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So We Have Asked the Wrong Question: Satan Said to Eve, “You Will be Like God, Knowing Good and Evil!”
A warmer climate, immigrations, and agricultural improvements have led to explosive population growth. We so many new mouths to feed the new growth in populations spelled disaster. Fertility rates combined with reduced harvest means the land can no longer support its population. While the abundance of labour has kept wages low, most Americans in the twenty first century have experienced a steady decline in living standards, marked by famine, poverty and poor health, leaving them vulnerable to infection. Medical examinations of many Americans find them overweight and suffering from prior illness from eating unhealthy foods because they are affordable. The destruction caused by COVID-19 will change humanity in two important ways. On an economic level, the rapid loss of population will lead to some important changes in America’s economic conditions. There will be more food to go around as well as more land and better pay for the surviving farmers and workers. People will begin to eat better and live longer. Living standards will also bring an increase in social mobility. Weakening the tyrannical oppression of the government, which will bring about political reforms. However, COVID-19 will also have an important biological impact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Because COVID-19 will wipe out some of the most frail and vulnerable people, it will leave behind a population with significantly different gene pool. Including genes that may help survivors resist the virus. Genetic mutations often confer immunity to different pathogens that work in similar ways. Riches are not from an abundance of Worldly goods, but from a contented mind. Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others’ were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. In the same sense as it could be said that one’s journey through life was undetectable, in the same sense no victim fell before one. One lived much too intellectually to be a seducer in the ordinary sense. For some people, individuals are merely for stimulation; they discard them as trees shake off their leaves—one is rejuvenated, the foliage withers. I can think of nothing more tormenting than a scheming mind that loses the thread and then directs all its keenness against itself as the conscience awakens and it becomes a matter of rescuing oneself from this perplexity. The many exists from one’s foxhole are futile; the instant one has troubled soul already thinks it sees daylight filtering in, it turns out to be a new entrance, and thus, like panic-stricken wild game, pursued by despair, one is continually seeking an exit and continually finding an entrance through which one goes back into oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Such a person is not always what could be called a criminal; one very often is oneself frustrated by one’s own schemes, and yet one is stricken with a more terrible punishment than is the criminal, for what is even the pain of repentance compared with this conscious madness? One’s punishment has a purely esthetic character, for even the expression “the conscience awakens” is too ethical to use about one; consciousness that manifests itself as a restlessness that does not indict one even in the profounder sense but keeps one awake, allow one no rest in one’s sterile restlessness. Nor is one insane, for one’s multitude of finite thoughts are not fossilized in the eternity of insanity. Who is and who is not a psychologist? And what is psychology? The answer to the first question would appear to be quite simple. Anyone who has not studied psychology and has not earn an academic degree in the field is not a psychologist. That would mean practically everyone is a nonpsychologist. However that is not really the case, and I would go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as a nonpsychologist, because we all practice and have to practice our own brands of psychology as we live our lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
We have to know what is going on inside other people. We have to try to understand them. We even have to try to predict how others will behave. To do so we do not have to go to a university laboratory. The laboratory of everyday life (to which it is not even necessary to go) gives us ample opportunity to think through and ponder any number of experiments and cases. So we have asked the wrong question. We should ask not whether we are psychologist. Whatever the answer to that question may be, I feel that the study of psychology can help us become better psychologist. That brings us to our second question: What is psychology? This question is much harder to answer than the first one. We will have to take a little time with it. The literal meaning of psychology is “science of the soul.” However, knowing that does not make any clearer to us precisely what this science of the soul is. What does it study? What are its methods? What are its goals? Most people think psychology is a relatively modern science. They have that impression because it is essentially only in the last 100 to 150 years that the word “psychology” ha come into use. However, they forget that there was a premodern psychology that began—let us say—about 500 years Before Christ and continued into the seventeenth century. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Premodern psychology did not call itself “psychology,” however. It was known as “ethics” or often as “philosophy,” but that does not make it any the less psychology. What was the purpose of that premodern psychology? Our answer can be quite brief: Premodern psychology sought to understand the human soul in the interest of making people better. The motivation behind psychology was therefore moral. Indeed, we could even say religious. Aristotle wrote a psychological textbook, but he titled it Ethics. The Stoics produced a very interesting psychology, and some of you may be familiar with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In Thomas Aquinas you will find a system of psychology from which you can probably learn more than you can from most modern textbooks. His discussion of such concepts as narcissism, pride, humility, modesty, inferiority complex, and many more are as interesting and profound as you will find anywhere. Spinoza, too, wrote a psychology and, like Aristotle, entitled it Ethics. Spinoza was probably the first great psychologist to recognize clearly the power of the unconscious when he said that we are all aware of our desires but we are not aware of the motives behind those desires. The modern period has seen the rise of a totally different psychology, which is no the whole not much more than a hundred years old. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This modern psychology has a different purpose. Its goals is not to understand the soul so that we can become better human beings; its goal is—to state the case crudely—to understand the soul so that we can become more successful human beings. We want to understand ourselves and others so that we can take the upper hand in life, so that we can manipulate others, so that we can shape ourselves in ways that will favour our own advancement. One if we understand how much culture and the goals of society have changed, can we fully grasp the difference between the tasks of premodern and modern psychology. Now, I am sure that by and large people in classical Greece or in the Middle Ages were not all that much better than we are today. Their everyday behaviour was probably even worse than ours. However, despite that their lives were governed by an idea, and that idea was just the business of earning one’s daily pay check (bread) was not enough to make life worth living. Life had to have a meaning, and much of that meaning lay in human growth, in the development of our human powers. And therein lay the relevance of psychology. Modern humans see things differently. They are not as interested in being and becoming more as they are in having more. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Modern humans want better careers, more money, more power, more respect. However, we know that more and more people are beginning to doubt whether goals like those will really make them happy. Word is getting around, and such doubt is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the United States of America, the richest and most economically advanced country in the World. God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite is anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations. During that time he had suffered many varied adversities. How could he have still needed the thorn to curb any temptation to become conceited? God had an even greater purpose for the thorn. He wanted Paul to experience the sufficiency of His grace. God wanted Paul to learn that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit was all he needed. God wanted Paul to lean continually on the Spirit for strength. All things are naked to God’s eyes. God necessarily knows things other than Himself. For it is manifest that He perfectly understands Himself; otherwise His existence would not be perfect, since His existence is His act of understanding. Now if anything is perfectly known, it follows of necessity that its power is perfectly known. However, the power of anything can be perfectly known only by knowing to what is power extends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Since therefore the divine power extends to other things by the very fact that it is the first effective cause of all things, as is clear. God must necessarily know things other than Himself. And if we add that the very existence of the first effective cause is God, this appears still more plainly, God is His own act of understanding. Hence whatever effects pre-exist in God, as in the first cause, must be in His act of understanding, and all things must be in Him according to an intelligible mode: for everything which is in another, is in accord to the mode of that in which it is. God’s grace assumes our sinfulness, guilt, and ill-deservedness. Here we see it also assumes our weakness and inability. Just as grace is opposed to the pride of self-righteousness, so it is also opposed to the pride of self-sufficiency. The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s temptation of Eve was undoubtedly complex and many faceted. That is, it included what we would now consider a number of different temptations. However, one of those facets was the temptation of self-sufficiency. Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Humankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being,” reports Acts 17.28. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Some people, their religious services are a holy thing to them, unpriced and unpriceable. For it is done at the dictate of one’s higher self. We must recognize a sharp, clear-cut distinction between spiritual teaching as a duty and spiritual teaching as a business. The one expresses one’s true relationship to the disciple, the other seeks financial return from one. Spirituality is no commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. It must be worked for step by step and won by personal effort. This still remains true even though in the end it is conferred by Grace, for without such preparation the conferment is unlikely, nay almost impossible. This is not less true if the efforts may mostly be buried in the history of past lives. If any religious organization or cult-leader even mentions a price, a fee, or even a contribution as a prerequisite to Grace, initiation, or higher consciousness, then the devotee is being deceived by imposture. It is an ancient tradition that such instruction should be given free and that a teacher is degraded by receiving payment. God is costless. It is, as Jesus pointed out, as free as the wind which comes and goes. Whoever has realized it will gladly teach the way to anyone who is ripe and ready for one’s teachings. If any human puts a price on it and offers to sell it to you, be sure one is offering a false or shoddy imitation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Note how Moses recalled the Israelites’ utter extremity and total dependence on God: God humbled them, caused them to hunger, fed them with food they had never seen before, taught them that humans live by the word that comes from God. Maybe this is due to Eve, but although many feminists’ legal theories are powerful and brilliant in many ways, they sometimes rely on gender essentialism—the notion that a unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience. The result of this tendency toward gender essentialism, is not only that some voices are silenced in order to privilege others (for this is an inevitable result of categorization, which is necessary both for human communication and political movement), but that the voices that are silenced turn out to be the same voices silenced by the mainstream legal voice of “We the People”—among them, the voices of Black women. This result troubles me for two reasons. First, the obvious one: As a humanitarian, the experience of Black women is too often ignored both in feminist theory and in legal theory, and gender essentialism in feminist legal theory does nothing to address the problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
A second and less obvious reason for my criticism of gender essential is that contemporary legal theory needs less abstraction and not simply a different sort of abstraction. To be fully subversive, the methodology of feminist legal theory should challenge not only law’s content but its tendency to privilege the abstract and unitary voice, and this gender essentialism also fails to do. In accordance with my belief that legal theory, including feminist legal theory, is in need of less abstraction, and should introduce the voices of more Black women. However, just because people do not represent everyone equally does not mean that they are racist. Some of the people who are not diverse are antiracist. Yet, just as law itself, in trying to speak for all persons, ends up silencing those without power, feminist legal theory is in danger of silencing those who have traditionally been kept from speaking, or who have been ignored when they spoke, including Black women, poor White women, and sometimes even rich young White men. The first step toward avoiding this danger is to give up the dream of gender essentialism. Second, in using a racial critique to attack gender essentialism in feminist legal theory, my aim is not to establish a new essentialism in its place based on the essential experience of Black women. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Nor should my focus on Black women be take to mean that other women and even men are not silenced either by the mainstream culture or by feminist legal theory. Third, every experience is unique and no categories or generalizations exists at all. Even a jurisprudence based on multiple consciousness must categorize; without categorization each individual is as isolated as most alienated people believe themselves to be, and there can be no moral responsibility of social change. We need to make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable, and to do so is all the more important in a discipline like law, where abstraction and “frozen” categories are the norm. Avoiding gender essentialism need not mean that the Holocaust and a corncob are the same. Although the tactful acceptance of clumsy efforts by others to help may be a burden to the stigmatized individual, more is asked of one. It is said that if one is really at ease with one’s differentness, this acceptance will have an immediate effect upon normals, making it easier for them to be at ease with one in social situations. The stigmatized individual is advised to accept oneself as a normal person because of what others can gain in this way, and hence likely one oneself, during face-to-face interaction. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The line inspired by normals, then, obliges the stigmatized individual to protect normals in various ways. An important aspect of this protection has only been suggested; it will be reconsidered here. Given the fact that normals in many situations extend a stigmatized person the courtesy of treating one’s defect as if it were of no concern, and that the stigmatized is likely to feel that underneath it all one is a normal human being like anyone else, the stigmatized can be expected to allow oneself sometimes to be taken in and to believe that one is more accepted then one is. One will then attempt to participate socially in areas of contact which others feel are not one’s proper place. Thus Black writer describes the consternation she causes in a hotel beauty shop: “The shop was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was virtually lifted by the uniformed attendant into the chair. I tried a joke, the usual thing about getting a haircut once every three months even if I did not need it. It was a mistake. The silence told me that I was not a woman who should make jokes, not even good ones.” People do not only expect you to play your part; they also expect you to know your place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
“Once at an open air restaurant, a waiter rushed to meet me, on the terrace where the tables were, no to help me, but to tell me that they could not serve a woman like me at that restaurant, as people visited to enjoy themselves and have a good time, not to be depressed by the sight minorities.” That the stigmatized individual can be caught taking the tactful acceptance of oneself too seriously indicates that this acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance—or, at worst, uneasily extended it. The stigmatized are tactfully expected to be polite and not to press their luck (or they will be arrested); they should not test the limits of the acceptance shown them (because the police are not on their side and looking for a reason to incarcerate them), nor make it the basis for still further demands. Tolerance, of course, is usually part of the bargain. The nature of a “good adjustment” is not apparent. It requires that the stigmatized individual cheerfully and unselfconsciously accept oneself as essentially the same as normals, while at the same time one voluntarily withholds oneself from those situations in which normals would find it difficult to give lip service to their similar acceptance one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
More emotion management goes on in the families and jobs of the upper classes than in those of the lower classes, generally speaking. That is, in the class system, social conditions conspire to make it more prevalent at the top. In the gender system, on the other hand, the reverse is true: social conditions make it more prevalent, and prevalent in different ways, for those at the bottom—women. In what sense is this so? And why? Both men and women do emotion work, in private life and at work. In all kinds of ways, men as well as women get into the spirit of the party, try to escape the grip of hopeless love, try to pull themselves out of depression, try to allow grief. However in the realm emotional experience, is emotion work as important for men as it is for women? And is it important in the same ways? I believer that the answers to both questions is No. The reason, at the bottom, is the fact that women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society. They are a subordinate social stratum, and this has four consequences. First, lacking other resources, women make a resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a gift in return for the more material resources they lack. (For example, in 2017, overall, 57 percent of men earn $50,000.00 or more annually, while only 42 percent of women earn the same a year.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
The pay gap is still 20 percent for woman and Black women with graduate degrees earn 2 percent less than their White female counterparts. Thus, a woman’s capacity to manage feeling and to do “relational” work is for them a more important resource. Second, emotion work is important indifferent ways for men and women. This is because each gender tends to be called on to do different kinds of this work. On the whole, women tend to specialize in the polite and accommodating side of emotional labour and men tend to be more stern and less emotional. This specialization of emotional labour in the marketplace rests on the different childhood training of the heart that is given to girls and to boys. (“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little body made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.”) Moreover, each specialization presents men and women with different emotional tasks of mastering anger and aggression in the service of “being nice.” To men, the socially assigned task of aggressing against those that break rules of various sorts creates the private task of mastering fear and vulnerability. Third, and less noticed, the general subordination of women leaves every individual women with a weaker “status shield” against the displaced feelings of others. For example, female real estate agents found themselves easier targets for verbal abuse from buyers so that male sales representatives often found themselves called upon to handle unwarranted aggression against them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
The fourth consequence of the power difference between the genders is that for each gender a different portion of the managed heart is enlisted for commercial use. Women more often react to subordination by making defensive use of physical beauty, charm, and relational skills. For them, it is these capacities that become most vulnerable to commercial exploitation, and so it is these capacities that they are most likely to become estranged from. For male workers in “male” jobs, it is more often the capacity to wield anger and make threats that is delivered over to the company, and so it is this sort of capacity that they are more likely to feel estranged from. After the great transmutation, then, men and women come to experience emotion work in different ways. Yet, wise teachers try to harmonize the contradictions. They use practical scientific ways along with mystical interior ones. The person who is fluent and articulate makes a better teacher so far as communication is concerned; but the person who has had divine experience, who knows what one is talking about, is still the best teacher of all. If one knows in experience as in theory, and if one possesses the ability to communicate this theory, then the impressions left will not be vague but quite distinct. A teacher who gives a well-argued discourse about Truth helps us, but so does the teacher who announces the Truth in non-discursive terms both are needful in their place. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The self-actualized is one who not only knows the truth but can teach well what one knows—and not necessarily in words, for silence can also be used as an effective medium. King Benjamin continues his address—the Lord Omnipotent will minister among humans in a tabernacle of clay—blood will come from every pore as He atones for the sins of the World—His is the only name whereby salvation comes—humans can putt off the natural humans and become Saints through the Atonement—the torment of the wicked will be as a lake of fire and brimstone. About 124 Before Christ. “And again my brethren, I would call your attention, for I have somewhat more o speak unto you; for behold, I have things to tell you concerning that which is to come. And he things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judges of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that hey may also be filled with joy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst humans, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases. And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of humans. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than humans can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of humans even through faith one one’s name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and hall scourge hi and shall crucify him. And he shall rise the third day from the dead; and behold, he standeth to judge the World; and behold, all these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. However, wo, wo unto one who knoweth that one rebelleth against God! For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord God hath sent his holy prophets among all the children of humans, o declare these things to every kindred, nation, and tongue, that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though one had already come among them. Yet the Lord God saw that his people were a stiffnecked people, and he appointed unto them a law even the law of Moses. And many signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows showed he unto them, concerning his coming; and also holy prophets spake unto them concerning his coming; and yet they hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Moses availeth nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood. And even if it were possible that little children could sin they could not be saved; but I say unto you they are blessed; for behold, as in Adam, or by nature, they shall, even so the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of humans, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but humans drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For the natural human is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless one yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural human and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon one, even as a child doth submit to one’s father. And moreover, I say unto you, that the time shall come when the knowledge of a Saviour shall spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. And behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And even at this time, when thou shalt have taught thy people the things which the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, even then are they found no more blameless in the sight of God, only according to the words which I have spoken unto thee. And now I have spoken he words which the Lord God hath commanded me. And thus saith the Lord: They shall stand as a bright testimony against this people, at the judgment day; whereof they shall be judged, every human according to one’s work, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. And if they be evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from whence they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation to their own souls. Therefore, they have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of one’s partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever. And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever. Thus hath the Lord commanded me. Amen,” reports Mosiah 3.1-27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Mighty God, I humble myself for faculties misused, opportunities neglected, words ill-advised, I repent of my folly and inconsiderate ways, my broken resolutions, untrue service, my backsliding steps, my vain thoughts. O bury my sins in the ocean of Jesus’ blood and please let no evil result from my fretful temper, unseemly behaviour, provoking pettiness. If by unkindness I have wounded or hurt another, do thou pour in the balm of Heavenly consolation; if I have turned coldly from need, misery, grief, please do not in just anger forsake me: If I have withheld relief from penury and pain, do not withhold They gracious bounty from me. If I have shunned those who have offended me, please keep open the door of Thy heart to my need. Please fill me with an over-flowing ocean of compassion, the reign of love my motive, the law of love my rule. O Thou God of all grace, please make me more thankful, more humble; please inspire me with a deep sense of my unworthiness arising from the depravity of my nature, my omitted duties, my unimproved advantages, Thy commands violated by me. With all my calls to gratitude and joy may I remember that I have reason for sorrow and humiliation; O give me repentance unto life; cement my oneness with my blessed Lord, that faith may adhere to one more immovably, that love may entwine itself round one more tightly, that one’s Spirit may pervade every fibre of my being. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
Then please send me out to make one know to my fellow-humans. The spiritual guide must be someone to be trusted more than any human to be looked to for guidance, knowledge, hope, inspiration, and warning. One respects every confidence that is reposed in one and keeps all confession in the hidden archives of memory. Whatever confidence one receives during the interview, the other person may feel sure that it will not be betrayed. The person who professes to guide others spiritually and to inspire them with high ideals cannot escape being watched. If one resents the ordeal, one’s service o them will be impaired; but if one accept it, one shows thereby that one is not looking for self-glory. Contempt and slander will be the unequal reward some will pay one; miscomprehension and minification will be received from others. One will accept them unconcernedly. No true master will take money for one’s services. O God, the Bread of our life, look upon us; be Thou the Guardian of our bodies; be Thou the Saviour of our souls. Believing that we have received from the holy Alter the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord and God, let us pray to the Unity of the Blessed Trinity, that it may be granted to us evermore, in fullness of faith, to hunger and thirst after righteousness; and that we, being strengthened with the grace of the saving Food, may so do His work, that we may possess the Sacrament which we have received, not for judgment, but for healing, through our Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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O LORD my God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make me ever to seek and love Thee, and by this Holy Communion which I have received never to depart from Thee; for Thou art God, and beside Thee there is none else, for ever and ever. #CresleighHomes
One Might Call Me a Stepchild of Our Culture—I Might Have Been a Gold-Fish in a Glass Bowl!
The value of life is possessed, not in the length of the days, but in the use we make of them; a human may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of years, but on your will. The greatest thing in the World is to know how to be self-sufficient. There are certain typical difficulties inherent in our culture, which mirror themselves as conflicts in every individual’s life and which, accumulated, may lead to the formation of the neuroses. Since I am not a sociologist, I shall merely point out briefly the main trends which has a bearing on the problem of neurosis and culture. Modern culture is economically based on the principle of individual competition. The isolated individual has to fight with other individuals of the same group, has to surpass them and, frequently, thrust them aside. The advantage of the one is frequently the disadvantaged of the other. The psychic result of this situation is a diffuse hostile tension between individuals. Everyone is the real or potential competitor of everyone else. This situation is clearly apparent among members of the same occupational group, regardless of strivings to be fair or of attempts to camouflage by polite considerations. It must be emphasized, however, that competitiveness, and the potential hostility that accompanies it, pervades all human relationships. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Competitiveness is one of the predominant factors in social relationships. It pervades the relationships between men and men, between women and women, and whether the point of competition be popularity, competence, attractiveness or any other social value it greatly impairs the possibilities of reliable friendship. It also, as already indicated, disturbs the relations between men and women, not only in the choice of the partner but in the entire struggle with one for superiority. It pervades school life. And perhaps most important of all, it pervades the family situation, so that as a rule the child is inoculated with this germ from the very beginning. The rivalry between father and son, mother and daughter, one child and another, is not a general human phenomenon but is the response to culturally conditioned stimuli. It remains one of Dr. Freud’s great achievements to have seen the role of rivalry in the family, as expressed in his concept of the Oedipus complex and in other hypotheses. It must be added, however, that this rivalry itself is not biologically conditioned but is a result of given cultural condition and, furthermore, that the family situation is not the only one to stir up rivalry, but that the competitive stimuli are active from the cradle to the grave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The potential hostile tension between individuals results in a constant generation of fear—fear of the potential hostility of others, reinforced by a fear of retaliation for hostilities of one’s own. Another important source of fear in the normal individual is the prospect of failure. The fear of failure is a realistic one because, in general, the chances of failing are much greater than those of succeeding, and because failures in a competitive society entail a realistic frustration of needs. They mean not only economic insecurity, but also loss of prestige and all kinds of emotional frustrations. Another reason why success is such a fascinating phantom is its effect on out self-esteem. It is not only by others that we are valued accord to the degree of our success; willy-nilly our own self-evaluation follows the same pattern. According to existing ideologies success is due to our own intrinsic merits, or in religious terms, is a visible sign of the grace of God; in reality it is dependent on a number of factors independent of our control—fortuitous circumstances, unscrupulousness, and the like. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the existing ideology, even the most normal person is constrained to feel that one amounts to something when successful, and is worthless if one is defeated. Needless to say, this presents a shaky basis for self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
All these factors together—competitiveness and its potential hostilities between fellow-beings, fears, diminished self-esteem—result psychologically in the individual feeling that one is isolated. Even when one has many contacts with others, even when one is happily married, one is emotionally isolated. Emotional isolation is hard for anyone to endure; it becomes a calamity, however, if it coincides with apprehensions and uncertainties about one’s self. It is this situation which provokes, in the normal individual of our time, an intensified need for affection as a remedy. Obtaining affection makes one feel less isolated, less threatened by hostility and less uncertain of oneself. Because it corresponds to a vital need, love is overvalued in our culture. It becomes a phantom—like success—carrying with it the illusion that it is a solution for all problems. Love itself is not an illusion—although in our culture it is most often a screen for satisfying wishes that have nothing to do with it—but it is made an illusion by our expecting much more of it than it can possibly fulfill. And the ideological emphasis that we place on love serves to cover up the factors which create our exaggerated need for it. Hence the individual—and I still mean the normal individual—is in the dilemma of needing a great deal of affection but finding difficulty in obtaining it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The situation thus far represents a fertile ground for the development of neuroses. The same cultural factors that affect the normal person—leading one toward a shaky self-esteem, potential hostile tension, apprehensiveness, competitiveness entailing fear and hostility, enhanced need for satisfactory personal relations—affect the neurotic to a higher degree and in one the same results are merely intensified—a crushed self-esteem, destructiveness, anxiety, enhanced competitiveness entailing anxiety and destructive impulses, and excessive need for affection. When we remember that in every neurosis there are contradictory tendencies which the neurotic is unable to reconcile, the question arises as to whether there are not likewise certain definite contradictions in our culture, which underlie the typical neurotic conflicts. It would be the task of the sociologist to study and describe these cultural contradictions. It must suffice for me to indicate briefly and schematically some of the main contradictory tendencies. The first contradiction to be mentioned is that between competition and success on the one hand, and humanly love and humility on the other. On the one hand everything is done to spur us toward success, which means that we must be not only assertive but aggressive, able to push others out of the way. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
On the other hand we are deeply imbued with Christian ideals which declare that it is selfish to want anything for ourselves, that we should be humble, turn the other cheek, by yielding. For this contradiction there are only two solutions within the normal range: to take one of these strivings seriously and discard the other; or to take both seriously with the result that the individual is seriously inhibited in both directions. The second contradiction is that between the stimulation of our needs and our factual frustrations in satisfying them. For economic reasons needs are constantly being stimulated in our cultural by such means as advertisements, “conspicuous consumption,” the ideal of “keeping up with Hiltons.” For the great majority, however, the actual fulfillment of these needs is closely restricted. They psychic consequences for the individual is a constant discrepancy between one’s desires and their fulfillment. Another contradiction exists between the alleged freedom of the individual and all one’s factual limitations. The individual is told by society that one is free, independent, can decide one’s life according to one’s own free will; “the great game of life” is open to one, and one can get what one wants if one is efficient and energetic. In actual fact, for the majority of people all these possibilities are limited. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
What has been said facetiously of the impossibility of choosing one’s parents can well be extended to life in general—choosing and succeeding in an occupation, choosing ways of recreation, choosing a mate. The result for the individual is a wavering between a feeling of boundless power in determining one’s own fate and a feeling of entire helplessness. These contradictions embedded in our culture are precisely the conflict which the neurotic struggles to reconcile: one’s tendencies toward aggressiveness and one’s tendencies toward yielding; one’s excessive demands and one’s fear of never getting anything; one’s striving toward self-aggrandizement and one’s feeling of personal helplessness. The difference from the normal is merely quantitative. While the normal person is able to cope with the difficulties without damage to one’s personality, in the neurotic all the conflicts are intensified to a degree that makes any satisfactory solution impossible. It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an accentuated form, mostly through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has solved them only at great cost to one’s personality. We might call one a stepchild of our culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The individual’s “own” group, then, may inform the code of conduct professionals advocate for one. The stigmatized individual is also asked to see oneself from the point of view of a second grouping: the normals and the wider society that they constitute. I want to consider at some length the shadow cast by this second standpoint. The language of this stance inspired by normals is not so much political, as in the previous case, as it is psychiatric—the imagery of mental hygiene being employed as a source of rhetoric. One who adheres to the advocated line is said to be mature and to have achieved a good personal adjustment; one who does not follow the line is said to be an impaired person, rigid, defensive, with inadequate inner resources. What does this advocacy involved? The individual is advised to see oneself as fully human being like anyone else, one who at worst happens to be excluded from what is, in the last analysis, merely one area of social life. One is not a type or a category, but a human being: Who said that the physically disabled are unfortunate? Do they, or do you? Just because they cannot dance? All music has to stop sometime anyway. Just because they cannot play tennis? Lots of times the Sun is too hot! Just because you have to help them down the stairs? Is there something else you would rather do? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Polio is not sad—it is just darned inconvenient—it means you cannot have those fits of temper and run into your room and kick the door shut any more. Disabled is an awful word. It specifies! It sets apart! It is too intimate! It is condescending! It makes me want to vomit like a wiggling creature coming out of the cocoon. Since one’s affliction is nothing in itself, one should not be ashamed of it or of others who have it; nor should one compromise oneself by trying to conceal it. On the other hand, by hard work and persistent self-training one should fulfill ordinary standards as fully as one can, stopping short only when the issue of normifcation arises; that is, where one’s efforts might give the impression that one is trying to deny one’s differentness. (This very fine line is drawn differently, of course, by different professionals, but because of this ambiguity it needs professional presentation all the more.) And because normals have their troubles, too, the stigmatized individual should not feel bitter, resentful, or self-pitying. A cheerful, outgoing manner should be cultivated. A formula for handling normals follows logically. The skills that the stigmatized individual acquires in dealing with a mixed social situation should be used to help the others in it. Normals really mean no harm; when they do, it is because they do not know better. They should therefore be tactfully helped to act nicely. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Slights, snubs, and untactful remarks should not be answered in kind. Either no notice should be taken or the stigmatized individual should make an effort at sympathetic re-education of the normal, showing one, point for point, quietly, and with delicacy, that in spite of appearances the stigmatized individual is, underneath it all, a fully-human being. (So complete is the individual’s derivation from society, that society can rely on those who are the least accepted as normal members, the least rewarded by the pleasures of easy social intercourse with others, to provide a statement, clarification, and tribute to the inward being of every human. The more the stigmatized individual deviates from the norm, the more wonderfully one may have to express possession of the standard subjective self if one is to convince others that on possesses, it and the more they may demand that one provide them with a model of what an ordinary person is supposed to feel about oneself.) When the stigmatizes person finds that normals have difficulty in ignoring one’s failings, one should try to help them and the social situation by conscious efforts to reduce tension. In these circumstances the stigmatized individual may, for example, attempt to “break the ice,” explicitly referring to one’s failing in a way that shows one is detached, able to take one’s condition in stride. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In addition to matter-of-factness, levity is also recommended: “Then there was the cigarette gag. That was invariably god for a laugh. Whenever I would walk into a restaurant, bar, or party, I would whip out a pack of butts, open it ostentatiously, take one, light it, and sit back puffing on it contentedly. That almost always attracted attention. People would stare and I could almost hear them saying, My! Is it not wonderful what he can do with a pair of hooks? Whenever anyone commented on this accomplishment I would smile and say ‘There is one thing I never have to worry about. That is burning my fingers.’ Corny, I know, but a sure icebreaker.” It should be noted that one who attempts to break the ice may, of course, be seen as exploiting the situation for what can be wrung from it, as novelists have pointed out. However, being able to break the ice, one may be demonstrating to oneself that one has superior control in the situation. A somewhat sophisticated female patient whose face had been scarred by a beauty treatment felt it effective upon entering a room of people to say facetiously, “Please excuse the case of leprosy.” It is also suggested that the stigmatized individual in mixed company may find it useful to refer to one’s disability and one’s group in the language one employs when with one’s own, and the language employed about one when normals are among their own—thus proffering the normals present a temporary status as wise one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
At other times one may find it appropriate to conform to “disclosure etiquette” and introduce one’s failing as a topic of serious conversation, in this way hoping to reduce its significance as a topic of suppressed concern: The injured man’s feeling that, as a person, one is not understood, combined with the non-injured person’s embarrassment in one’s presence, produced a strained, uncomfortable relationship which further serves to separate them. To relieve this social strain and gain greater acceptance, the injured person may not only be willing to satisfy the expressed curiosity of non-injured persons…but may also oneself initiate discussions of the injury. Other means of helping the others to be tactful toward one are also recommended, such as, in the case of facial disfigurements, pausing on the threshold of an encounter so the participants-to-be will have a chance to compose their response. A 37-year-old male whose face is grossly disfigured but who carries on a real estate business, “When I have an appointment with a new contact, I try to manage to be standing at a distance and facing the door, so the person entering will have more time to see me and get adjusted to my appearance before we start talking.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The stigmatized individual is also advised to act as if the efforts of normals to ease matters for one were effective and appreciated. Unsolicited offers of interest, sympathy, and help, although often perceived by the stigmatized as an encroachment on privacy and a presumption, are to be tactfully accepted: “Yet, help is not only a problem to those who render it. If the disabled individual wants the ice to be broken, one must admit the value of help and allow people to give it to one. Innumerable times I have seen the fear and bewilderment in people’s eyes vanish as I have stretched out my hand for help, and I have felt life and warmth stream from the helping hands I have taken. We are not always aware of the help we may give b accepting assistance, that in this way we may establish a foothold for contact.” A polio patient author states a similar theme: “When my neighbours ring my bell on a snowy day to inquire if I need something from the store, even though I am prepared for bad weather I try to think up some item rather than reject a generous offer. It is kinder to accept help than refuse it in an effort to prove independence.” And similarly, an amputee: “A lot of amputees sort of humour the others to make them feel good because they are doing something for you. It does not make other people uncomfortable like it could if you were still standing up.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The call, properly done, is a call from God who is inviting us corporately into His presence. We listen to God’s works with reverent, prayerful anticipation. As the call ends, we are led in an invocation which invites God to meet us and calls us to submit ourselves in worship, for His glory. When God stands before us, we stand before Him. Refusing to worship Him is a way of trying to avoid his face and his eyes. Even the One-and-a half-year-old Annie was enjoying water in the back yard with her brother Leo, and grandmother “Boomba.” Boomba gently counseled her to water the peonies, but she had just discovered mud by pouring water on a small patch of dirt. Boomba told her not to put water on the dirt because it makes mud and mud will “get everything dirty.” Well, mud it was anyway, and little Annie even put the mud into a small tub of water nearby, calling it then “warm chocolate,” and she ate some. Boomba, who had been reading facing away from the action, soon discovered and cleaned up what to her was a mess, and then returned to her reading, but now seated so as to be facing Annie. However, the little girl soon resumed her “warm chocolate” routine, saying sweetly, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” Boomba of course agreed, and looked down at her reading. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Then Annie would make black mud and put some of it in the tub. And then some more. Three times she said, as she continued with her work, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” The tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we unobserved in our wrong. The adult soul carries the same burden—but now so great as to be crushed by it. And when the face of God will no longer be avoidable, that soul will cry out in agony “to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face Him who sits on the throne,’” reports Revelation 6.15-16. The so-called “right to privacy” of which so much is made in contemporary life is in very large measure merely a way of avoiding scrutiny in our wrongdoing. King Benjamin addresses his people—he recounts the equity, fairness, and spirituality of his reign—he counsels them to serve their Heavenly King—those who rebel against God will suffer anguish like unquenchable fire. About 124 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that after Mosiah had done as his father had commanded him, and had made a proclamation throughout all the and, that the people gathered themselves together throughout all the land, that they might go up to the temple to hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them. And there were a great number, even so many that they did not number them; for they had multiplied exceedingly and waxed great in the land. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
“And they also took the firstlings of their flocks, that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses; and also that they might give thanks to the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, and who had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies, and had appointed just humans to be their teachers, and also a just man to be their kind, who had established peace in the land of Zarahemla, and who had taught them to keep the commandments of God, that they might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all humans. And it came to pass that when they came up to the temple, they pitched their tents round about, every human according to one’s family, consisting of one’s wife, and one’s sons, and one’s daughters, and their sons, and their daughters, from the eldest down to the youngest, every family being separate one from another. And they pitched their tents round about the temple, every human having one’s tent with the door there of towards the temple, that thereby they might remain in their tents and hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them; for the multitude being so great that king Benjamin could not teach them all within the walls of the temple, therefore he caused a tower to be erected, that thereby his people might hear the words which he should speak unto them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“And it came to pass that he began to speak to his people from the tower; and they could not all hear his words because of the greatness of the multitude; therefore he caused that the words which he spake should be written and sent forth among those that were not under the sound of his voice, that they might also receive his words. And these are the words which he spake and caused to be written, saying: My brethren, all ye that have assembled yourselves together, you that can hear my words which I shall speak unto you this day; for I have not commanded you to come up hither to trifle with the words which I shall speak, but that you should hearken unto me, and open your ears that ye may hear, and your hears that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God maybe unfolded to your view. I have not commanded you to come up hither that ye should fear me, or that ye should think that I of myself am more than a mortal man. However, I am like as yourselves, subject to all manner of infirmities in body and mind; yet I have been chosen by this people, and consecrated by my father, and was suffered by the hand of the Lord that I should be a ruler and a king over this people; and have been kept and preserved by his matchless power to serve you with all the might, mind and strength which the Lord hath grated unto me. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“I say unto you that as I have been suffered to spend my days in your service, even up to this time, and have not sought gold nor sliver nor any manner of riches of you; neither have I suffered that ye should be confined in dungeons, nor that ye should make slaves of one another, nor that ye should murder, or plunder, or steal, or commit adultery; nor even have I suffered that ye should commit any manner of wickedness, and have taught you that ye should keep the commandments of the Lord, in all things which he hath commanded you—and even I, myself, have labored with mine own hands that I might serve you, and that ye should not be laden with taxes, and that there should nothing come upon you which was grievous to be borne—and of all these things which I have spoken, ye yourselves are witnesses this day. Yet, my brethren, I have not done these things that I might boast, neither do I tell these things that thereby I might accuse you; but I tell you these things that ye may know that I can answer a clear conscience before God this day. Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God. And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“Behold, ye have called me your king; and if I, whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought not ye to labor to serve one another? And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your Heavenly King! I say unto you, my brethren, that is you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting your from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him. And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he had paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast? Thou God of my end, Thou hast given me a fixed disposition to go forth and spend my life for Thee; if it by Thy will let me proceed in it; if not, then revoke my intentions. All I want in life is such circumstances as may best enable me to serve Thee in the World; to this end I leave all my concerns in Thy hand, but let me not be discouraged, for this hinders my spiritual fervency; enable me to undertake some task for Thee, for this refreshes and animates my soul, so that I could endure all hardships and labours, and willingly suffer for Thy name. However, O what a death it is to strive and labour, to be always in a hurry and yet do nothing! Alas, time flies and I am of little use. O that I could be a flame of fire in Thy service, always burning out in one continual blaze. Please fit me for singular usefulness in the World. Please fit me to exult in distresses of every kind if they but promote the advancement of Thy kingdom. Fit me to quit all hopes of the World’s friendship, and give me a deeper sense of my sinfulness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Please fit me to accept as just desert from Thee any trial that may befall me. Please fit me to be totally resigned to the denial of pleasures I desire, and to be content to spend m time with Thee. Please fit me to pray with a sense of the joy of divine communion, to find all times happy seasons to my soul, to see my own nothingness, and wonder that I am allowed to serve Thee. Please fit me to enter the blessed World where no unclean thing is, and to know Thee with me always. May the holy Food and Drink be salutary to us, O Lord; may it fortify our temporal life, and give us life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who touchest us in the participation of Thy Sacrament, work out in our hearts the effects of its power, that through Thy Gift itself we may be fitted for the reception of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Heavenly Mystery, O Lord, be to us a renewal of soul and body; and as we have gone through the performance of it, may we feel its effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank Thee, O Lord, Who refreshest us both with the partaking of the Heavenly Sacrament and with the solemn remembrance of Thy righteous servants, through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the vices of our hearts be overcome by this Medicine, which came to heal the diseases of our mortal nature. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
This #PlumasRanch laundry room makes our heads spin with all that storage! 😍
Check out the interactive floor plans and virtual tours for this community on our website. Link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/
Almighty and everlasting God, preserve the works of Thy mercy, and pour into our hearts the sweetness of the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes
In Our World of Divide and Conquer, the Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master House!
Miracles are not believed, even by those to whom they happen. A guru who thinks of oneself as having disciples has attachments. The ego is present in one. They are mentally held as possessions. An individual who is privileged to carry a message from the mountaintop down to one’s fellows should feel no envy of other messengers, no emotional disturbance at their success or one’s own failure. If one does, it means that the ego has inserted itself into one’s work and poisoned it. On the contrary, one which they could not hear for themselves. One ought to rejoice at their blessing, otherwise one is still worshipping oneself and not God. A true messenger will not look for followers but for those whom one can help. Exposed to flattery and obsequiousness though one will be, one will nevertheless keep quite free from pomposity and vanity. The teacher has to bear patiently with the defects and weakness of one’s students. If one’s insight were too limited, one’s compassion too small, and one’s calmness too superficial, one could not do this. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creative can spark like a dialectic. Only then different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power seek new ways of being in the World generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominated) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal being is forged. Many people have been taught either to ignore their differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and one’s oppression. However, community must no mean a shedding of our difference, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable people; those of us who have been forged in the crucible of difference—those of us who are less affluent, who are atypical, who are mature—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified at outside the structures in order to define and seek a World in which we can al flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
We must learn to allow our unique qualities to make us strong for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow for us to temporarily beat one at one’s own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those whom still define the master’s house as their only source of support. I believe most educators would agree that a high priority in education is to help individuals to acquire the learning, the information, and the personal growth that will enable them to deal more constructively with the “real World.” This is often the theme of commencement addresses, in which one expresses hopes or fears concerning how the new graduates will face and cope with the “real World.” It is often a topic in the final hours of intensive encounter groups, when individuals who have learned a great deal about themselves and about their interpersonal relationships are concerned about how they will behave when they return to their “real” lives outside. What is this “real World?” It is this question that I want to explore, and I believe that the direction in which my thinking has inexorably led me will be best portrayed by giving a number of personal commonplace examples. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
A few weeks ago, I was sitting alone, late at night, on the deck of a beach cottage in norther California. As I sat there for several hours, a bright star on the horizon moved upward into clear view. A brilliant planet moved with the same slow, majestic speed from directly above me to a point well on my right. The star and the planet were accompanied in their movement by the Milk Way and all the other constellations. Obviously, I was the center of the Universe, and the Heavens were slowly revolving about me. It was a humbling experience (How small I am!) and an uplifting one (How marvelous to be such a focal point!). I was looking at the real World. Yet, in another corner of my mind, I knew that I, and the Earth beneath me, and the atmosphere surrounding me were moving at a breathless speed—faster than modern jet plane—in the direction I called east, and the stars and planets were, relative to the Earth, comparatively motionless. Although I could not see what I have just described, I knew that this—not the more obvious perception—was really the real World. On some level, we are aware that we are an infinitesimal speck on an insignificant planet in one of the minor galaxies (of which there are millions) in the Universe. We know that each of these galaxies are moving at an incredible speed, often exploding away from the others. Is this reality, too? #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
I am confused. However, at least there is one reality of which I can be sure: the hard wooden chair on which I sit, the solid Earth on which the deck rests, the stainless steel pen I hold in my hand. This is a reality that can not only be seen, but also felt and touched. These objects can sustain weight and pressure. They are solid. However, no, I know enough of science to challenge all this. The chair is made up of formerly living cells, intricate in their composition, composed more of space than of matter. The Earth is a slowly moving fluid mess, which shudders very frequently as it shrinks and cracks and crinkles. The road over which I drove yesterday had been a part of those shudders. One day in 1906, the Earth shrugged a little and the road cracked, and the western side of the crack was carried twenty feet north of its continuation on the other side. Solid Earth! And what about the reassuring hardness of my metal pen? They tell me it is composed of invisible atoms, moving at great speed. Each atom has a nucleus, and recent years have brought discoveries of more and more particles in those nuclei. Each particle is endowed with fantastically unbelievable characteristics; it moves in possibly random, possibly orderly trajectories in the great inner space of each atom. My pen is hardly the firm solid object that I so clearly feel and hold. The “real World” seems to be dissolving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
I am reassured, but also perplexed, by the statement of the great physical scientist, Sir James Jeans. He says: “The steam of human knowledge is impartially heading toward a nonmechanical reality: The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Try that on your practical friend, or your plumber, or your stockbroker. Tell them, “The real World is just a great thought.” At any rate, the conception of a real World, obvious to anyone, is rapidly slipping completely out of my grasp. However, at least in the interpersonal World, I know my family and my friends; this knowledge is surely a solid basis on which I can act. However, then my memories trip me up. One needs only the simple occasion of a softly facilitated encounter group, where permission is given to express oneself, to discover how shaky our interpersonal knowledge is. Individuals have discovered in their closet friends and family members great realms of hidden feelings. There are previously unknown fears, feelings of inadequacy, suppressed rages and resentments, bizarre desires for pleasures of the flesh and fantasies, hidden pools of hopes and dreams, of joys and dread, of creative urges and unbidden loves. This reality, too, seems as unsure, as full unknowns, as any yet considered yet in this paper. So that individual is drive back to self: “At least I know who I am. I decide what I want t do, and I do it. That is for real.” However, is it? #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
If I talk to the behaviourist, one tells me, “You are nothing but the sum of your stimulus inputs and the conditioned responses you emit. All of the rest is illusion.” Well, finally we have reality. I am nothing but a mechanical robot. Or is that all? Where do my dreams come from? Perhaps that can be explained too. The I think of Jean, the woman who told me that her identical twin sister was driving back to her own home at night by a familiar route when Jean awoke in a panic of certainty. She phoned the highway police and told them, “There have been an accident on such-and-such a highway. It is a white car with his license and a lone woman driver.” There was a pause, and then the officer said, in a puzzled and slightly suspicious voice, “But how did you know about that lady? We only got the report of the accident two minutes ago.” What do we make of that kind of reality? That little episode opens up a whole train of thought about the inner Worlds and “separate realities.” In a World of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize differences as crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our World, divide and conquer must become define and empower. We need to foster interracial cooperation between races, cultures, occupations, lifestyles, and genders who do not love each other. Unity is powerful and important. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Feminists and other egalitarian movements have the same agenda, and that is to achieve equality for all of the group that they recognize. Many people are still caught up by discriminatory visions of the past, and those are being relived today. However, majority of society has educated themselves about humanity and the difference between people, and know that they key to survival is acceptance and understanding. To follow the Golden Rule, do on to others as you would have then do on to you. We all want to go to Heaven because Earth is not our final home. However, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 6.23. Humans of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of society’s ignorance and to educate humanity as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of the young and mature to educate society—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of discriminatory thought. It is the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Helping others to understand the art of proper living is itself an art. A person may be good and yet not a good teacher. Racism, sexism, Zeusophobia, homophobia, perennial disregard for law and order are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside oneself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices. The people have so much power and are coming out in masses and demanding changes, but violence is not the answer. Your mayors and governors are the ones who have control over how your state and local resources are distributed and they also have a strong influence in law enforcement, business and the media. You have the power to use all of people who are upset and want change to recall these people and put officials in office who will listen to you and build more affordable housing before expanding a theatre or erecting a sports colosseum, add more public transportation and supermarkets in communities that need them, and allocate more resources to educate, and make sure they make it to the classroom and are not eaten up on administrative costs and fees. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
There is scarcely any neurosis in which the tendency to get rid of the self does not appear in a direct form. It may appear in fantasies of leaving home and becoming a derelict or of losing one’s identity; in an identification with a person one is reading about; in a feeling, as one individual put it, of being forlorn amid the darkness and the waves, of being at one with the darkness and the waves. The tendency is present in wishes to be hypnotized, in an inclination toward mysticism, in feelings of unreality, in an inordinate need for sleep, in the lure of sickness, insanity, death. And as I have mentioned before, in masochistic fantasies the common denominator is a feeling of being putty in the master’s hand, of being devoid of all will, of all power, of being absolutely subjected to another’s domination. Each different manifestation is of course determined in its special way and has its own implications. A feeling of being enslaved, for example, may be par of a general tendency to feel victimized, and as such be a defense against impulses to enslave others and also an accusation against others for not letting themselves be dominated. However, while it has also the secret positive value of self-surrender. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Whether the neurotic subjects oneself to a person or to fate, and whatever the kind of suffering which one allows to overpower one, the satisfaction one seeks seems to be the weakening or extinction of one’s individual self. One ceases then to be the active carrier of actions and becomes an object, without a will of one’s own. When masochistic strivings are thus integrated into the general phenomenon of a striving to relinquish the individual self, the satisfaction that is sought or attained by weakness and suffering loses its strangeness; it is put in a frame of reference that is familiar. The tenaciousness of masochistic strivings in neurotics is then accounted for by the fact that at the same time they serve as a protection against anxiety and provide a potential or real satisfaction. As we have seen, this satisfaction is seldom real except in fantasies about pleasures of the flesh or perversions, even though the striving for it is an important element in the general tendencies toward weakness and passivity. Thus a final question arises as to why the neurotic so rarely attains the oblivion and abandon, and thus the satisfaction, which one seeks. An important circumstance which prevents a definite satisfaction is that the masochistic drives are counteracted by the neurotic’s extreme emphasis on the uniqueness of one’s individuality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Most masochistic phenomena share with neurotic symptoms the character of being a compromise solution of incompatible strivings. The neurotic tends to feel a prey to everyone’s will, but at the same time insists that the World should adapt itself to one. One tends to feel enslaved, but at the same time insists that one’s power over others should be unquestioned. One wants to be helpless and taken care of, but at the same time insists on being not only entirely self-sufficient but, in effect, omnipotent. One tends to feel that one is nothing, but is irritated when one is not taken for a genius. There is absolutely no satisfactory solution which could reconcile such extremes, particularly since both strivings are so strong. The drive toward oblivion is much more imperative in the neurotic than in the normal person because the former wants to get rid not only of the fears, limitations and isolations that are universal in human existence, but also of a feeling that one is trapped in insoluble conflicts and their resultant sufferings. And one’s contradictory drive toward power and self-aggrandizement is equally imperative and more than normally intense. Of course one does attempt to achieve the impossible, to be at once everything and nothing; one may, for example, live in a helpless dependence and at the same time exert a tyranny over others by means of one’s weakness. Such compromises one oneself mistake as a capacity for surrender. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In fact, sometimes even psychologist seem inclined to confound the two, and to assume that surrender is in itself a masochistic attitude. In reality the masochistic persons is, on the contrary, entirely incapable of giving oneself to anything or anyone; one is incapable, for example, of putting all one’s energies into the service of a cause, or of wholly giving oneself in love to another person. One can surrender oneself to suffering but in this surrender one is wholly passive, and the feeling or the interest or the person which is the cause of one’s suffering one uses only as a means to lose oneself for the sake of losing oneself. There is no active interplay between oneself and the other, but only one’s self-centered absorption in one’s own ends. Genuine surrender to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength; masochistic surrender is ultimately a manifestation of weakness. Another reason why the satisfaction that is sought is seldom attained lines in the destructive elements inherent in the neurotic structure I have described. These are missing in the cultural “Dionysian” drives. In the latter there is nothing comparable to the neurotic destructiveness of all that constitutes the personality, of all its potentialities for achievement and happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Let us compare the Greek Dionysian cult, for example, the neurotic fantasies of becoming insane. In the former the desire was for a transitory ecstatic experience serving to enhance the joy of life; in the latter the same drive toward oblivion and abandon serves neither as a temporary submergence leading to reemergence, nor as a means of making life richer and fuller. Its goal is to get rid of the whole tormenting self, regardless of its values, and therefore the intact part of the personality reacts to it with fear. In fact, fear of disastrous possibilities toward which part of the personality impels the whole is usually the only factor in the process that impinges upon awareness. All the neurotic knows about it is that one has a fear of becoming insane. Only when the process is separated into its component parts—a drive toward self-relinquishment and a reactive fear—can it be understood that one is striving for a definite satisfaction but is prevented by one’s fears from attaining it. One factor peculiar to our culture serves to reinforce the anxiety connected with the drives toward oblivion. In Western civilization there are but few, if any, cultural patterns in which these drives, even regardless of their neurotic character, can be satisfied. Religion, which offered such a possibility, has lost its power and appeal for the majority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Not only are there no effective cultural means for such satisfaction, but their development is actively discouraged, for in an individualistic culture the individual is expected to stand on one’s own feet, assert oneself, and if necessary fight one’s way. In our culture to yield realistically to tendencies toward self-relinquishment involves the danger of ostracism. In view of the fears that usually debar the neurotic from the specific satisfactions for which one is striving, it is possible to understand the value for one of masochistic fantasies and perversions. If one drives for self-relinquishment are lived out in fantasies or in pleasures of the flesh practices one can perhaps escape one’s danger of complete self-obliteration. Like the Dionysian cults, these masochistic practices provide a temporary oblivion and abandon, with comparatively little risk of harm to the self. Usually they pervade the whole structure of the personality; sometimes they are concentrated on pleasures of the flesh activities, aggressive and successful in their own work, but are impelled from time to time to indulge in masochistic perversions such as dressing like the opposite gender or playing the naughty boy or girl and having themselves beaten. On the other hand, the fears that prevent the neurotic from finding a satisfactory solution of one’s difficulties may also pervade one’s masochistic drives. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
If these drives are of a pleasure of the flesh nature one will then, in spite of intense masochistic fantasies concerning relations of pleasures of the flesh, keep away from pleasures of the flesh altogether, showing a repugnance toward the other gender, or at least grave inhibitions with pleasures of the flesh. Dr. Freud regards masochistic drives as an essentially phenomenon involving pleasures of the flesh. Originally he regarded masochism as an aspect of a definite, biologically determined stage of sexual development, the so-called anal-sadistic stage. Later he added the hypothesis that masochistic drives have an inherent kinship with feminine nature and imply something like living out a wish to be the opposite gender. His last assumption, as mentioned before, is that masochistic drives are a combination of self-destructive and drives dealing with pleasures of the flesh, and that their function is to render the self-destructive drives harmless to the individual. My point of view, on the other hand, may be summed up as follows. Masochistic drives are neither an essential phenomenon dealing with pleasures of the flesh nor the result of biologically determined processes, but originate in personality conflicts. Their aim is not suffering; the neurotic wishes to suffer as little as anyone else wishes it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Neurotic suffering, inasmuch as it serves certain functions, is not what the person wants but what one pays, and the satisfaction one aims at is not suffering itself but a relinquishment of the self. Most of us are familiar with the often used but very true expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Perhaps we have even uttered it on occasion. However, do we sincerely believe it? I think not. If we truly believed it, we would be far less judgmental, much more compassionate toward, and quick to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ. God has been a beneficial purpose in giving the thorn, whatever it was, to Paul. And it was God who gave it, even though it was given through the instrumentality of Satan. Satan certainly had no interest in curbing Paul’s temptation to pride; he would have wanted just the opposite. As in the case of Job, Satan undoubtedly wanted to drive a wedge between Paul and the Lord; he wanted Paul to turn against God. However, just as God and Satan had different purposes for Paul’s thorn in the flesh. God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” reports Romans 8.28-29. God’s purpose for Paul’s thorn is clearly stated in the text: “to keep me from becoming conceited,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.7. Sometimes God’s purpose for allowing pain in our lives is clear; more often, it seems, it is not. In fact, frequently a great part of the pain is the sheer irrationality of it. God never explained to Job the Purpose of his unbelievable pain. He left Job to suffer in the dark, so to speak. That is usually our experienced. Paul said the thorn was given to torment him. Other various translate the verb as “harass,” “buffet,” or “afflict.” The same verb is used in 1 Corinthians 4.11 where it is translated as “brutally treated.” Paul was brutally treated by Satan. The apostle Peter said, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,” reports 1 Peter 5.8. The devil is cruel and vicious. He would devour us, if he could. He torments us to the full extent God allows. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
However, as was the case when Joseph’s brother sold him into slavery, through the devil intends to harm us, God intends it for good. “You intended to harm me, but God intended if for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives,” reports Genesis 50.20. Paul’s reaction to this thorn was one of deep anguish. He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.8. Although the turn was always present, there were probably times when its pain, whether physical or emotional or both, was unusually severe. It is likely that on three of those occasions Paul was driven to cry out to God for its removal. Mormon abridges the large plates of Nephi—he puts the small plates with the other plates—King Benjamin established peace in the land. About After Death 385. “And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And it is many hundreds of years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. However, many God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps someday it may profit them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king of Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which has been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this kind Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi. And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of he prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have been fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely comes to pass—wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people. However, behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren. And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, one worketh in me to do according to his will. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
And my prayer to God is concerning my brethren, that they may once again come to knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ; that they may once again be a delightsome people. And now I, Mormon, proceed to finish out my record, which I take from the plates of Nephi; and I make it according to the knowledge and the understanding which God has given me. Wherefore, it came to pass that after Amaleki had delivered up these plates into the hands of king Benjamin, he took them out and put them with the other plates, which contained records which had been handed down by the kings, from generation to generation until the days of king Benjamin. And they were handed down from king Benjamin, from generation to generation until they have fallen into my hands. And I, Mormon, pray to God that they may be preserved from this time henceforth. And I know that they will be preserved; for there are great things written upon them, out of which my people and their brethren shall be judged at the great and last day, according to the word of God which is written. And now, concerning this king Benjamin—he had somewhat of contentions among his own people. And it came to pass also that the armies of the Lamanites came down out of the land of Nephi, to battle against his people. However, behold, king Benjamin gathered together his armies, and he did stand against them; and he did fight with the strength of his own arm, with the sword of Laban. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And in the strength of the Lord they did contend against their enemies, until they had slain many thousands of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did contend against the Lamanites until they had driven them out of all the lands of their inheritance. And it came to pass that after there had been false Christs, and their mouths had been shut, and they punished according to their crimes; and after there had been false prophets, and false preachers and teachers among the people, and all these having been much contention and many dissension away unto the Lamanites, behold, it came to pass that king Benjamin, with the assistance of the holy prophets who were among his people—for behold, king Benjamin was a holy man, and he did reign over his people in righteousness; and there were many holy people in the land, and they did speak the word of God with power and with authority; and they did use much sharpness because of the stiffneckedness of the people—wherefore, with the help of these, king Benjamin, by labouring with all the might of his body and the faculty of his whole soul, and also the prophet, did once more establish peace in the land. Being filled with the very essence of restoration and life, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that by the Heavenly Gifts which Thou art pleased to bestow on us, Thou wouldest grant us to cleave to things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Elector of Saints, blessed is the person whom Thou choosest and callest to Thyself. With Thee is mercy, redemption, assurance, forgiveness; Thou hast lifted me, a prisoner, out of the pit of sin and pronounced my discharge, not only in the courts of Heaven, but in the dock of conscience; hast justified me by faith, given me peace with Thee, made me to enjoy glorious liberty as Thy child. Save me from the false hope of the hypocrite: May I never suppose I am in Christ unless I am a new creature, never think I am born of the Spirit unless I mind the things of the Spirit, never rest satisfied with professions of belief and outward forms and services, while my heart is not right with Thee. May I judge my sincerity in religion by my fear to offend Thee, my concern to know Thy will, my willingness to deny myself. May nothing render me forgetful of Thy glory, or turn me aside from Thy commands, or shake my confidence in Thy promises, or offend Thy children. Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful. May I not be inattentive to the design of Thy dealings with me, or insensible under Thy rebukes, or immobile at Thy calls. May I learn the holy art of abiding in Thee, of being in the World and not of it, making everything not only consistent with but conducive to my religion. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Refreshed with the participation of the sacred Gift, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that we may feel the effectual working of the rite which we celebrate; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hitch Your Wagon to a Star and Never Leave that Till Tomorrow which You Can do Today!
The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one. While liberals criticize the model of deliberative democracy for possibly overextending itself and corroding the sphere of individual privacy, feminist theorists criticize this model for not extending itself broadly enough to be truly inclusive. The distinction between public and private as it appears in modern political theory expresses a will for homogeneity that necessitates the exclusion of many persons and groups, particularly women and radicalized groups culturally identified with the body, wildness and rationality. In conformity with the modern idea of normative reason, the idea of the public in modern political theory and practice designates a sphere of human existence in which citizens express their rationality and universality, abstracted from their particular situations and need, and opposed to feeling. Examination of the exclusionary and homogeneous ideal in modern political theory, however, shows that we cannot envision such renewal of public life as a recovery of Enlightenment ideals. Instead, we need to transform the distinction between public and private that does not correlate with an opposition between reason and affectively desire, or universal and particular. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
In this cogent and penetrating feminist critique of the ideal of the impartial public applies to the model of deliberative democracy suggested in the preceding only in certain respects. Certainly, the model of a general deliberative assembly that governed our conceptions of the public sphere well into the twenty-first century was historically, socially, and culturally a space for male bodies. I mean this not only in a sense that only men were active citizens entitled to hold office and appear in public, but also in the sense that the institutional iconography of early democratic theory privileged the male mode of self-representation. Yet here we must distinguish between the institutional and the conceptual critique. There is a certain ambivalence in the feminist critique of such models of the public sphere and deliberative democracy. On the one hand, the critique appears to take democratic institutions at their principled best and to criticize their biased and restrictive implementations in practice; on the other hand, the feminist critique appears to aim at a rejection of the ideals of free public reason and impartiality altogether. The democratic public sphere appears to be essentially and not just accidentally masculinist. A normative theory of deliberative democracy requires a strong concept of the public sphere as its institutional correlate. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
The public sphere replaces the model of the general deliberative assembly found in early democratic theory. In this context, it is important for feminist theorists to specify the level of their conceptual objection, and to differentiate among institutional and normative presuppositions. We do not reject the ideal of a public sphere, only its Enlightenment variety. Perhaps we should replace the ideal of the “civil public” with that of a heterogeneous public. There are a number of institutional measures that would guarantee and solidify group representation in such a public sphere. Yet wanting to retain the public sphere and according it a place in democratic theory is not compatible with the more radical critique of the ideal of impartial reason. We can distinguish between “deliberative” and “communicative” democracy on the grounds that most theories of deliberative democracy offer too narrow a conception of the democratic process because they continue to privilege an ideal of a common good in which the discussions participants are all supposed to leave behind their particular experience and interests. By contrast, we advocate a theory of communicative democracy according to which individuals would attend to one another’s differences in class, gender, race, religion, and so one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Each social position has a partial perspective on the public that is does not abandon; but through the communicative process participants transcend and transform their initial situated knowledges. Instead of critical argumentation, such processes of communicative confrontation privilege modalities of communication like greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling. I think this distinction between deliberative and communicative democracy is more apparent than real. To sustain critique of the ideals of impartiality and objectivity, which we associate with the deliberative model, we must also be able to distinguish the kind of transformation and transcendence of partial perspectives that occurs in communicative democracy from the mutual agreement to be reached in process of deliberative democracy. Yet how can we distinguish between the emergence of common opinion among members of one group, if we do not apply to such processes of communications or deliberation some standards of fairness and impartiality in order to judge the manner in which opinions were allowed to be brought forth, groups were given chances to express their points of view, and the like? The model of communicative democracy, far from dispensing with the need for standards of impartiality and fairness, requires them to make sense of its own formulations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Without some such standards, we could not differentiate the genuine transformation partial and situated perspectives from mere agreements of convenience or apparent unanimity reached under conditions of duress. With respects to modes of communication like greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling, I would say that each of these modes may have their place within the informally structed process of everyday communication among individuals who share a cultural and historical life World. However, it is neither necessary for the democratic theorist to try to formulize and institutionalize these aspects of communicative everyday competence, nor is it plausible—and this is the more important objection—to build an opposition between them and critical argumentation. Greeting, storytelling, and rhetoric, although they may be aspects of informal communication in our everyday life, cannot become the public language of institutions and legislatures in a democracy for the following reasons: to attain legitimacy, democratic institutions require the articulation of the bases of their actions and policies in discursive language that appeals to commonly shared and accepted public reasons. In constitutional democracies such public reasons take the form of general statements consonant with the rule of law. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The rule of law has a certain rhetoric structure of its own: it is general, applies to all members of a specified reference group on the basis of legitimate reasons. In our attempt to transform the language of the rule of law into a more partial, affective, and situated mode of communication would have the consequences of inducting arbitrariness, for all who can tell how far the power of a greeting can reach? It would further create capriciousness—what about those who simply cannot understand by story? It would limit rather than enhance social justice because rhetoric moves people and achieves results without having to render an account of the bases upon which it induces people to engage in certain courses of action rather than others. In short, some moral ideal of impartiality is a regulative principle that should govern not only our deliberations in public but also the articulation of reasons by public institutions. What is considered impartial has to be in the best interests of all equally. Without such a normative principle, neither the ideal of the rule of law can be sustained nor deliberative reasoning toward a common good occur. Some Enlightenment ideals are part of any conception of democratic legitimacy and the public sphere. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The point therefore is not rejection of the Enlightenment in toto but a critical renegotiation of its legacy. Expanding on the model of a heterogeneous, dispersed network of many publics, it is suggested how, in fact, once the unitary model of the public sphere is abandoned, women’s concerns, as well as those of other excluded groups, can be accommodated. Such a nonunitary and dispersed network of public can accommodate women’s desires for their own spaces, in their own terms. In such subaltern counter publics, the lines between the public and the private, for example, can be renegotiated, rethought, challenged, and reformulated. It is nonetheless a long step from the cultural and social rethinking and reformulation of such distinctions as between the public and the private to their implementation in legislation and governmental regulation. While sharing the concern of liberal theorists that the precipitous reformulation of such a divide may corrode individual liberties, we rightly point out that there is a distinction between opinion-making and policy-making public bodies, and that the same kinds of contrasts may not apply to each alike. Opinion-making publics, as found in social movements, for example, can lead us to recognizer and rethink very controversial issues about privacy, pleasures of the flesh, and intimacy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
However, this does not imply that the only or even most desirable consequence of such processes of public deliberation should be general legislation. Thus when conceived as an anonymous, plural, and multiple medium of communication and deliberation, the public sphere need not homogenize and repress difference. Heterogeneity, otherness, and difference can find expression in the multiple associations, networks, and citizens’ forums, all of which constitute public life under late capitalism. My goal in this essay has been to outline a deliberative model of democracy that incorporates features of practical rationality. Central to practical rationality is the possibility of free public deliberation about matters of mutual concern to all. The discourse model of ethics and politics suggest a procedure for such free public deliberation among all concerned. Such processes of public deliberation have a claim to rationality because they increase and make available necessary information, because they allow the expression of arguments in the light of which opinions and beliefs need to be revised, and because they lead to the formation of conclusions that can be challenged publicly for good reasons. Furthermore, such procedures allow self-referential critique of their own uses and abuses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
One who takes up the vocation of spiritual service should do so only if one be sufficiently prepared for it morally—only if one be destitute of ambitions and greeds, detached from people and the thought of people, isolated from personal motivations, liberated from the lower emotions. A master of issues no command and requires no obedience. Others may do so but not one. One will bear no grudge if one’s advice is rejected. The self-actualized who performs the enlightened potentate to one’s court disciples may be unconsciously playing up to their desires or expectations but also playing down to one’s own desire for power. It may help to keep them in juvenile dependence on one but also keep one within the ego and thus reduce one’s capacity to serve them. Even if one were not ethically more sensitive and hence more scrupulous than most people, one’s own spiritual dignity and personal self-respect would alone forbid one’s taking advantage of the credulous, the inexperienced, or the unbalanced. The spiritual guide who is not oneself free from passion is a dangerous guide for those who are still struggling in the grip of passion. The teacher who has not utterly subdued personal egoism is unfit to assist those who seek liberation from it. One should learn to solve the problems of other people. The true teacher identifies oneself with one’s student and does not sit on a Himalayan height of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The chief institutional correlate of such a model of deliberative democracy is a multiple, anonymous, heterogenous network of many public and public conversations. In other domains of social life as well, the model of deliberative democracy based on the centrality of public deliberation can inspire the proliferation of many institutional designs. Usually the sufferings entailed in these tendencies toward weakness yield no conscious satisfaction but, on the contrary, regardless of the purpose they serve, are definitely part of the neurotic’s general awareness of misery. Nevertheless these tendencies aim at a satisfaction, even when they do not, or at least apparently do not, reach it. Occasionally this aim can be observed and sometimes it even becomes apparent that the goal of satisfaction has been achieved. An individual who went to visit some friends living in the country felt disappointed that no one met her at the station and that some of her friends were not at home when she arrived. Thus far, she said, the experience was wholly painful. However, then she felt herself sliding into a feeling of being utterly desolate and forlorn, a feeling which, son afterwards, she recognized as entirely disproportionate to the provocation. This submergence in misery not only lulled the pain but was felt as positively pleasurable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The achievement of satisfaction is much more frequent and more obvious in fantasies involving pleasures of the flesh and perversions of a masochistic character, such as fantasies of being assaulted, beaten, humiliated, enslaved, or their actual enactment. In fact they are only another manifestation of this same general inclination toward weakness. The obtaining of satisfaction by submersion in misery is an expression of the general principle of finding satisfaction by losing the self in something greater, by dissolving the individuality, by getting rid of the self with its doubts, conflicts, pains, limitations and isolation. This is called liberation from the principium individuationis. It is what is meant by the Dionysian tendency and is considered one of the basic strivings in human beings, as opposed to what is called the Apollonian tendency, which works toward an active molding and mastering of life. Dionysian trends have attempts to induce ecstatic experience, and these tendencies are widespread among the various cultures, and they manifold their expressions. The term “Dionysian” is taken from the Dionysus cults in Greece. These, as well as the earlier cults of Thracians, had as their aim the extreme stimulations of all feelings up to visionary states. This means of producing ecstatic states were music, uniform rhythm of flutes, raving dances at night, intoxicating drinks and pleasures of the flesh abandon, all working up to a seething excitement and ecstasy. (The term ecstasy means literally being outside or beside oneself.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
All over the World there are customs and cults following the same principle: in groups abandonment in festivals and religious ecstasy, and individuals, oblivion in drugs. Pain also plays a role in producing the Dionysian condition. In some Plains India tribes visions are induced by fasting, cutting off a piece of flesh, being tied in a painful position. In the Sun Dances, one of the most important ceremonies of the Plains Indians, physical torture was a very common means of stimulating ecstatic experiences. The Flagellantes in the Middle Ages used beatings to produce ecstasy. The Penitentes in New Mexico used thorns, beatings, the carrying of heavy loads. Though these cultural expressions of Dionysian tendencies are far from being patterned experience in our culture, they are not entirely alien to us. To some degree all of us know the satisfaction derived from losing ourselves. We feel it in the process of falling asleep after a physical or mental strain or of going into narcosis. The same effect can be induced by alcohol. In the use of alcohol certainly losing inhibitions is one of the factors involved, and lulling grief and anxiety is another, but here too the ultimate satisfaction aimed at is the satisfaction of oblivion and abandon. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
And there are few persons who do not know the satisfaction of losing themselves in some great feeling, whether it be love, nature, music, enthusiasm for a cause or pleasures of the flesh abandon. How can we account for the apparent universality of these strivings? In spite of all the happiness life can afford, it is at the same time full of inescapable tragedy. Even if there is no particular sufferings, there still remain the facts of old age, sickness, and death; in still more general terms, the fact remains inherent in human life that the individual is limited and isolated—limited in what one can understand, achieve, or enjoy, isolated because one is a unique entity, separate from one’s fellow beings and from surrounding nature. In fact, it is this individual limitation and isolation which mist of the cultural trends toward oblivion and abandon tend to overcome. The most poignant and beautiful expression of this striving is found in the Upanishad, in the picture of rivers which flow and, disappearing into the ocean, lose name and shape. By dissolving the self in something greater, by becoming part of a greater entity, the individual overcomes to a certain extent one’s limitations; as it is expressed in the Upanishad, “By vanishing to nothing, we become part of the creative principle of the Universe.” This seems to be the great consolation and gratification which religion has to offer human beings; by losing themselves they can become at one with God or nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The same satisfaction can be achieved by devotion to a great cause; by surrendering to the self to a cause we feel at one with a greater whole. In our culture we are more aware of the opposite attitude toward the self, the attitude that emphasizes and highly values the particularities and uniqueness of individuality. Humans in our culture feels strongly that one’s own self is a separate unity, distinguished from or opposite to the World outside. Not only does one insist on this individuality but one derives a great deal of satisfaction from it; one finds happiness in developing one’s special potentialities, mastering oneself and the World in active conquest, being constructive and doing creative work. Of this ideal of personal development Goethe has said, “Hoechstes Glueck der Menschenkinder ist doch die Persoenlichkeit.” However, the opposite tendency that we have discussed—the tendency to break through the shell individuality and be rid of its limitations and isolation—is an equally deep-rooted human attitude, and is also pregnant with potential satisfaction. Neither of these tendencies is itself pathological; both the preservation and development of individuality and the sacrifice of individuality are legitimate goals in the solution of human problems. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Although these proposed philosophies of life, these recipes of being, are presented as though from a stigmatized individual’s personal point of view, on analysis it is apparent that something else informs them. This something else is groups, in the broad sense of like-situated individuals, and this is only to be expected, since what an individual is, or could be, derives from the place of this kind in the social structure. One of these groups is the aggregate formed by the individual’s fellow-sufferers. The spokesperson of this group claim that the individual’s real group, the one to which one naturally belongs, is this group. All the other categories and groups to which the individual necessarily also belongs are implicitly considered to be not one’s real ones; one is no really one of them. The individual’s real group, then, is the aggregate of persons who are likely to have to suffer the same deprivation as one suffers because of having the same stigma; one’s real “group,” in fact, is the category which can serve as one’s discrediting. The character these spokespersons allow the individual is generated by the relation one has to those of one’s own kind. If one turns to one’s group, one is loyal and authentic; if one turns away, one is craven and a fool. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The admonition that the stigmatized individual should be loyal to one’s group is voiced by professional scientists, too. For example, Riesman, in “Marginality, Conformity, and Insight,” Phylon, Third Quarter, 1935, 251-252, in describing how a sociologist, or an American, or a professor may each be seduced into accepting compliments regarding one’s self that are an insult to one’s group, adds this story: “I myself recall that I once told a woman lawyer that she was not as strident and aggressive as other Portias I had known, and I regret that she took this as a compliment and consented to the betrayal of her female colleagues of the bar. Here, surely, is a clear illustration of a basic sociological them: the nature of an individual, as one oneself as we impute it to one, if generated by the nature of one’s group affiliations. Sociologically, it should be clear that in finding oneself in different social situations, the individual will find oneself facing different claims as to which of one’s many groups is one’s real one. Other matter are less clear. Why, for example, should individuals who have already paid a considerable price for their stigma be told not to pass; perhaps according to the rule that the less you have had the less you should try to obtains? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
And if derogation of those with a particular stigma is bad in the present and bad for the future, why should those who have the stigma, more so than those who do not, be given the responsibility of presenting and enforcing a fair-minded stand and improving the lot of the category as a whole? One answer, of course is that those with the stigma should “know better,” thus assuming an interesting relation between knowledge and morality. A better answer, perhaps, is that those with a particular stigma are often considered by themselves and by normals to be linked together through space and time into a single community that should be supported by its members. As might be expected, professionals who take an in-group standpoint may advocate a militant and chauvinistic line—even to the extent of favouring a secessionist ideology. Taking this tack, the stigmatized individual in mixed contacts will give praise to the assumed special values and contributions of one’s kind. One may also flaunt some stereotypical attributes which one could easily cover; thus, one finds second generations Jews who aggressively interlard their speech with Jewish aggressively interlard their speech with Jewish idiom and accent, and the militant homosexual who are patriotically swish in public places. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The stigmatized individual may also openly question the half-concealed disapproval with which normals treat one, and wait to “fault” the self-appointed wise, that is, continue to examine the other’s actions and words until some fugitive sign is obtained that their show of accepting one is only a show. The problems associated with militancy are well known. When the ultimate political objective is to remove stigma from the differentness, the individual may find that one’s very efforts can politicize one’s own life, rendering it even more different from the normal life initially denied one—even though the next generation of one’s fellow may greatly profit from one’s efforts by being more accepted. Further, in drawing attention to the situation of one’s own kind one is in some respects consolidating a public image of one’s differentness as a real thing and of one’s fellow-stigmatized as constituting a real group. On the other hand, if one seeks some kind of separateness, not assimilation, one may find that one is necessarily presenting one’s militant efforts in the language and style of one’s enemies. Moreover, the pleas one presents, the plight one reviews, the strategies one advocates, are all part of an idiom of expression and feeling that belongs to the whole society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
One’s disdain for a society that rejects one can be understood only in terms of that society’s conception of pride, dignity, and independence. In short, unless there is some alien culture on which to fall back, the more one separates oneself structurally from the normals, the more likely one may become culturally. “Behold, it came to pass that I, Omni, being commanded by my father, Jarom, that I should write somewhat upon these plates, to preserve our genealogy—wherefore, in my days, I would that ye should know that I fought much with the sword to preserve my people, the Nephites, from falling into the hands of their enemies, the Lamanites. However, behold, I of myself am a wicked man, and I have not kept the statues and the commandments of the Lord as I ought to have done. And it came to pass that two hundred and seventy and six years had passed away, and we had many seasons of peace; and we had many seasons of serious war and bloodshed. Yea, and in fine, two hundred and eighty and two years had passes away, and I had kept these plates according to the commandments of my fathers; and I conferred them upon my son Amaron. And I make an end. And now I, Amaron, write the things whatsoever I write, which are few, in the book of my father. Behold, it came to pass that three hundred and twenty years had passed away, and the more wicked part of the Nephites were destroyed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“For the Lord would not suffer, after he had led them out of the land of Jerusalem and kept and preserved the from falling into the hands of their enemies, yea, he would not suffer that the words should not be verified, which he spake unto our fathers, saying that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall not prosper in the land. Wherefore, the Lord did visit them in great judgment; nevertheless, he did spare the righteous that they should not perish, butt did deliver them out of the hands of their enemies. And it came to pass that I did deliver the plates unto my brother Chemish. Now, I Chemish, write what few things I write, in the same book with my brother; for behold, I saw the last which he wrote, that he wrote it with his own hand; and he wrote it in the day that he delivered them unto me. And after this manner we keep the records, for it is according to the commandments of our fathers. And I make an end. Behold, I, Abinadom, am the son of Chemish. Behold, it came to pass that I saw much war and contention between my people, the Nephites, and the Lamanites; and I, with my own sword, have taken the lives of many of the Lamanites in defense of my brethren. And behold, the record of this people is engraven upon plates which is had by the kinds, according to the generations; and I know of no revelation save that which has been written, neither prophecy; wherefore, that which is sufficient is written. And I make an end. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Behold, I am Amaleki, the son of Abinadom. Behold, I will speak unto you somewhat concerning Mosiah, who was made king over the land of Zarahemla; for behold, he being warned of the Lord that he should fled out of the land of Nephi, and as many would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him, into the wilderness—and it came to pass that he did according as the Lord had commanded him. And they departed out of the land into the wilderness, as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord; and they were led by many preachings and prophesyings. And they were admonished continually by the word of God; and they were led by the power of his arm, through the wilderness until they came down into the land which is called the and of Zarahemla. And they discovered a people, who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla; and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contained the record of the Jews. Behold, it came to pass that Mosiah discovered them; and they had dwelt there from that time forth. And at the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them. However, it came to pass that Mosiah caused that they should be taught in his language. And it came to pass that after they were taught in the language of Mosiah, Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory; and they are written, but not in these plates. And it came to pass that the people of Zarahemla, and of Mosiah, did unite together; and Mosiah was appointed to be their king. And it came to pass in the days of Mosiah, there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God. And they gave an account of one Coriantumr, and the slain of his people. And Coriantumr was discovered by the people of Zarahemla; and he dwelt with them for the space of nine moons. It also spake a few words concerning his fathers. And his first parent came out from the tower, at the time of the Lord confounded the language of the people; and the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments, which are just; and their bones lay scattered in the land northward. Before, I, Amaleki, was born inn the days of Mosiah; and I have lived to see his death; and Benjamin, his son, reigneth in his stead. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And behold, I have seen, in the days of king Benjamin, a serious war and much bloodshed between the Nephites and the Lamanites. However, behold, the Nephites did obtain much advantage over them; yea, insomuch that king Benjamin did drive them out of the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that I began to be old; and, having no seed, and knowing king Benjamin to be a just man before the Lord, wherefore, I shall deliver up these plates unto him, exhorting all humans to come unto God, the Holy One of Israel, and believe in prophesying, and in revelations, and in the ministering of Angels, and in the gift of speaking with tongues, and in the gift of interpreting languages, and in all things which is good save it comes from the Lord: and that which is evil cometh from the devil. And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved. And now I would speak somewhat concerning a certain number who were desirous to possess the land of their inheritance. Wherefore, they went up into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And their leader being a strong and mighty man, and a stiffnecked man, wherefore he caused a contention among them; and they were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness, and they returned again to the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that they also took others to a considerable number, and took their journey again into the wilderness. And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grace; and these plates are full. And I make an end of my speaking,” reports Omni 1.1-30. Heavenly Father, Thou hast led me singing to the cross where I fling down all my burdens and see them vanish, where my mountains of guilt are levelled to a plain, where my sins disappear, though they are the greatest that exist, and are more in number than the grains of fine sand; for there is power in the blood of Calvary to destroy sins more than can be counted even by one from the choir of Heaven. Thou hast given me a hill-side spring that washes clear and white, and I go as a sinner to its waters, bathing without hinderance in its crystal streams. At the cross there is free forgiveness for poor and meek ones, and ample blessings that last forever; the blood of the Lamb is like a great river of infinite grace with never any diminishing of its fullness as thirsty ones without number drink of it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
O Lord, forever will Thy free forgiveness live that was gained on the mount of blood; in the midst of a World of pain it is a subject for praise in every place a song on Earth, an anthem in Heaven, its love and virtue knowing no end. I have a longing for the World above where multitudes sing the great song, for my soul was never created to love the dust of Earth. Though here my spiritual state is frail and poor, I shall go on singing Calvary’s anthem. May I always know that a clean heart full of goodness is more beautiful than the lily, that only a clean heart can sing by night and by day, that such a heart is mine when I abide at Calvary. Please Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy family, and guard with watchful tenderness the hearts which have been hallowed by scared Mysteries; that as by Thy mercy they receive the healings Gifts of eternal salvation, they may retain them by Thy protecting power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please defend, O Lord, with Thy protection those whom Thou satisfies with Heavenly Gifts; that being set free from all things hurtful, we may press onwards with our whole heart to the salvation which cometh from Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have received, O Lord, the glorious Mysteries, and pray Thee by means of them to make us partakers of things Heavenly, while we are dwelling on the Earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
This week’s Cresleigh Blog welcomes you to #MillsStation at #CresleighRanch! Located in the heart of Rancho Cordova, this community features modern homes built for making memories. 😍 Check it out at the link in bio! https://www.instagram.com/p/CBWN3lLgHaX/
We beseech Thee, O Lord, that the solemn reception of Thy Sacrament may cleanse us from all our old sins, and change us into new creatures; though Jesus Christ our Lord. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
So Short is Our Life and it Seems to Long Against the Envy of Less Happier Lands
The Universe was at some point wound up like a great clock and has been ticking off its inexorable way ever since. It makes it impossible for me to deny the reality and significance of human choice. To me it is not an illusion that humans are to some degree the architect of themselves. Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet. That means we must approach social change based on the human desire and potentiality for change, not on conditioning. This leads to a deeply democratic political philosophy rather than management by an elite. So the choice does have consequences. Upon reflection, we can see that institutionally as well, complex constitutional democracies, and particularly those in which a public sphere of opinion formation and deliberation has been developed, engage in such recursive validation continually. Basic human civil and political rights, as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to the United States of America Constitution and as embodied in the constitution of most democratic governments, are never really “off the agenda” of public discussion and debate. They are simply constitutive and regulative institutional norms of debate in our kinds of societies: although we cannot change these rights without extremely elaborate political and juridical procedures, we are always disputing their meaning, their extent, and their jurisdiction. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Democratic debate is like a ball game where there is no umpire to interpret the rules of the game and their application definitively. Rather, in the game of democracy the rules of the game no less than their interpretation and even the position of the umpire are essentially contestable. Contestation means neither the complete abrogation of these rules nor silence about them. When basic rights and liberties are violated the game of democracy is suspended and becomes either martial rule, civil war, or dictatorship; when democratic politics is in full session, the debate about the meaning of these rights, what they do or do not entitle us to, their scope and enforcement, is what politics is all about. One cannot challenge the specific interpretation of basic right and liberties in a democracy without taking these absolutely seriously. The deliberative theory of democracy transcends the traditional opposition of majoritarian politics verses liberal guarantees of basic rights and liberties to the extent that the normative conditions of discourses, like basic rights and liberties, are to be viewed as rules of the game that can be contested within the game but only insofar as one first accepts to abide by them and play the game at all. This formulation seems to me to correspond to the reality of democratic debate and public speech in real democracies much more accurately than he liberal model of deliberation upon constitutional essentials or the reasoning of the Supreme Court. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Crucial to the deliberative model of democracy is the idea of a “public sphere” of opinion-formation, debate, deliberation, and contestation among citizens, groups, movements, and organizations in a polity. When this concept of a public sphere is introduced as the concrete embodiment of discursive democracy in practice, it also become possible to think of the issues of conversational constraints in a more nuanced way. While the deliberative model of democracy shares with liberalism a concern for the protection of these rights to autonomy of equal citizens, the conceptual method of discursive validation and the institutional reality of a differentiated public sphere of deliberation and contestation provide plausible beginning points for a mediation of the stark opposition between liberalism and deliberative democracy. Bruce Ackerman’s conception of dualist democracy is based upon a similar strategy of overcoming the opposition between the standpoint of foundationalist rights-liberals on the one hand and monist majoritarian democrats on the other: “The basic meditating devices is the dualist’s two-track system of democratic lawmaking. It allows an important place for the foundationalist’s views of rights as trumps’ without violating the monist’s deeper commitment to the primacy of democracy.” In a constitutional democracy the question as to which aspects of the higher law are entrenched against the revision by the people as opposed to which aspects may be repealed is itself always open and contestable. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Conceptually as well as sociologically, models of deliberative and dualistic democracy focus on this process of “recursive” and “hermeneutic” interdependence between constitution-making and democratic politics. The comfortable cloak of objectivity is necessarily be dropped, exposing the people as a vulnerable, imperfect, subjective being, thoroughly engaged, intellectually and emotionally, objectively and subjectively, in all their activities. This is understandably too threatening. Let me simply add that what is really at issue is the confrontation of two paradoxes. If the extreme behaviourist position is true, then everything an individual does is essentially meaningless, since one is but an atom caught in a seamless chain of cause and effect. On the other hand, if the thoroughgoing humanistic position is true, then choice enters in, and this individual subjective choice has some influence on the cause-and-effect chain. In all candor I must say that I believe that the humanistic view will, in the long run, take precedence. I believe that Americans are, as a people, beginning to refuse to allow technology to dominate our lives. Our culture, increasingly based on the conquest of nature and the control of humans, is in decline. Emerging through the ruins is the new person, highly aware, self-directing, as explorer of inner, perhaps more than outer, space scornful of the conformity of institutions and the strict and rigid doctrines of authority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
One does not believe in being behaviorally shaped, or in shaping the behaviour of others. One is most assuredly humanistic rather than technological. In my judgment one has a high probability of survival. Yet, this belief of mine is open to one exception. If we were to permit one-human control, or a military take-over of our government—and it is obvious we have been (and are) perilously close to that—then another scenario would take place. A governmental—military—police—industrial complex would be more than happy to use scientific technology for military and industrial conquest and psychological technology for the control of human behaviour. I am not being dramatic when I say that humanistic psychologists, emphasizing the essential freedom and dignity of the unique human person, and one’s capacity for self-determination, would be among the first to be incarcerated by such a government. I confess that when I wish to be scholarly, serendipity plays a very important part. Serendipity, in case you have forgotten, is the faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident. I have an eerie feeling that I have that faculty. I have tried to facilitate clarity of communication between individuals of the most diverse points of view. I have worked for better communication between groups whose perceptions and experiences are poles apart: strangers, member of different cultures, representatives of different strata of society. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
I discern more sharply the theme of my life as having been built around the desire for clarity of communication, with all its ramifying results. I have also helped to sponsor, and have taken some part in, interracial and intercultural groups, believing that better understanding between diverse groups is essential if our planet is to survive. And then I garden. Those mornings when I cannot find time to inspect my flowers, water the young shoots I am propagating, pull a few weeds, spray some destructive insects, and pour just the proper fertilizer on some budding plants, I feel cheated. My garden supplies the same intriguing question I have been trying to meet in all my professional life: What are the effective conditions of growth? However, in my garden, though they frustrations are just as immediate, the results, whether success or failure, are more quickly evident. And when, through patient, intelligent, and understanding care I have provided the conditions that result in the production of a rare or glorious bloom, I feel the same kind of satisfaction that I have felt in the facilitation of growth in a person or in a group of persons. Why does it appeal to me to try the unknown, to gamble on something new, when I could easily settle for ways of doing things that I know from past experience would work very satisfactorily? I am not sure I understand fully, but I can see several factors that have made a difference. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
It is estimated the 145 million Americans are committed to a way of living that reflects their inner convictions about justice, equality, and peace. They believe that it is better to have things on a human scale; live frugally, to conserve, recycle, not waste; and the inner life, rather than externals, is central. I belong to that group, and trying to live in this new way is necessarily risky and uncertain. However, perhaps the major reason I am willing to take chances is that I have found that in doing so, whether I succeed or fail, I learn. Learning, especially learning from experience, has been a prime element in making my life worthwhile. Such learning helps me to expand. So I continue to risk. I like to be logical, to pursue the ramifications of a thought. I am deeply involved in the World of feeling, intuition, nonverbal as well as verbal communication, but I also enjoy thinking and writing about that World. Conceptualizing the World clarifies its meaning for me. Human beings have potentially available a tremendous range of intuitive powers. We are indeed wiser than our intellects. There is much evidence. We are learning how sadly we have neglected the capacities of the nonrational, creative metaphoric mind—the right half of our brain. Biofeedback has shown us that if we let ourselves function in a less conscious, more relaxed way, we can learn at some level to control temperature, heart rate, and all kinds of organic functions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
We find that terminal cancer patients, when given an intensive program of prayer and fantasy training focused on overcoming the malignancy, experience a surprising number of remissions. I am open to even more mysterious phenomena—precognition, thought transference, clairvoyance, human auras, Kirlian photography, even out-of-the-body experiences. These phenomena may not fit with known scientific laws, but perhaps we are on the verge of discovering new types of lawful order. I think I am learning a great deal in a new area, and I find the experience enjoyable and exciting. However, in my experience, I have found that one of the hardest things for me is to care for a person for whatever he or she is, at that time, in the relationship. It is so much easier to care for others for what I think they are, or wish they would be, or feel they should be. To care for this person for what he or she is, dropping my own expectations of what I want him or her to be for me, dropping my desire to change this person to suit my needs, is a most difficult but enriching way to satisfying intimate relationship. I think no one can know whether he or she fears death until it arrives, but with COVID-19, this is something many are thinking about. Certainly, death is the ultimate leap in the dark, and I think it is highly probable that the apprehension I feel when going under an anesthetic will be duplicated when I face death. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Yet I do not experience a really deep fear of this process. So far as I am aware, my fear concerning death relate to its circumstances. My belief that death is the end has, however, been modified by some of my learnings of the past decade. I am impressed with the accounts b Raymond Moody (1975) of the experience of persons who have been so near death as to be declared dead, but who have come back to life. I am impressed by some of the reports of reincarnation, although reincarnation seems a very dubious blessing indeed. All of this brings change and for me the process of change is life. I realize that if I were stable and steady and static, I would be living death. So I accept confusion and uncertainty and fear and emotional highs and lows because they are the price I willingly pay for a flowing, perplexing, exciting life. We must dismiss the devil by telling him he has made a mistake in coming, and we are not going with him, and he will never reappear. All of my life experiences has lead me to the belief in the possibility of the continuation of the individua human spirit, something I have never before believed possible. These experiences have left me very much interested in all types of paranormal phenomena. They have quite changed my understanding of the process of living. I now consider it possible that each of us is a continuing and changing spiritual essence lasting over time, and occasionally incarnated in a human body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
“Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place age after age. Before the mountains were born and the Earth and land labored in pains of birth. From eternity to eternity Thou art God. For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is passed. Thou turnest humans back to dust and sayest: Return ye children of humans. They are as a watch in the night; Thou carriest them away; they are as a sleep, like grass which grows up, that in the dawn is fresh and flourishing, then by twilight fades and withers. Our life is seventy years or eighty at the most. Yet is their pride but toil and disappointment—for it is soon gone and we fly away. For we are consumed in Thy anger and in Thy wrath we are frightened away. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee and our most secret deeds in the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath, we bring our years to an end as a sigh. Yet who know of us dreads Thy wrath? So teach us to count our days that we may get a heart of wisdom! Relent, O Thou Eternal, and delay not; be sorry for Thy servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Thy loving-kindness that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Grant joy as long as thou hast been afflicting us, for all the years we have had suffering. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
“Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory upon Thy children! And let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us and prosper the work of our hands,” reports Psalm 90. There is something unique in this psalm, a rise and fall of praise and lament, of consideration and prayer, of melancholy and hope. If we want to grasp its meaning, we must follow it, word by word, feeling what the poet has felt, trying to see what he has seen, looking at our own life through his vision, as it is interpreted through his mighty words. These words come to us from the furthest past, yet they speak to our present and to every future. Later generations in Israel expressed their feeling for the incomparable power of this psalm by attributing it—and it alone—to Moses, whom they called the man of God. Let us approach it with the same awe. This psalm, like many other passages of the Bible, speaks of human’s life and death in profoundly pessimistic words. It echoes what God said to Adam in the third chapter of Genesis: “Cursed is the land for Thy sake. In the sweat of Thy face shalt thou eat bread till Thou returns unto the ground; for out it wast Thou taken: for dust Thou art, and unto dust shalt Thou return.” It would be hard to intensify the melancholy of these words. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
And I would be hard for a modern pessimist to intensify he bitterness with which job challenges his moralistic friends, saying that “man born of woman lives but a few days,” that there is hope for a tree which is cut off, that it may flourish again, but “man lies down never to arise.” And he says to God: “Thou destoyest all the hopes of humans. Thou art too strong for humans, one has to go.” And the modern naturalist would need to change nothing in the words of Ecclesiastes, the “Preacher,” when one dines that there is any difference between human and beast: “As one dies the other dies. Both sprang from the dust they both returned.” He doubts the idealistic doctrine that “the spirit of humans goes upward while the spirit of a beast does down into the Earth.” Humans ought to be happy in their work, for “that is what one gets out of life—for who can show one what is to happen afterward?” That is the mood of ancient humankind. Many of us are afraid of it. A shallow Christian idealism cannot stand the darkness of such a vision. Not so the Bible. The most universal of all books, it reveals the age-old wisdom about human’s transitoriness and misery. The Bible does not try to hide the truth about human’s life under facile statements about the immortality of the soul. Neither the Old nor the New Testament does so. They know the human situation and they take it seriously. They do not give us any easy comfort about ourselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
This is the light in which we must read on the 90th Psalm. However, the psalm goes further. It starts with a song of praise: “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place age after age.” In order to describe human transitoriness, the poet glorifies the Divine Eternity. Before looking downward he looks upward. Before considering human’s misery he points to God’s majesty. Only because we look at something infinite can we realize that we are finite. Only because we are able to see the eternal can we see the limited time that is given us. Only because we can elevate ourselves above the animals can we see that we are like animals. Our melancholy about our transitoriness is rooted in our power to look beyond it. Modern pessimists do not start their writings by praising the Eternal God. They think that they can approach humans directly and speak about his finiteness, misery and tragedy. However, they do not succeed. Hidden—often to themselves—is a criterion by which they measure and condemn human existence. It is something beyond human. When the Greek poets called humans the “mortals,” they had in mind the immortal gods by which they measured human morality. The measure of human’s misery and tragedy is the Divine Perfection. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The Divine Perfection is what the psalmist means when he calls God our dwelling place, the only permanence in the change of all the ages and generations. That is why he starts his song of profoundest melancholy with the praise of the Lord. God’s eternity is described in a powerful vision: “Before the mountains were born and the Earth and land labored in pains of birth, from eternity to eternity Thou art God.” Even the mountains, most immovable of all things on Earth, are born and shall die. However, God, Who was before their birth, shall be after their death. From eternity to eternity, that is, from form to form and World to World, He is. His measure of time is not our measure. “For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is passed.” He has His measure, which is beyond human understanding. Eternity is not the extinction of time; it is the creative unity of all times and cycles of time, of all past and future. Eternity is eternal life and not eternal death. It is the living God at Whom the psalmist looks. And then the psalmist looks down to humans and writes: “Thou turnest humans back to dust and sayest: Return, ye children of humans.” The fate of death is the fate God has decreed for humans. God delivers us to the fate God has decreed for humans. God delivers us to the law of nature, that dust must return to dust. No being can escape this decree. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
No being can acquire Divine eternity. When humans tried to become like God—so the Paradise story tells us—by trying to grasp for oneself knowledge of all good and evil powers, one achieved that knowledge. However, at the same time, one’s eyes were opened and one saw one’s real situation, which has been hidden from one in he dreaming innocence of Paradise. One saw that one is not like God. The gift of knowledge one received includes the destiny of pleasures of flesh and the fate of labouring and dying. One was awakened and one saw the infinite gap between oneself and God. Short is the time between birth and death. The poet’s tremendous vision is expressed only fragmentarily, in smiles: “They are as a watch in the night,” that is, like one of the three night watches into which the nights were divided. “Thou carriest them away, they are as a sleep”—from an infinite sleep we are awakened; one third of a night we are awake, this is our turn, this long and no longer; soon those who replace us arrive, and we are drawn into infinite sleep again. Turning from the night to the course of a day, and the life of he grass in it, the poet continues: “Like grass which grows up, that in the dawn is fresh and flourishing, then by twilight fades and withers.” The Sun, whose first rays bring life to grass, burns it to death at noon and withers it utterly away before evening. So short is our life—and it seems so long. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
“Our life is seventy years, or eighty at the most, yet is their pride-but toil and disappointment…for it is soon gone and we fly away.” Not many reach this age, which seems unimaginable to the adolescent, far removed from the mature human, and—as nothing to those who have reached it, a moment only, flying away like a bird that we can neither capture nor follow. Why is the poet so tremendously impressed by the shortness of our life? Obviously, he feels that it makes a real fulfillment impossible. Although very few want to repeat their lives, we often hear people say: “If only I could start my life again, with all its experiences, I could live it in the right way. It would be more than this broken piece, this fragment, this frustrated attempt which I call my life.” However, life does not allow us to begin again. And even if we could begin again, or even if our life were among the most perfect and happy and successful ones, would we not, looking back at it, feel as the psalmist felt? Would we not feel that the most valuable things in it, he god, the creative, and the joyful hours, were based on endless toil and followed by disappointments? Would be not feel that what we had thought to be important was not? #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
And, in the face of death, would not all our valuations become doubtful? This, certainly, was the mood of the ancient poet who wrote the psalm. There is a danger in considerations such as these. They can produce a sentimental, superficial enjoyment of our own melancholy, a lustful abiding with our sadness, a perverted longing for the tragic. There is not a hint of such a feeling in the 90th Psalm. The poet knew something which most of our modern pessimists do not know, and he expressed it in grave words: “For we are condemned in Thy anger, and in Thy wrath we are frightened away. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee and our most secret deeds in the light of Thy countenance.” These words point to something we do not find in nature: human’s guilt and God’s wrath. Another order of things becomes visible. The natural law “from dust to dust” alone does not explain the human situation. That humans are bound to this law is the Divine reaction against the attempt of humans to become like God. We have to die, because we are dust. That is the law of nature to which we are subject with all beings—mountains, flowers, and beasts. However, at the same time, we have to die because we are guilty. That is the moral law to which we, unlike all other beings, are subjected. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Both laws are equally true; both are stated in all sections of the Bible. If we could ask the psalmist of the other Biblical writers how they thought these laws are untied, they would find it hard to answer. They felt, as we do, that death is not only natural, but also unnatural. Something in us rebels against death wherever it appears. We rebel at the sight of a corpse, we rebel against the death of children, of young people, of men and women in their strength. We even feel a tragic element in the passing of senior citizens, with their experience, wisdom, and irreplaceable individuality. We rebel against our own end, against its definitive, inescapable character. If death were simply natural, we would not rebel as we do not rebel the falling of the leaves. We accept their falling, although we do so with melancholy. However, we do not accept human’s death in the same way. We rebel; and since our rebellion is useless, we become resigned. Between rebellion against death and resignation to death we oscillate, demonstrating by both attitudes that it is nor natural for us to die. However, if anyone of us, as individuals, comes to a complete and final end, aspects of us will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought. “Behold, it came to pass that I, Enos, knowing my father that he was just man—for he taught me in his language, and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—and bless be the name of my God for it—and I will tell you of wrestle which I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the stains, sunk deep into my heart. And my soul hungered; and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto Him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day log did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still rise my voice high that it reached the Heavens. And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed. And I, Enos, knew that God could not lie; wherefore, my guilt was swept away. And I said: Lord, how is it done? And he said unto me: “Because of thy faith in Christ, whom thou hast never before heard nor seen. And many years pass away before he shall manifest himself in the flesh; wherefore, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole. Now, it came to pass that when I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them. And while I was thus struggling in the spirit, behold, he voice of the Lord came into my mine again, saying: I will visit thy brethren according to heir diligence in keeping my commandments. I have given unto them this land, and it is a holy land; and I curse it not save it be for the cause of iniquity; wherefore, I will visit thy brethren according as I have said; and their transgressions will I bring down with sorrow upon their own heads. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And after I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites. And it came to pass that after I had prayed and laboured with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith. And now behold, this was the desire which I desired of him—that if I should so be, that my people, the Nephites, should fall into transgression, and by any means be destroyed, and the Lamanites should not be destroyed, that the Lord God would preserve a record of my people, the Nephites; even if it so be by the power of his holy arm, that it might be brought forth at some future day unto the Lamanites, that, perhaps, they might be brought unto salvation—for at the present our strugglings were in vain in restoring them to the true faith. And they swore in their wrath that, if it were possible, they would destroy our records and us, and also all the traditions of our fathers. Wherefore, I knowing that the Lord God was able to preserve our records, I cried unto him continually, for he had said unto me: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it. And if I had faith, and I did cry unto God that He would preserve the records; and he covenanted with me that he would bring them forth unto the Lamanites in His own due time. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“And I, Enos, knew it would be according to the covenant which He had made; wherefore my soul did res. And the Lord said unto me: Thy fathers have also required of me this thing; and it shall be done unto them according to heir faith for their faith was like unto thine. And now it came to pass that I, Enos, went about among the people of Nephi, prophesying of things to come, and testifying of the things which I had heard and seen. And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. However, our labours were in vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of pray; dwelling in tens, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us. And it came to pass that the people of Nephi did till the land and raise all manner of grain, and of fruit, and flocks of herds, and flocks of all manner of cattle of every kind, and goats, and wild goats, and also many horses. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And there were exceedingly many prophets among us. And the people were a stiffnecked people, hard to understand. And there was nothing save it was exceeding harshness, preaching and prophesying of wards, and contentions, and destructions, and continually reminding them of death, and the duration of eternity, and the judgments and the power of God, and all these things—stirring them up continually to keep them in fear of the Lord. I say there was nothing short of these things, and exceedingly great plainness of speech, would keep hem from going down speedily to destruction. And after this manner do I write concerning them. And I saw wars between the Nephites and Laminates in the course of my days. And it came to pass that I began to be old, and an hundred and seventy and nine years had passed away from the time that our father Lehi left Jerusalem. And I saw that I must son go down to my grace, having being wrought upon by the power of God that I must preach and prophesy unto this people, and declare the word according to the truth which is in Christ. And I have declared it in all my days, and have rejoiced in it above that of the World. And I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer; for I know that in Him I shall rest. And I rejoice in the day when my mortal shall put on immortality, and shall stand before him; then shall I see His face with pleasure, and He will say unto me: Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. Amen, reports Enos 1.1-27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Please Grant, O Lord, that what we have taken with our mouth we may receive with our soul, and let that which has been a temporary gift become to us an everlasting remedy; through Jesus Chris our Lord. Father or Mercies, please hear me for Jesus’ sake. I am sinful even in my closet walk with thee; it is of Thy mercy I died not long ago; Thy grace has given me faith in the cross by which Thou hast reconciled Thyself to me and me to Thee, drawing me by Thy great love, reckoning me as innocent in Christ though guilty in myself. Giver of all graces, I look to thee for strength to maintain them in me, for it is hard to practise what I believe. Strengthen me against temptations. My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin, a river of corruption since childhood days, flowing on in every pattern of behaviour; Thou hast disarmed me of the means in which I trusted, and I have no strength but in Thee. Thou alone canst hold back my evil ways, but without Thy grace to sustain me I fall. Satan’s darts quickly inflame me, and the shield that should quench them easily drops from my hand: Please empower me against his wiles and assaults. Keep me sensible of my weakness, and of my dependence upon Thy strength. Please let every trial trach me more of Thy peace, more of Thy love. Thy Holy Spirit is given to increase Thy graces, and I cannot preserve or improve them unless He works continually in me. May he confirm my trust in Thy promised help, and let me walk humbly in dependence upon Thee, for Jesus’ sake. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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There are Two things to Aim at in Life: First to Get What You Want; and, After that, To Enjoy it!
Conflict is probably as old as life itself and some would say that it is just as right. Our understanding of human behaviour should enable us to make some distinctions between those kinds of natural phenomena that are necessary and those that we have outgrown as human beings. Conflict, in the sense of fighting and warfare within the species of humans, is an outmoded and certainly dysfunctional social process. Dysfunctional means not serving the survival needs of the organism or the structure. If you are like me, you have tried to see inside yourself, to find in you what you see in others. If you are like me, you have only ever seen darkness where others have light. You believe you have no soul. You believe you have no goodness in you. However, you are made of God like everyone else. So we have three basic social processes: cooperation, competition, and conflict. Of the three, cooperation and some forms of competition seem to be functional, while vicious competition and conflict can be shown to be devastatingly dysfunctional. The proponents of instinctive aggression claim that competitiveness and conflict have just as much natural origin, are just as functional, and have just as much survival value as cooperation. However, many others feel that a full evaluation of the biosocial nature of humans will point up to the dysfunctionality of continued hostility in a World growing daily more crowded. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
I have attempted to cover neither all the aggravating factors that operate during the process nor the curative ones. I have not discussed, for instance, any of the difficulties or benefits that arise in connection with the individual’s brining all one’s defensive and offensive peculiarities into the relationship with the analyst—though this is an element of great significance. The steps I have described constitute merely the essential processes that must be gone though each time a new trend or conflict becomes visible. It is often impossible to proceed in the other named, since a problem may be inaccessible to the individual even when it has come into sharp focus. As we saw in the example concerning the arrogation of rights, one problem may merely disclose another which must be analyzed first. As long as every step is eventually covered, the order is of secondary importance. The specific symptomatic changes that result from analytical work naturally vary with subject tackled. When an individual recognizes one’s unconscious impotent rage and its background, a state of panic may subside. When one sees the dilemma in which one was caught, a depression may life. However, each piece of analysis well done also brings about certain general changes in the individual’s attitude toward others and toward oneself, changes that occur regardless of the particular problem that has been worked through. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
If we were to take such dissimilar problems as an overemphasis on pleasures of the flesh, a belief that reality will accord with one’s wishful thinking, and a hypersensitivity to coercion, we would find that their analysis affects the personality in much the same way. No matter which of these difficulties is analyzed, hostility, helplessness, fear, and alienation from the self and others will be diminished. Let us consider, for example, how alienation from the self is lessened in each of these instances. A person who overemphasizes pleasures of the flesh feels alive only in experiences and fantasies involving pleasures of the flesh; one’s triumphs and defeats are confined with the sphere of pleasure of the flesh; the only asset one values in oneself is how attractive one is visually. It is only when one understands this condition that one can start to become interested in other aspects of living, and so retrieve oneself. A person for whom reality is bounded by the projects and plans of one’s imagination has lost sight of oneself as a functioning human being. One sees neither one’s limitations nor one’s actual assets. Through analytical work one ceases to mistake one’s potentialities for accomplishments; one is able not only to face but to feel oneself as one really is. The person who is hypersensitive to coercion has become oblivious to one’s own desires and beliefs, and feels that it is others who dominate and impose upon one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
When this condition is analyzed, one begins to know what one really wants, and hence is able to strive toward one’s own goals. In every analysis repressed hostility, regardless of its kind and source, will come to the fore and make the individual temporarily more irritable. However, each time a neurotic attitude is abandoned, irrational hostility will be diminished. The individual will become less hostile when one sees one’s own share in the difficulty instead of externalizing, and when one becomes less vulnerable, less fearful, less dependent, less demanding, and so on. Hostility is primarily allayed by a decrease in the helplessness. The stronger a person becomes, the less one feels threatened by others. The accrual of strength stems from various sources. One’s center of gravity, which had been shifted to others, comes to rest within oneself; one feels more active and starts to establish one’s own set of values. One will gradually have more energy available: the energy that had done into repressing part of oneself is released; one becomes less inhibited, less paralyzed by fears, self-contempt, and hopelessness. Instead of either blindly complying or fighting or venting sadistic impulses, one can give in on a rational basis and so becomes firmer. Finally, although anxiety is temporarily stirred up by the undermining of established defenses, each step that is profitably taken is bound to diminish it, because the individual becomes less afraid of others and oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The general result of these changes is an improvement in the individual’s relations with others and with oneself. One becomes less isolated; to the extent that one becomes stronger and less hostile, others gradually cease to be a menace to be fought, manipulated, or avoided. One can afford to have friendly feelings for them. One’s relations with oneself improve as externalization is relinquished and self-contempt disappears. If we examine the changes that take place during analysis we see that they apply to the very conditions that brought about the original conflicts. While in the course of a neurotic development all the stresses become more acute, therapy takes the opposite road. The attitudes that arose from the necessity of coping with the World in the face of helplessness, fear, hostility, and isolation become more and more meaningless and hence can be gradually dispensed with. Why, indeed, if one feel secure within oneself and can live and strive with others without the constant fear of being submerged, should anyone want to efface or sacrifice oneself for persons one hates and who step on one? If one is able to love and is not afraid to fight, why should anyone anxiously avoid involvement with others? #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
To do this work takes time; the more entangled and the more barricaded a person is, the more time is required. That there should be a desire for brief analytical therapy is quite understandable. We should like to see more persons benefit from all that analysis has to offer, and we realize that some help is better than no help at all. Neuroses, it is true, vary greatly in severity, and mild neuroses can be helped in a comparatively short period. While some of the experiments in brief psychotherapy are promising, many, unfortunately, are based upon wishful thinking and are carried on with an ignorance of the powerful forces that operate in neurosis. In the case of sever neuroses I believe that the analytical procedure can be shortened only by so bettering our understanding of the neurotic character structure that less time will be wasted in groping for interpretations. Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist. Experience of any one of a number of kinds may be sufficiently telling to bring about personality changes. It may be the inspiring example of a truly great person; it may be a common tragedy which by brining the neurotic in close touch with others takes one out of one’s egocentric isolation; it may be association with persons so congenial that manipulating or avoiding them appears less necessary. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
In other instances the consequences of neurotic behaviour may be so drastic or of such frequent occurrence that they impress themselves on the neurotic’s mind and make one less fearful and less rigid. The therapy effected by life itself is not, however, within one’s control. Neither hardships nor friendships nor religious experience can be arranged to meet the needs of the particular individual. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may entirely crush another. And, as we have seen, the capacity of the neurotic behaviour and to learn from them is highly limited. We could rather say that an analysis can be safely terminated if the individual has acquired this very capacity to learn from one’s experience—that is, if one can examine one’s share in the difficulties that arise, understand it, and apply the insight to one’s life. Knowledge of the role that conflicts play in neurosis and the realization that they can be resolved make it necessary to redefine the goals of analytical therapy. Although many neurotic disturbances belong in the medical sphere, it is not feasible to define the goals in medical terms. Since even psychosomatic illness are essentially an ultimate expression of conflicts within the personality, the goals of therapy must be defined in terms of personality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Thus seen they encompass a number of aims. The individual must acquire the capacity to assume responsibility for oneself, in the sense of feeling oneself the active, responsible force in one’s life, capable of making decisions and of taking the consequences. With this goes an acceptance of responsibility toward others, a readiness to recognize obligations in whose value one believes, whether they relate to one’s children, parents, friends, employees, colleagues, community, or country. Closely allied is the aim of achieving an inner independence—one as far removed from a mere defiance of the opinions and beliefs of others as from a mere adoption for them. This would mean primarily enabling the individual to establish one’s own hierarchy of values and to apply it to one’s actual living. In reference to others it would entail respect for their individuality and their rights, and would thus be the basis for a real mutuality. It would coincide with truly democratic ideals. We could define the goals in terms of spontaneity of feeling, an awareness and aliveness of feeling, whether in respect to love or hate, happiness or sadness, fear or desire. This would include a capacity for expression as well as for voluntary control. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Because it is so vital, the capacity for love and friendship should be especially mentioned in this context; love that is neither parasitic dependence nor sadistic domination but, a relationship which has no purpose beyond itself; in which we associate because it is natural for human beings to share their experience; to understand one another, to find joy and satisfaction in living together; in expressing and revealing themselves to one another. The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that conflicts are resolved. These goals are not arbitrary, nor are they valid goals of therapy simply because they coincide with the ideals that wise persons of all times have followed. However, the coincidence is not accidental, for these are the elements upon which psychic health rests. We are justified in postulating these goals because they follow logically from a knowledge of the pathogenic factors in neurosis. Our daring to name such high goals rests upon the belief that human personality can change. It is not only the young child who is pliable. All of us retain the capacity to change, even to change in fundamental ways, as long as we live. This is belief supported by experience. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Analysis is one of the most potent means of bringing about radical changes, and the better we understand the forces operating in neurosis the greater our chance of effecting desired change. Neither the analyst nor the individual is likely wholly to attain these goals. They are ideals to strive for; their practical value lies in their giving us direction in our therapy and in our lives. If we are not clear about the meaning of ideals, we run the danger of replacing an old idealized image with a new one. We must be aware, too, that it does not lie within the power of the analyst to turn the individual into a flawless human being. One can only help one to become free to strive toward an approximation of these ideals. And this means giving one as well an opportunity to mature and develop. “Think about the hundreds of years, if not thousands of years of lost women’s stories. How the hell can I not feel that there is a sense of urgency? Every woman I know that is working to tell stories of women or marginalized groups feels the same way. You do not know how long a window will last. You hope it lasts a long, long, time, but you never know,” reports Reese Witherspoon. During this time of tension and uncertainty, and as the Restoration continues, I know that God will continue to reveal many great and important things pertaining to His kingdom here on Earth. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
To bring the mind to dwell intelligently upon God as He is presented in His Word will have the effect of causing us to love God passionately, and this love will in turn bring us to think God steadily. Thus he will always be before our minds. The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. One who is in love, one’s thoughts are ever upon the object. One who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee,” reports Psalms 139.18. The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept Heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts,” reports Psalms 10.4. A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. One never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. In this way we enter a life of worship. To think of God as he is, one cannot but lapse into worship; and worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in the whole person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Worship puts into abeyance every evil tendency in every dimension of the self. It naturally arises from thinking rightly of God on the basis of revealed truth confirmed in experience. We say flatly, Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought of life and the only safe place for a human being to stand. An old hymn contains these lines: “In our astonished reverence we confess Thine uncreated loveliness.” “Astonished reverence” is a good paraphrase for worship, as is “admiration to the point of delight.” That is the true outcome of renovation of the thought life. The first request in The Lord’s Prayer is, “Hallowed be Thy name.” It is first because it is the most important one. To the extent that God is exalted in the minds of people, and his very name is cherished with utmost respect, everything else goes right. You can verify this experimentally in yourself. Your God is too small is a message we hear often these days, and it is a message that is usually misunderstood. The point is not your God is too small to meet your needs, but your God is so small that you fail to relentlessly worship and adore him. In the renovated mind, God constantly stands as uniquely and supremely worthy. Hallowed be Thy name! This is a serious matter, for how can a symbol disintegrate if it truly partakes of the power of being-itself which it expresses? How can it fail to be revelatory, unless the reality of which it partakes also disintegrates? #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
When we speak of artistic symbols, we naturally do not encounter this problem. However, when we speak of the Unconditional as perceived in religion and faith, one does not seem to posit it with enough earnestness. One duly recognizes the difference between artistic and religious symbols. The latter has special character in that it points to the ultimate level of being, to ultimate reality, to being itself, to meaning itself. If this is admitted, how then can we declare that when a religious symbol disintegrates, it means that the encounter with Ultimate reality out of which it grew has itself disintegrated? They are the expression of an encounter with ultimate reality, and they disappear if this kind of encounter disappears. It is not theoretical criticism that kills the religious symbols. Theoretical refutation is powerless before the existential pregnancy of the symbol. However, when one adds that symbols are killed by a change in the actual encounter, one may ask how ultimate was the Ultimate that was perceived in that situation, if it can disappear? If the Unconditional is unconditional, it should be beyond the reach of the situation in which it was perceived. The situation was a necessary, symbolic mediation for it to be perceived; but a person that has intuited the Unconditional knows it once and for all, even after the various elements of the revelatory correlation have separated and lost their power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
This leads to a basic criticism. If we are right connecting religious symbols and the Ultimate, one cannot be right in thinking that religious symbols can die. For the Ultimate does not die. A symbol which is no longer made powerful by the existential context in which it became symbolic of Ultimate reality, remains symbolic of it by the very power of Ultimate reality already perceived. A symbol which has been truly symbolic of God is always symbolic of God. When it no longer leads to God, God comes to humans through it. This would seem to be the conclusion logically to be drawn: A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. A symbol remains true as long as what it reveals is the truth. Since ultimate truth does not disintegrate, neither do its symbols. However, religious symbols are double-edged. They are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize. One can easily understand that the symbol and, along with it, the reality from which it was take may disintegrate in mutual interdependence. Yet one cannot see why the Infinite lacks the power to maintain the symbolic relation even when the situation is no longer revelatory. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
A constellation of religious symbols form what is calls a religious myth. Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-human encounters. One finds such myths in pagan religions, and they are present in the Old Testament and even in the New. The usage of the word “myth” is not derogatory. Myths are as necessary as symbols. The correlation of several symbols even manifests an element of human’s perception of the Unconditional which a symbol, by itself, would not convey, namely the historical and the cosmic relevance of the Unconditional. It puts the stories of the gods into the framework of time and space. If this expresses the transcendence of God above space and time, it is very legitimate. However, it is radically ambiguous. Myths can contribute to unseat the Unconditional and to make humans conceive of it as subject to time and space. This is why so many myths imply polytheism: myth divides the divine into several figures, removing ultimacy from each of them without removing their claim to ultimacy. Like symbols, therefore, myths must be criticized, and all great religious have done so. In modern times, and in the Christian context of the New Testament, this criticism has been given the name of de-mythologization, a matter which will claim our attention later. At this point it is enough to note that myth and de-mythologization belong together, just like symbol and symbol-criticism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
A myth which is not understood as symbolic but as literally true is a “pure myth.” Its religious value is distorted by literalism. It is taken as transcendent history of the life of God and of God’s intervention in the life of humans. Such myths must be broken. Only a broken myth has undoubted religious value, precisely because its value has resisted the radical criticism of de-mythologization. However, the criticism of myth should bear on the real, not on the imagined shortcomings of the mythical story. Pagan mythology has often been criticized for its supposed immortality, yet, these attacks are only partially justified. The relations of the mythological gods are trans-moral; they are ontological; they refer to structures of being and to conflicts of values. The only ultimately valid criticism of a myth must take account of the religious dimensions of the myth. It must be seen as an attempt to perceive and express the concept that God is living and the experience of humans faced with the fascinating mystery of the holiness of God’s life. Because it is made of symbols that are themselves the products of a series of revelatory situations, a myth may be successfully criticized only from within its own revelatory context. This is called the theological circle. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Only the Unconditional which the myth wants to express can judge myth. Only in its light can the myth be considered inadequate, misleading, or, perhaps, fallacious. In the light of the Ultimate, however, all myths are ambiguous. For if they combine symbols, that is, revelatory situations, the system into which these are united is not itself a revelatory situation. It is, precisely, a myth, arising out of religious imagination. Because of the bipolarity—combining genuine revelatory situations into imaginative patterns—myths must be neither destroyed, negated, nor accepted in their literalism. They must be broken, understood on the level of the ultimate dimension of existence, which they depict in ambiguous traits and colours. Christianity was born, not with the birth of the man who is called Jesus, but in the moments in which one of His followers was driven to say to Him, “Thou art the Christ.” The cornerstone of Christology is that the revelation carried by Jesus must have been known in a revelatory situation. This implies the convergence of a “miraculous,” power-revealing situation, and of someone grasping the meaning of this situation in an ecstasy of faith. The most striking such moment, as recorded in the New Testament, is the confession of Peter professing his faith that “Thou art the Christ.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“Thou art the Christ” is confession with which we need to concentrate on the meaning. For the term “Christ” is evidently the central symbol of Christology. It is in the light of it that every other symbol is meaningful and that every Christian assertion about Jesus must be criticized. In the light of it, too, Christians will judge the attempts of other religions to identify the Christ differently from what Christianity asserts. With the symbol of the Christ we are at the cosmic crossroads of all religions. For, as the analysis of faith has shown, all religions try to identify the depths of humans; they endeavour to find the name of the ground of being. The concrete content of a religious faith is an equation of being-itself with the meaning of a religious symbol or myth. The essential content of every religious faith, whatever the concrete content involved, is that the depths of human is experienced the ultimate ground of all being, the Unconditional. The term Christ, in Christianity, gives a name to the Unconditional, the eternal ground of all that is. However, it is not more than a name; it is an identification with an event of history. There has been a man in whom Essential Godmandhood has appeared within existence and subjected itself to the conditions of existence without being conquered by them. By Essential Godmanhood, we mean the eternal ground of humans. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The analysis of human’s existential estrangement, which classical theology calls original sin, shows that by the very fact of their existence, humans have fallen from their essential being to an existential situation. The essential being of humans corresponds exactly to one’s point of contact with the Absolute. It is not only humanhood as experienced in existence, but it is also humanhood as created in God, ontologically before the fall into existence. This is called Godmanhood. Essential Godmanhood is thus being of humans prior to existence. It is humans in God. To essential humans belongs the unity of their finiteness with their infinity, and it is precisely this unity which I called Godmanhood, because it is an expression of the dialectical interdependence of finiteness and infinity. Sherem denies Christ, contends with Jacob, demands a sign, and is smitten of God—all the prophets have spoken of Christ and His Atonement—the Nephites lived out their days as wanderers, born in tribulation, and hated by the Lamanites. About 544-421 Before Christ. “And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem. And it came to pass that he began to preach among the people, and to declare unto them that there should be no Christ. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ. And he labored diligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did lead away many hearts; and he knowing that I Jacob, had faith in Christ who should come, he sought much opportunity that he might come to me. And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech, according to the power of the devil. And he had hope to shake me from the faith, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things; for I truly had seen Angels, and they had ministered unto me. And also, I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word, from time to time; wherefore, I could not be shaken. And it came to pass that he came unto me, and on this wise did he speak unto me, saying: Brother Jacob, I have sought much opportunity that I might speak unto you; for I have heard and also know that thou goest about much, preaching that which ye call the gospel, or the doctrine of Christ. And ye have lead away much of this people that they pervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the laws of Moses into the worship of a being which ye shall say come many hundred years hence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no human knowth of such things to come. And after this manner did Sherem contend against me. However, behold, the Lord God poured in His Spirit into my soul, insomuch that I did confound him in all his words. And I said unto him: Deniest thou the Christ who shall come? And he said: If there should be a Christ, I would not deny him; but I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be. And I said unto him: Believest thou the scriptures? And he said, Yea. And I said unto him: Then ye do not understand them; for they truly testify of Christ. Behold, I say unto you that none of the prophets have written, not prophesized, save they have spoken concerning this Christ. And this is not all—it has been made manifest unto me, for I have heard and seen; and it also has been made manifest unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, I know if there should be no atonement made all humankind must be lost. And it came to pass that he said unto me: Show me a sign by this power of the Holy Ghost, in the which ye know so much. And I said unto him: What am I that I should tempt God to show unto thee a sign in the thing which thou knowest to be true? Yet thou wilt deny it, because thou art of the devil. Nevertheless, not my will be done; but if God shall smite thee, let that be a sign unto thee that he has power, both in Heaven and in Earth; and also that Christ shall come. And thy will, O Lord, be done, and not mine. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And it came to pass that when I, Jacob, had spoken these words, the power of the Lord came upon him, insomuch that he fell to the Earth. And it came to pass that he was nourished for the space of many days. And it came to pass that he said unto the people: Gather together on the morrow, for I shall die; wherefore, I desire to speak unto the people before I shall die. And it came to pass that on the morrow the multitude were gathered together; and he spake plainly unto them and denied the things which he had taught them, and confessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of Angels. And he spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. And he spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. And he said: I fear least I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall awful; but I confess unto God. And it came to pass that when he had said these words he could say no more, and he gave up the ghost. And when the multitude had witnessed that he spake these things as he was about to give up the ghost, they were astonished exceedingly; insomuch that the power of God came down upon them, and they were overcome that they fell to the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“Now, this thing was pleasing unto me, Jacob, for I had requested it of my Father who was in Heaven; for he had heard my cry and answered by prayer. And it came to pass that peace and the love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures, and hearkened no more to the words of this wicked man. And it came to pass that many means were devised to reclaim and restore the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth; but it all was vain, for they delighted in wars and bloodshed, and they had an eternal hatred against us, their brethren. And they sought by the power of their arms to destroy us continually. Wherefore, the people of Nephi did fortify against them with their arms, and with all their might, trusting in the God and rock of their salvation; wherefore, they became as yet, conquerors of their enemies. And it came to pass that I, Jacob, began to be old; and the record of this people being kept on the other plates of Nephi, wherefore, I conclude this record, declaring that I have written according to the best of my knowledge, by saying that the time passes away with us, and also out lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hatred of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And I, Jacob, saw that I must soon go down to my grave; wherefore, I said unto my son Enos: Take these plates. And I told him the things which my brother Nephi has commanded me, and he promised obedience unto the commands. And I make an end of my writing upon these plates, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu,” reports Jacob 7.1-27. Lord Jesus Christ, Who hast given unto us such Food of Thy goodness unto salvation and life eternal, preserve us by means of this Food in purity and without defilement, dwelling within us by Thy divine protection. Please guide us by Thy divine grace into the path of Thy holy will, which desires our good, and by it may we be fortified against all the assaults of our enemies, that we may be accounted worthy to hear Thy voice, and to follow Thee, the only mighty and true Shepherd, and to obtain the place prepared in Thy Heavenly kingdom, O our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Life-giving God, please quicken me to call upon Thy name, for my mind is ignorant, my thoughts vagrant, my affections Earthly, my heart unbelieving, and only Thy Spirit can help my infirmities. I approach Thee as Father and friend, my portion forever, my exceeding joy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
I believe in Thee as the God of nature, the ordainer of providence, the sender of Jesus my Saviour. My guilty fears discourage an approach to Thee, but I praise Thee for the blessed news that Jesus reconciles Thee to me. May the truth that is in him illuminate in me all that is dark, establish in me all that is wavering, comfort in me all that is wretched, accomplish in my all that is of Thy goodness, and glorify in me the name of Jesus. I pass through a vale of tears but bless Thee for the opening gate of glory at its end. Please enable me to realize as mine the better, Heavenly country. Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage. Uphold my steps by Thy word. Please let no iniquity dominate me. Please teach me that Christ cannot be the way if I am the end, that He cannot be redeemer if I am my own saviour, that there can be no true union with Him while the creature has my heart, that faith accepts Him as redeemer and Lord or not at all. Constant association with Him can only benefit the sensitive after all. It exalts and tutors them. However, it leaves the insensitive exactly as they were before. Long ago Jesus pointed out the futility of casting a good seed on a stony ground. Not that this lack of sensitivity is to be deprecated. Nature has set us all on different rungs of ger evolutionary ladder. No one is to blame for being what he or she is. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Light of Light, and God of God, Who didst bow Thy holy Heavens, and descend to Earth for the salvation of the World, out of Thy love of humans; extend Thine Almighty right hand, and send out Thy blessings on all us. Hallow our bodies and souls by this Sacrifice which we have received, and guide our steps into the paths of righteousness, that we may behave ourselves according to Thy will, and observe Thy commandments and do them all the days of our life, and come to a blessed end, and sing a ceaseless hymn with Thy Saints to Thee, and Thy Father, and Thy Holy Spirit.
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Better to Write of Laugher than of Tears Because to Laugh is Proper to a Human!
Unlike the child, the youth becomes an individual who thinks beyond the present and forms theories about everything, delighting especially in considerations of that which is not. Not many people believe in actual evil anymore—not even in the Church. We live in a World that embraces relative truths and morality as the modern Church prepares itself for a figurative battle for souls. However, some of us have been preparing ourselves for a much more literal battle of Armageddon between very real forces of evil and those of good. We have some resources left to us from old days when people still believed that darkness walked among us. Those old rituals and spells shield this place from creatures that do not belong among the holy. There is in the brain of each individual the possibility for all these developments but they are not realized. Humans have a great more freedom than they ever use, because they operate out of habits, prejudices, and stereotypes. According to the deliberative model of democracy, it is a necessary condition for attaining legitimacy and rationality with regard to collective decision-making processes in a polity, that the institutions of this polity are so arranged that what is considered in the common interest of all results from processes of collective deliberation conducted rationally and fairly among free and equal individuals. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The more collective decisions making processes approximate this model the more increases the presumption of their legitimacy and rationality. Why? The basis of legitimacy in democratic institutions is to be traced back to the presumption that the instances which claim obligatory power for themselves do so because their decisions represent an impartial standpoint said to be equally in the interests of all. This presumption can be fulfilled only if such decisions are in principle open to appropriate processes of deliberation by free and equal citizens. The discourse model of ethics formulates the most general principles and moral intuitions behind the validity claims of a deliberative model of democracy. The basic idea behind this model is that only those norms (id est, general rules of action and institutional arrangements) can be said to be valid (id est, morally binding), which would be agreed to by all those affected by their consequences, if such agreement were reached as a consequences, of a process of deliberation that had the following features: 1) participation in such deliberation is governed by the norms of equality and symmetry; all have the same chances to initiate speech acts, to question, to interrogate, and open the debate; 2) all have the right to question the assigned topics of conversation; and 3) all have the right to initiate reflexive arguments about the very rules of the discourse procedure and the way in which they are applied or carried out. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
There are no prima facie rules limiting the agenda of the conversation, or the identity of the participants, as long as each excluded person or group can justifiably show that they are relevantly affected by the proposed norm under question. In certain circumstances this would mean that citizens of a democratic community would have to enter into a practical discourse with noncitizens who may be residing in their countries, at their borders, or in neighboring communities if there are matters that affect them all. Ecology and environmental issues in general are a perfect example of such instances when the boundaries of discourses keep expanding because the consequences of our actions expand and environmental issues in general are a perfect example of such instances when the boundaries of discourses keep expanding because the consequences of our actions expand and affect increasingly more people. The procedural specifics of those special argumentation situations called “practical discourses” are not automatically transferable to a marco-institutional level, nor is it necessary that they should be so transferable. A theory of democracy, as opposed to a general moral theory, would have to be concerned with the question of institutional specifications and practical feasibility. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Nonetheless, the procedural constraints of the discourse model can act as test cases for critically evaluating the criteria of membership and the rules of agenda setting, and for the structuring of public discussions within and among institutions. According to the deliberative model, procedures of deliberation generate legitimacy as well as assure some degree of practical rationality. However, what are the claims to practical rationality of such deliberative democratic processes? Deliberative processes are essential to the rationality of collective decision-making processes for three reasons. First, as Bernard Manin has observed in an excellent article “On Legitimacy and Deliberation,” deliberative processes are also processes that impart information. New information is imparted because 1) no single individual can anticipate and foresee all the variety of perspectives through which matters of ethics and politics would be perceived by different individuals; and 2) no single individual can possess all the information deemed relevant to a certain decision affecting all. Deliberation is a procedure for being informed. Furthermore, much political theory under the influence of economic models of reasoning in particular proceeds from a methodological fiction: this is the methodological fiction of an individual with an ordered set of coherent preferences. This fiction does not have much relevance in the political World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
On complex social and political issues, more often then not, individuals may have views and wishes but no ordered set of coherent preferences. This fiction does not have much relevance in the political World. On complex social and political issues, more often than not, individuals may have views and wishes but no ordered set of preferences, since the latter would imply that they would be enlightened not only about the preferences but about the consequences and relative merits of each of their preferred choices in advance. It is actually the deliberative process itself that is likely to produce such an outcome by leading the individual to further critical reflection on one’s already held views and opinions; it is incoherent to assume that individuals can start a process of public deliberation with a level of conceptual clarity about their choices and preferences that can actually result only from a successful process of deliberation. Likewise, the formation of coherent preferences cannot precede deliberation; it can only succeed it. Very often individuals’ wishes as well as vies and opinions conflict with one another. In the course of deliberation and the exchange of views with others, individuals become more aware of such conflicts and feel compelled to undertake a coherent ordering. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
More significantly, the very procedure of articulating a view in public imposes a certain reflexivity on individual preferences and opinions. When presenting their point of view and position to others, individuals must support them by articulating good reasons in a public context to their codeliberators. This process of articulating good reasons in public forces the individual to think of what would count as a good reason for all others involved. One is thus forced to think from the standpoint of all involved for whose agreement one is “wooing.” Nobody can convince others in public of one’s point of view without being able to state why what appears good, plausible, just, and expedient to one can also be considered so from the standpoint of all involved. Reasoning from the standpoint of all involved not only forces a certain coherence upon one’s own views but also forces one to adopt a standpoint called the “enlarged mentality.” A deliberative model of democracy suggests a necessary but no sufficient condition of practical rationality, because, as with any procedure, it can be misinterpreted, misapplied, and abused. Procedures can neither dictate outcomes nor define the quality of the reasons advanced in argumentation nor control the quality of the reasoning and rules of logic and inference used by participants. Procedural models of rationality are underdetermined. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Nonetheless, the discourse model makes some provisions against its own misuses and abuses in that the reflexivity condition built into the model allow abuses and misapplications at the first level to be challenged at a second, metalevel of discourse. Likewise, the facie fixed but can be revised and subjected to reexamination. Such would be the normative justification of majority rule as a decision procedure following from this model: in many instances the majority rule is fair and rational decision procedure, not because legitimacy resides in numbers but because if a majority of people are convinced at one point on the basis of reasons formulated as closely as possible as a result of a process of discursive deliberation that conclusion A is the right thing to do, then this conclusion can remain valid until challenged by good reasons by some other group. It is not the sheer numbers that support the rationality of the conclusion, but the presumption that if a large number of people see certain matters a certain way as a result of following certain kinds of rational procedures of deliberation and decision-making, then such a conclusion has a presumptive claim to being rational until shown to be otherwise. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The simple practice of having a ruling and an opposition party in democracies in fact incorporates this principle: we accept the will of the majority at the end of an electoral process that has been fairly and correctly carried out, but even when we accept the legitimacy of the process we may have grave doubts about the rationality of the outcome. The practice of there being parliamentary opposition says that the grounds on which the majority party claims to govern can be examined, challenged, tested, criticized, and rearticulated. Parliamentary procedures of opposition, debate, questioning, and even impeachment proceedings, and investigatory commissions incorporate this rule of deliberative rationality that majoritarian decisions are temporarily agreed-upon conclusions, the claim to rationality and validity of which can be publicly reexamined. This deliberative mode of democracy is proceduranst in that it emphasizes first and foremost certain institutional procedures and practices for attaining decisions on matters that would be binding on all. Three additional points are worthy of note with respect to such a conception of democracy: first, I proceed from the assumption of value pluralism. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Disagreement about the highest goods of human existence and the proper conduct of a morally righteous life are a fundamental feature of our modern value-universe since the end of natural law cosmologies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the eventual separation of church and state. The challenge to democratic rationality is to arrive at acceptable formulations of the common good despite this inevitable value-pluralism. We cannot resolve conflicts among value systems and visions of the good by reestablishing a strong unified moral and religious code without forsaking fundamental liberties. Agreements in societies living with value pluralism are to be sought for not at the level of substantive beliefs but at that of procedures, processes, and practices for attaining and revising beliefs. Proceduralism is a rational answer to persisting values conflicts at the substantive level. Second, the deliberative model of democracy proceeds not only from a conflict of values but also from a conflict of interests in social life. Social life necessitates both conflict of interests and cooperation. Democratic procedures have to convince, even under conditions when one’s interests as an individual or as a group are negatively affected, that the conditions of mutual cooperation are still legitimate. Procedures can be regarded as methods for articulating, sifting through and weighing conflicting interests. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The more conflicts of interests there are the more it is important to have procedural solutions of conflict adjudication through which parties whose interests are negatively affected can find recourse to other methods of the articulation and representation of their grievances. Proceduralist models of democracy allow the articulation of conflicts of interests under conditions of social cooperation mutually acceptable at all. Finally, any proceduralist and deliberative model of democracy is prima facie open to the argument, that no modern society can organize its affairs along the fiction of a mass assembly carrying out its deliberations in public and collectively. Here more than an issue of size is at stake. The argument that there may be an invisible limit to the size of a deliberative body that, when crossed, affects the nature of the reasoning process is undoubtedly true. Nonetheless the reason why a deliberative and proceduralist model of democracy does not need to operate with the fiction of a general deliberative assembly is that the procedural specifications of this model privilege a plurality of modes of association in which all affected can have the right to articulate their point of view. These can range from political parties, to citizens’ initiatives, to social movements, to voluntary associations, to consciousness-raising groups, and the like. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
It is through the interlocking net of these multiple forms of associations, networks, and organizations that an anonymous “public conversation” results. It is central to the model of deliberative democracy that it privileges such a public sphere of mutually interlocking and overlapping networks and associations of deliberation, contestation, and argumentation. The fiction of a general deliberative assembly in which the untied people expressed their will belongs to the early history of democratic theory; today our guiding model has to be that of a medium of loosely associated, multiple foci of opinion formation and dissemination which affect one another in free and spontaneous processes of communication. Such a strong model of deliberative democracy is subject to three different kinds of criticism; first, liberal theorists will express concerns that such a strong model would lead to the corrosion of individual liberties and may in fact destabilize the rule of law. In one’s earlier work, Bruce Ackerman had formulated a theory of “conversational neutrality” to voice some of these concerns. Stephen Holmes has defended the plausibility of certain “gag rules” on public conversation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Second, feminist theorists are skeptical about this model, because they see it as privileging a certain mode of discourse at the cost of silencing others: this is the rationalist, male, univocal, hegemonic discourse of transparent polity that disregards the emotions, polyvocity, multiplicity, and differences in the articulation of the voice of the public. Those who are sufficiently sensitive feel, when they spend a short time with one who has learned to live with God, a large relief from all their ancient burden of anxieties and difficulties and darkness for a while. This effect is so extraordinary, its exalted peace so glowing, that although it passes away its memory will never pass away. One who arrives at this stage becomes so wise and understanding, so strong and dependable, so kind and calm, that those who seek to foster these qualities within their own selves will receive from one’s work—sometimes from one’s mere presence—a powerful impetus to their progress. They will catch fire from one’s touch, as it were, and find a little easier of accomplishment the fulfilment of these aspirations. And those who are able to share in one’s effort to serve, to collaborate with one’s selfless work for the loftier ad more mysterious qualities which pertain to the quest of God: in the paradox of dynamic stillness, inspired action, and sublime prayers. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Yet one accepts worship from nobody as one oneself worships none. For one will not degrade oneself into such materiality nor permit others so to degrade themselves through their own superstition or someone else’s exploitation. One’s thoughts are permeated with unusual energy, and strange intensity, so that sensitive persons feel its atmosphere when in one’s presence or react quickly to its spoken an written expression when not. An individual realized that in one’s personal relationships one showed profound irritation in response to any claim the partner made upon him. Even the most legitimate requests were regarded as coercion and the most merited criticisms as insults. At the same time one felt free to demand exclusive devotion and to express one’s own criticisms quite frankly. One realized, in other words, that one accorded oneself every privilege while denying the partner any. It became clear to one that this attitude was bound to mar, if not destroy, one’s friendships as well as one’s marriage. Up to this point one had been very active and productive in one’s analytical work. However, the session after one became aware of the consequences of one’s attitude was pervaded by silence; the individual was mildly depressed and anxious. The few associations that did appear pointed to a strong tendency to withdraw, which was in decided contrast to one’s eagerness in previous hours to establish a good relationship with women. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The impulse to withdraw was an expression of how intolerable the prospect of mutuality was to one: one accepted the idea of equality of rights in theory, but in practice one rejected it. While one’s depression was a reaction to finding oneself in an unsolvable dilemma, the tendency to withdraw meant one was groping for a solution. When one recognized the futility of withdrawing, and saw that there was no way out but to change his attitude, he became interested in the question of why mutuality was so unacceptable to one. The associations that appeared immediately thereafter indicated that emotionally he saw only the alternative of having all rights or no rights whatever. He voiced apprehension that if he should concede any rights one would never be able to do what he wanted but would invariably have to comply with the wishes of others. This in turn opened up the whole field of his compliant and self-effacing trends which, although they had hitherto been touched upon, had never been seen in their full depth and significance. For a number of reasons one’s compliance and dependence were so great that he had had to build up the artificial defense of arrogating all rights exclusively to himself. To abandon the defense at a time when one’s compliance was still a stringent inner necessity would have meant to submerge oneself as an individual. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Before one could even consider a change in one’s arbitrary settlement the complaint trends had to be worked through. It is clear that we can never exhaust a problem through a single approach; it must be returned to again and again from various angles. This is because any single attitude springs from a variety of sources and assumes new functions in the course of the neurotic development. Thus, for instance, the attitude of placating and “putting up” with too much is originally part and parcel of the neurotic need for affection and must be tackled when that need is being dealt with. Its scrutiny must be resumed when the idealized image is in question. In that light placating will be seen as an expression of the individual’s notion that one is a saint. That it also involves a need to avoid friction will be understood when one’s detachment is under discussion. Again, the compulsive nature of the attitude will become clearer when the individual’s fear of others and one’s need to lean over backward from one’s sadistic impulses come into view. In other instances an individual’s sensitivity to coercion may be seen first as a defensive attitude stemming from one’s detachment, then as a projection of one’s own craving for power, and later perhaps as an expression of externalization, inner coercion, or other trends. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Any neurotic attitude or conflict that crystallizes during analysis must be understood in its relation to the personality as a whole. This is what is called working through. It involves the following steps: bringing to the individual’s awareness all the overt and hidden manifestations of the particular trend or conflict, helping one to recognize its compulsive nature, and enabling one to attain an appreciation both of its subjective value and its adverse consequences. The individual, when one discovers a neurotic peculiarity, tends to avoid examining it by immediately raising the question: “How did it come about?” Whether or not one is aware of doing so, one hopes to solve the particular problem by turning to its historical origin. The analyst must hold one back from this escape into the past and encouraged one to examine first what is involved—in other words, to become familiar with peculiarity itself. One must get to know the specific ways in which it manifests itself, the means one uses to cover it up, and one’s own attitudes toward it. If, for instance, the individual’s dread of being complaint has become clear, one must see the extent to which one resents, dreads, and despises in oneself any form of self-effacement. One must recognize the checks one has unconsciously instituted to the end of eliminating from one’s life all possibilities of compliance and everything involved in complaint tendencies. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
One will understand, then, how attitudes apparently divergent all serve this one purpose; how one has numbered one’s sensitivity to others to the point of being unaware of their feelings, desires, or reactions; how this has made one highly inconsiderate; how one has chocked off any feeling of fondness for others as well as any desire to be liked by them; how ne disparages tender feelings and goodness in others; how one tends automatically to refuse requests; how in personal relationships one feels entitled to be moody, critical, and demanding but denies the partner any of these prerogatives. Or, if it is the patient’s feeling of omnipotence that has come into focus, it is not enough that one realizes that one has this feeling. One must see how from morning till night one sets impossible tasks for oneself; how, for instance, one thinks one should be able to write a brilliant paper on a complex subject at top speed; how one expects oneself to be spontaneous and scintillating in spite of one’s exhaustion; how in analysis one expects to solve a problem the moment one catches a glimpse of it. Next, the individual must recognize that one is driven to act in accordance with the particular trend, regardless of—and often contrary to—one’s own desires or best interests. One must realize that the compulsion operates indiscriminately, usually without reference to factual conditions. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
One must see, for example, that one’s faultfinding attitude is turned towards friends and enemies alike; that one upbraids the partner no matter how the latter behaves: if the partner is amiable, one suspects one of feeling guilty about something; if one assets oneself, one is domineering; if one gives in, ne is a weakling; if one likes to be with one, one is too easily available; if one refuses anything, one is stingy, and so on. Or if the attitude under discussion is the individual’s uncertainty of being wanted or welcome, one must realize that the attitude persists despite all evidence to the contrary. Understanding the compulsive nature of a trend also involves recognizing reactions to its frustration. If, for instance, the trend that has emerged concerns the individual’s need for affection, one would have to see that one feels lost and frightened at any sign of rejection or diminished friendliness, no matter how trivial the sign or how little the other person means to one. While the first of these steps shows the individual the extent of one’s particular problem, the second impresses upon one’s mind the intensity of the forces behind it. Both arouse an interest in further scrutiny. Therefore, besides worshiping in stupendous truth, we worship “in spirit.” Notice the small “s,” referring to our human spirits, the inner person. True worship flows from the inside out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Worship is not an external activity, but is of necessity first internal. Jesus warned hypocrites with the words of Isaiah: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain,” reports Mark 7.6,7. Thus true worship must spring from within a human’s spirit, from the spontaneous affections of the heart—as it did so regularly from the heart of David. Psalm 130, a Psalm of Ascents, expresses the anticipation of one worshipping in spirit: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning,” reports Psalm 130.5,6. “Wherefore, let us go to and labour with our might this last time that I shall prune my vineyard. Graft in the branches; begin at the last that they may be first, and that the first may be last, and dig about the trees, both old and young, the first and the last; and the last and the first, that all may be nourished once again for the last time. Wherefore, dig about them, and prune them, and dung them once more, for the last time, for the end draweth nigh. And if it be so that these grafts shall grow, then shall ye prepare the way for them, that they may grow. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And as they begin to grow ye shall clear away the branches which bring forth bitter fruit, according to the strength of the good and the size thereof; and ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once, lest the roots thereof should be too strong for the graft, and the graft thereof shall perish, and I lose the trees of my vineyard. For it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard; wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow, that the root and the top may be equal in strength, until the good shall overcome the bad, and the bad be hewn down and cast into the fire, that they cumber not the ground of my vineyard; and this will I sweep away the bad out of my vineyard. And the branches of the natural tree will I graft in again into the natural tree; and the branches of the natural tree will I graft into the natural branches of the tree; and this will I bring them together again, that they shall bring forth the natural fruit, and they shall be one. And the bad shall be cast away, yea, even out of all the land of my vineyard; for behold, only this once will I prune my vineyard. And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard sent his servant; and the servant went and did as the Lord had commanded him, and brought other servants; and they were few. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and labour in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labour with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself against the time which will soon come. And it came to pass that the servants did go and labour with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them; and they did obey the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard in all things. And there began to be the natural fruit again in the vineyard; and the natural branches began to grow and thrive exceedingly; and the wild branches began to be plucked off and cast away; and they did keep the root and the top hereof equal, according to the strength thereof. And thus they labored, with all diligence, according to the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard, even until the bad had been cast away out of the vineyard, and the Lord had preserved unto himself that the trees had become again the natural fruit; and they became like unto one body; and the fruits were equal; and the Lord of the vineyard had preserved unto himself the natural fruit, which was most precious unto him from the beginning. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And it came to pass that when the Lord of the vineyard saw that his fruit was good, and that his vineyard was no more corrupt, he called up his servants, and said unto them: Behold, for this last time have we nourished my vineyard; and thou beholdest that I have done according to my will; and I have preserved the natural fruit, that it is good, even like as it was in the beginning. And blessed art thou; for because ye have been diligent in labouring with me in my vineyard, and have kept my commandments, and have brought unto me again the natural fruit, that my vineyard is no more corrupted, and the bad is cast away, behold ye shall have joy with me because of the fruit of my vineyard. For behold, for a long time will I lay up of the fruit of my vineyard unto mine own self against the season, which seedily cometh; and for the last time have I nourished my vineyard, and pruned it, and dug about it, and dunged it; wherefore I will lay up unto mine own self of the fruit, for a long time, according to that which I have spoken. And when the time cometh that evil fruit shall again come into my vineyard, then will I cause the good and the bad to be gathered; and the good will I preserve unto myself, and the bad will I cast away into its own place. And then cometh the season and the end; and my vineyard will I cause to be burned with fire,” reports Jacob 5.62-77. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
To ensure a righteous judgment, the Saviour’s atoning sacrifice will clear away the underbrush of ignorance and the painful thorns of hurt caused by others. The doctrine of Christ—which consists of the saving principles and ordinances of faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end—is taught numerous times in all the scriptures of the Restoration but with particular power in the Book of Mormon. The doctrine begins with faith in Christ, and every one of its elements depends upon trust in His atoning sacrifice. The more we understand about the Saviour’s supernatural gift, the more we will come to know, in our minds, and in our hearts, the reality of the truths of the Book of Mormon and how it has the power to heal, comfort, restore, succor, strength console, and cheer our souls. God himself aoneth for the sins of the World, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also. The thought that rescued Alma is this: Restoring what you cannot restore, healing the wound you cannot heal, fixing that which you broke and you cannot fix is the very purpose of the atonement of Christ. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
The joyous truth on which Alma’s mind caught hold was not just that he himself could be made clean but also that those whom he had harmed could be healed and made whole. O God, Who Thy deep and ineffable love to humans hast condescended to the weakness of Thy servants, and made us partakers of this Heavenly Table; condemn not us sinners after the reception of Thy spotless Mysteries, but guard us, of Thy goodness, in the sanctification of the Holy Spirit; that being made holy, we may find our portion and inheritance with all the Saints who have pleased Thee from the beginning, in the light of Thy countenance, through the mercies of Thine Only-begotten son Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. O Lord, please help me never to expect any happiness from the World, but only in Thee. Let me not think that I shall be more happy by living to myself, for I can only be happy if employed for thee, and if I desire to live in this World only to do and suffer what Thou dost allot me. Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies Thee, I shall not live a life that will satisfy myself. Please help me to desire the spirit and temper of Angels who willingly come down to this lower World to perform Thy will, though their desires are Heavenly, and not set in the least upon Earthy things; then I shall be of that temper I ought to have. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Please help me not to think of living to Thee in my own strength, but always to look to and rely on Thee for assistance. Please teach me that there is no greater truth than this, that I can do nothing of myself. Lord, this is the life that no unconverted man can live, yet it is an end that every Godly soul presses after; let it be then my concern to devote myself and all to Thee. Please make me more fruitful and more spiritual, for barrenness is my daily affliction and load. How precious is time, and how painful to see it fly with little done to good purpose! I need Thy help: O may my soul sensibly depend upon Thee for all sanctification, and every accomplishment of Thy purposes for me, for the World, and for Thy kingdom. Please Lead us not into temptation, since we have been partakers of the holy Body and precious Blood. And we thank Thee that Thou hast made us meet communicants of the Mystery of glory and holiness which passeth all understanding. Please pour down on us O Lord, the Spirit of Thy love, that Thou mayest preserve in the same piety those whom Thou hast satisfied with the same Heavenly Bread. We have received, O Lord, the glorious Mysteries, and pray Thee by means of them to make us partakers of things Heavenly, while we are dwelling on the Earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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We give Thee thanks, O Lord our God, after having received Thy holy, spotless, immortal, and Heavenly Mysteries, which Thou hast given us for the benefit, sanctification, and healing of our souls and bodies. And we pray and beseech Thee, O good Lord, the Lover of Humans, to grant that the Communion of the holy Body and precious Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son may procure for us faith that needeth not to be ashamed, love without dissimulation, fulness of wisdom, healing of soul and body, repulse of every enemy, fulfilment of Thy commandments, an acceptable defense before the awful judgment-seat of Thy Christ. #CresleighHomes
Know Your Prices, Keep Smiling, Create an Alarm–There is More than One Way to Arrive at a Redemption from Phoniness!
The doctrine that maintains that what I cannot have I must teach myself not to desire; that a desire eliminated or successfully resisted, is as good as a desire satisfied, seems to me a sublime form of the doctrine of sour grapes: What I cannot be sure of, I cannot truly want. Complex modern democratic societies the Second World War face the task of securing three public goods. These are legitimacy, economic welfare, and a viable sense of collective identity. These are “goods” in the sense that their attainment is considered worthy and desirable by most members of such societies; furthermore, not attaining one or a combination thereof would cause problems in the functioning of these societies such as to throw them into crises. These goods stand in a complex relation to one another: excessive realization of one such good may be in conflict with may jeopardize the realization of others. For example, economic welfare may be attained at the cost of sacrificing legitimacy by curtailing union rights, by limiting a more rigorous examination of business accounting practices, or by encouraging the unfair use of protectionist state measures. Too great an emphasis on collective identity may come at the cost of marginalized workers and dissidents whose civil and political rights may be impinged upon by a revival of a sense of collective identity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Thus legitimacy claims and collective identity demands, particularly if they take a nationalist tone, may come into conflict. There can also be conflicts between the claims of economic welfare and the demands of collective identity, as when excessive forms of protectionism and nationalism isolate countries in the World economic context, possibly leading to declining standards of living. Conversely, too great an emphasis on economic welfare may undermine a sense of collective identity by increasing competition among social groups and by weakening the claims of political sovereignty vis-à-vis other state. In a well-functioning democratic society the demands of legitimacy, economic welfare, and collective identity ideally exist in some form of equilibrium. The present essay is concerned with one good among others which democratic societies must attain: the good of legitimacy. I am concerned to examine the philosophical foundations of the democratic legitimacy. I will argue that legitimacy in complex democratic societies must be thought to result from the free and unconstrained public deliberation of all about matter of common concern. Thus a public sphere of deliberation about matters of mutual concern is essential to the legitimacy of democratic institutions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Democracy, in my view, is best understood as a model for organizing the collective and public exercise of power in the major institutions of a society on the basis of the principle that decisions affecting the well being of a collectivity can be viewed as the outcome of a procedure of free and reasoned deliberation among individuals considered as moral and political equals. Certainly any definition of essentially contested concepts like democracy, freedom, and justice is never a mere definition; the definition itself already articulates the normative theory that justifies the term. Such is the cause with the preceding definition. My understanding of democracy privileges a deliberative model over other kinds of normative considerations. This is not to imply that economic welfare, institutional efficiency, and cultural stability would not be relevant in judging the adequacy of a normative definition of democracy. Economic welfare claims and collective identity needs must also be satisfied for democracies to function over time. However, the normative basis of democracy as a form of organizing our collective life is neither the fulfillment of economic welfare nor the realization of a stable sense of collective identity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
For just as the attainment of certain levels of economic welfare may be compatible with authoritarian political rule, so too antidemocratic regimes may be more successful in assuring a sense of collective identity than democratic ones. The practical rationality embodied in democratic institutions has a culture-transcending validity claim. This form of practical reason has become the collective and anonymous property of cultures, institutions, and traditions as a result of the experiments and experiences, both ancient and modern, with democratic rule over the course of human history. The insights and perhaps illusions resulting from these experiments and experiences are sedimented in diverse constitutions, institutional arrangements, and procedural specifics. When one think through the form of practical rationality at the core of democratic rule, Hegel’s concept of “objective Spirit” (objekiver Geist) appears to me particularly appropriate. The moral life is the perfection of spirit objective—the truth of the subjective and objective spirit itself. The failure of this latter consists—partly in having its freedom immediately in reality, in something external therefore, in a thing—partly in the abstract universality of its goodness. The failure of spirit subjective similarly consists in this, that it is, as against the universal, abstractly self-determinant in its inward individuality. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
When these two imperfections are suppressed, subjective freedom exists as the covertly and overtly universal rational will, which is sensible of itself and actively disposed in the consciousness of the individual subject, whilst its practical operation and immediate universal actuality at the same time exist as moral usage, manner and custom—where self-conscious liberty has become nature. The consciously free substance, in which the absolute “ought” is no less an “is,” has actuality as the spirit of a nation. The abstract disruption of this spirit singles it out into persons, whose independence it, however, controls and entirely dominates from within. However, the person, as an intelligent being, feels that underlying essence to be one’s own very being—ceases when so minded to be a mere accident of it—looks upon it as one’ absolute final aim. In its actuality one sees not less an achieved present, than somewhat one brings about by one’s action—yet somewhat which without all question is. Thus, without any selective reflection, the person performs one’s duty as one’s own and as something which is; and in this necessity one has oneself and one’s actual freedom. It is the rationality intrinsic to these anonymous yet intelligible rules, procedures and practices that any attempt aiming at the reconstruction of the logic of democracies must focus upon. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The more we realize what infinite harm neurotic conflicts inflict on the personality, the more stringent appears the need truly to resolve them. However, since, as we now understand, this cannot be done by rational decision nor by evasion nor by the exertion of will power, how can it be done? There is only one way: the conflicts can be resolved only by changing those conditions within the personality that brought them into being. This is a radical way, and a hard one. In view of the difficulties involved in changing anything within ourselves, it is quite understandable that we should scour the ground for short cuts. Perhaps that is why individuals—and others as well—so often ask: If one sees one’s basic conflict, is that enough? The answer is clearly, no. Even when the analyst—discerning quite early in the analysis just how the individual is divided—is able to help one recognize this split, the insight is of no immediate profit. It may bring a certain relief in that the individual begins o see a tangible reason for one’s troubles instead of simply being lost in a mysterious haze; but one cannot apply it to one’s life. A perception of how one’s divergent parts operate and interfere with one another makes one no les divided. One hears these facts as one hears a strange message; it seems plausible, but one cannot realize its implications for oneself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
One is bound to invalidate the facts by manifold unconscious mental reservations. Unconsciously one will insist that the analyst is exaggerating the magnitude of one’s conflicts; that one would be quite all right if it were not for outside circumstances; that love or success would rid one of one’s distress; that one can evade one’s conflicts by keeping away from people; that though it may be true of ordinary folk that they cannot serve two masters, one with one’s unlimited powers of will and intelligence could manage to do so. Or one may feel-again unconsciously—that the analyst is a charlatan or a well-meaning fool, feigning professional cheerfulness; that one ought to know the individual is ruined beyond repair—which means that the individual responds to the analyst’s suggestions with one’s own feelings of hopelessness. Since such mental reservations point to the fact that the individual either clings to one’s particular attempts at solution—these being much more real to one than the conflicts themselves—or that one fundamentally despairs of recovery, all the attempts and all their consequences must be worked through before the basic conflict can profitably be tackled. The search for an easier road has given rise to another questions, lent weight by Dr. Freud’s emphasis on genesis: Is it enough to relate these conflicting drives—once they have been recognized—to their origins and early manifestations in the childhood situation? #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Again the answer is, no—and again, for the most part, the same reasons apply. Even the most detailed recollection of one’s early experiences gives the individual little beyond a more lenient, ore condoning attitude toward oneself. It in no way make one’s present conflicts any less disrupting. A comprehensive knowledge of early environmental influences and the changes they effected in the child’s personality, though it has little direct therapeutic values, does have a bearing on our inquiry into the conditions under which neurotic conflicts develop. As is generally recognized, this knowledge is also of great prophylactic value. If we know what environmental factors are helpful to a child’s development and what factors delay and limit it, a way is opened to the prevention of the rank growth of neuroses in future generations. It was, after all, the changes in one’s relations with oneself and others that originally brought about the conflicts. Briefly, a child may find oneself in a situation that threatens one’s inner freedom, one’s spontaneity, one’s feeling of security, one’s self-confidence—in short the very core of one’s psychic existence. One feels isolated and helpless, and as a result one’s first attempts to relate oneself to others are determined not by one’s real feelings but by strategic necessities. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
One cannot simply like or dislike, trust or distrust, express one’s wishes or protest against those of others, but has automatically to devise ways to cope with people and to manipulate them with minimum damage to oneself. The fundamental characteristics that evolve in this way may be summarized as an alienation from the self and others, a feeling of helplessness, a pervasive apprehensiveness, and a hostile tension in one’s human relations that ranges from general wariness to definite hatred. As long as these conditions persist, the neurotic cannot possibly dispense with any of one’s conflicting drives. On the contrary, the inner necessities from which they stem become even more stringent in the course of the neurotic development. The fact that the pseudo solutions increase the disturbance in one’s relations with others and with oneself means that real solutions become less and less attainable. The goal of therapy, therefore, can only be o change the conditions themselves. The neurotic must be helped to retrieve oneself, to become aware of one’s real feelings and wants, to evolve one’s own set of values, and to relate oneself to others on the basis of one’s feelings and convictions. If we could achieve this by some magic, the conflicts would be dispelled without their having even to be touched upon. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
As there is no magic, we must know what steps have to be taken to being about the desired change. Therapy affords insight and helps the individual grow. It helps makes one more empathic and gives theory more experiential meaning. If affords more faith in one’s understanding life. The real aristocrats among those in therapy are those who have had nervous breakdowns. Everybody else is kind of “square.” Therapy can yield a fuller awareness of the extent to which one has been inauthentic in one’s everyday existence, and some help and encouragement to dare to be genuine in one’s everyday existence. This experience can also be gotten out of a good platonic relationship, probably. There is more than one way to arrive at redemption from phoniness. Such experience can enhance one’s sensitivity to phoniness, to inauthenticity in another person; and it also gives one an opportunity to be a role model of authenticity of others. Now, if you can get this courage to be authentic in some way other than therapy, so much the better; but I suspect it is rather difficult to. There may be some wise seniors who have knocked around a lot, and who have worked in every kind of work—who have cheated, lied, stolen, and sinned. They have paid the consequences of all these things #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
After paying the consequences for their bad behaviour, on their own, they may have realized how they shortchanged themselves. They may have arrived at the authentic way, and can be regarded as natural untrained graduates of a therapeutic program. Since they have been one, they can spot phony. They are experts. They are more expert at phoniness than the others. They can help an individual grope for a way to be more genuine and at the same tie be effective in life. They can help a person realize that one does not have to be destroyed when one is genuine, that one will not inevitably be divorced, fired, or run out of town if one presents oneself as one is In 50 or 60 years, a human may discover authenticity and have some therapeutic capacity. However, a training analysis or bout of therapy may expedite this. The corporate World has a toe and heel, and each performs a different function: one delivers a service, the other collects payment for it. When an organization seeks to create demand for a service and then deliver it, it uses the smile and the soft questioning voice. Behind this delivery display, the organization’s worker is asked to feel sympathy, trust, and good will. On the other hand, when the organization seeks to collect money for what it has sold, its workers may be asked to use a grimace and the raised voice of commands. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Behind this collection display of beneficial and comforting emotions and expressions, the worker is asked to feel distrust and sometime positive bad will. Some companies assign the function of debt collecting to outside agencies in order to preserve pleasant and morally satisfying associations with the company name. The builder’s billing department explained: “We use eight or nine collection agencies around the country. No one initiates actions in this office. We prefer that the agency be the bad guy or gal and we be he nice people.” Just over 1 percent of customers do not pay their bills. After solicitations, some 40 percent pay, and 33 percent of that goes to the collection agency. In each kind of display, the problem for the worker becomes how to create and sustain the appropriate feeling. The reason for describing the polar extremes of emotional labour, as represented by a sale agent and the bill collector, is that it can give us a better sense of the great variety of emotional task required by jobs that fall in between. It can help us see how emotional labour distributes itself up and down the social classes and how parents can train children to do the emotional labour required by different jobs. Now this is tremendously important for us today as it has been in the past. Perhaps we are in a time when it is more important that ever. The prospering of God’s cause on Earth depends upon His people thinking well. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith. They do not realize that in so doing they are not honoring God, but simply yielding to the deeply anti-intellectualist currents in the New World. They do not realize that they are operating on the same satanic principle that produced the “killing fields” of Cambodia, where those with any sign of education—even the wearing of glasses—were killed on the spot or condemned to starvation and murderous labour. We too easily forget that it is great thinkers who have given direction to the people of Christ in their great moments: Paul, John, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, to name a few. At the head of the list is Jesus Christ Himself, who was and is the most powerful thinker the World has ever known. Logical is a great design of a noble science that allows us to rescue our reasoning powers from their unhappy slavery and darkness; and thus, with all due submission and deference, it offers an humble assistance to divine revelation. Its chief business is to relieve the natural weakness of the mind by some better efforts of nature; it is to diffuse a light over the understanding in our inquiries after truth. And it renders its daily service to wisdom and virtue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Bluntly, to serve God well we must think straight; and crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favours evil. And when the crooked thinking gets elevated into group orthodoxy, whether religious or secular, there is always, quite literally “hell to pay.” That is, hell will take its portion, as it has repeatedly done in the horrors of the World history. To take the “information” of the Scripture into a mind thinking straight under the direction and empowerment of the Holy Spirit, by contrast, is to place our feet solidly on the high road of spiritual formation under God. “The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes,” reports Psalm 19.7-8. And “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee,” reports Psalm 119.11. “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path,” reports Psalm 119.105. “I love Thy commandments above gold, yes, above fine gold. Therefore I esteem right all Thy precepts concerning everything,” reports Psalm 119.127-128. “Those who love Thy law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble,” reports Psalm 119.165. Worship does not just “happen.” Worship requires careful preparation on the part of minister and congregations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
I have experienced both side of this, and I know Sunday morning can be the worst time of the week. It is probably true that couples, especially those with young children, have more disagreements on Sunday morning than on any other day of the week. Sometimes by the time we get to church, worship is an impossibility—unless, perhaps, the sermon is on repentance! The answer to the problem begins Saturday (on Friday night for those who attend church on Saturday) preparation. (Any men who interpret the following as women’s work are wrong. Both husband and wife should share responsibility for the practical and spiritual preparations for the Lord’s Day.) It is advisable that young families have their clothing clean and laid out of Saturday (or Friday) night, and even breakfast be decided upon. The whereabouts of Bibles and lessons should be known, and even better, ought to be collected and ready. There should be an agreed-upon time to get up which leaves plenty of time to get ready for church. Going to bed at a reasonable hour is also a good idea. Spiritually, prayer about the Lord’s Day is essential—prayer for the service, the music, the pastors, one’s family and one’s self. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The Puritans understood this well. As one of their great preachers, George Swinnock, quaintly expressed it: Prepare to meet thy God, O Christian! Betake thyself to thy chamber on the Saturday (of Friday) night. The oven of thine heart thus baked, as it were, overnight, would be easily heated the next morning; the fire so well raked up when thou wentest to bed, would be the sooner kindled when thou shouldst rise. If thou wouldst thus leave thy heart with God on the Saturday (or Friday) night, thou shouldst fine it with him in the Lord’s Day morning. On Sunday (or Saturday) everyone needs to get up on time, eat at a set hour, and leave plenty early, ideally after a short time of family prayer asking that God will be glorified and speak to each family member. If you do this, Sunday (or Saturday) worship will ascend to new heights. Next you ought to come expecting to uniquely meet God in corporate worship. Congregational worship makes possible an intensity of devotion which does no as readily come in individual worship. On the tragic level, a mob tends to descend to a much deeper level of cruelty than individuals by themselves. It is also understood that the appreciation and enjoyment of an informed group of music lovers at a symphony is more intense than that of a single listener at home. This holds true for worship as well, because corporate worship provides a context where passion is joyously elevated and God’s Word comes with unique power. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“At home in my own house there is no warmth or vigour in me, but in church when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through,” reports Martin Luther. We must come with great expectation—for we will experience just what we expect. Anything may be found in symbol. However, how do we know that what it points to is not itself a more abstract symbol. In order to speak of symbolic knowledge one must delimit the symbolic realm by an unsymbolic statement. Were there no limit to symbolism, there would be no knowledge either. Faith would imply an indefinite progress from symbol to further symbol, without any ultimate encounter with the Unsymbolic. That is, it would be a regress, an acknowledgement of the ultimacy of despair, of the impossibility of making sense out of the human situation, of the universal fallacy of thinking that revelatory situations truly are revelatory, or revelation without content. Some argue that the human intellect is fallen, depraved, darkened, and blinded, and therefore human reason is irrelevant or suspect when it comes to becoming or growing as a Christian. Now, even if this point is granted in the case of evangelizing unbelievers, it does not follow that Christians should not use or cultivate their intellects once they become disciples. Moreover, from the fact that reasoning alone will not bring someone to Christ, it does not follow that we should not persuade or reason with people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Preaching alone will not save people without the Spirit’s work, but will still preach and work on our messages. We should do the same thing with our use of reason in evangelism. This will is fallen and depraved too, but God still commands people to make a choice to believe. The doctrine of total depravity does not mean that the image of God is effaced, that sinners are as evil as they could possibly be, or that the intellect, emotions, and will are gone or completely useless. Rather, total depravity means that the entire person, including the intellect, has been adversely affected by the Fall and is separate from God. The sinner alone cannot extricate oneself from this condition and cannot merit God’s favour or commitment oneself to God on the basis of one’s own righteousness. Further, the entire personality is corrupt but no inoperative, and every aspect of our personality has a natural inclination to fun in ways contrary to God’s ways. However, none of this means that reason, considered itself, is bad. “Behold, my brethren, do ye not remember to have read the words of the prophet Zenos, which he spake unto this house of Israel, saying: Hearken, O ye house of Israel, and hear the words of me, a prophet of the Lord. For behold, thus saith the Lord, I will liken thee, O house of Israel, like unto a tame olive tree, which a human took and nourished in his vineyard; and it grew, and waxed old, and became to decay. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And it came to pass that the master of the vineyard went forth, and he saw that his olive three began to decay; and he said: I will prune it, and dig about it, and nourish it, that perhaps it may shoot forth young and tender branches, and it perish not. And it came to pass that he pruned it, and digged about it, and nourished it according to its word. And it came to pass that after many days it began to put forth somewhat a little, young and tender branches; but behold, the main top thereof began to perish. And it came to pass that the master of the vineyard saw it, and he said unto his servant: It grieveth me that I should lose this tree; wherefore, go and pluck off those branches which are beginning to wither away, and we will cast them into the fire hat they may be burned. And behold, saith the Lord of the vineyard, I take away many of these young and tender branches, and I will graft them whithersoever I will; and it mattereth not that if it so be that the root of this tree will perish, I may preserve the fruit thereof unto myself; wherefore, I will take these young and tender branches, and I will graft them whithersoever I will. Take thou branches of the wild olive tree, and graft them in, in the stead thereof; and these which I have plucked off I will cast into the fire and burn them, that they may not cumber the ground of my vineyard. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And it came to pass that the servant of the Lord of the vineyard did according to the word of the Lord of the vineyard, and grafted in the branches of the wild olive tree. And the Lord of the vineyard caused that is should be digged about, and pruned, and nourished, saying unto his servants: It grieveth me that I should lose this tree; wherefore, that perhaps I might preserve them unto myself the natural branches of the tree; and also that I may lay up fruit thereof against the season, unto myself; for it grieveth me that I should lose this tree and the fruit thereof. And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard went his way, and hid the natural branches of the tame olive tree in the nethermost parts of the vineyard, some in one and some in another, according to his will and pleasure. And it came to pass that a long time passed away, and the Lord of the vineyard said unto his servant: Come, let us go down into the vineyard, that we may labour in the vineyard. And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard, and also the servant, went down into the vineyard to labour. And it came to pass that the servant said unto his master: Behold, look here; behold the tree. And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard looked and beheld the tree in the which the wild olive branches had been grafted: and it had sprung forth and begun to bear fruit. And he beheld that it was good; and the fruit thereof was like unto the natural fruit. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“And he said unto the servant: Behold, the branches of the wild have taken hold of the moisture of the root thereof, that the root thereof hath brought forth much strength; and because of the much strength of the root thereof the wild branches have brought forth tame fruit. Now, if we had not grafted these branches, the tree therefore would have perished. And now, behold, I shall lay up much fruit, which the tree thereof I shall lay up against the season, unto mine own self. And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard said unto the servant: Come, le us go to the nethermost part of the vineyard and behold if the natural branches of the tree have not brought forth much fruit also, that I make lay up of the fruit thereof against the season, unto mine own. And it came to pass that they went forth whither the master had hid the natural branches of the tree, and he said unto the servant: Behold these; and he beheld the first that it had brought forth much fruit; and he beheld also that it was good. And he said unto the servant: Take of the fruit thereof, and lay it up against the season, that I may preserve it unto mine own self; for behold, said he, this long time have I nourished it, and it hath brought for much fruit,” reports Jacob 5.1.20. O Taste and see how good the Lord is Alleluia. Bless the Lord in the Heavens, Alleluia. Bless Him in the highest, Alleluia. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Bless the Lord, all ye Angels of His, Alleluia. Bless Him, all His host, Alleluia. What blessings or thanksgiving can we offer for this Sacrament? Thee only, O Jesus, do we bless, with the Father and the most Holy Spirit, now and forever. Blessed Creator, Thou hast promised Thy beloved sleep: Please give me restoring rest needful for tomorrow’s toil; if dreams be mine, let them not be tinged with evil. Let Thy Spirit make my time of repose a blessed temple of His holy presence. May my frequent lying down make me familiar with death, the bed I approach remind me of the grace, the eyes I now close picture to me their final closing. Keep me always ready, waiting for admittance to Thy presence. Weaken my attachment to Earthly things. May I hold life loosely in my hand, knowing that I receive it on condition of its surrender; as pain and suffering betoken transitory health, may I not shrink from a death that introduces me to the freshness of eternal youth. I retire this night in full assurance of one day awaking with Thee. All glory for this precious hope; for the gospel of grace, for thine unspeakable gift of Jesus, for the fellowship of the Trinity. Withhold not Thy mercies in the night season; Thy hand never weariness, Thy power needs no repose, Thine eye never sleeps. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Help me when I helpless lie, when my conscience accuses me of sin, when my mind is harassed by foreboding thoughts, when my eyes are held awake by person anxieties. Show Thyself to me as the God of all grace, love and power; Thou hast a balm for every wound, a solace for all anguish, a remedy for every pain, a peace for all disquietude. Permit me to commit myself to Thee awake or asleep. “For, as I have often old you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on Earthly things. However, our citizenship is in Heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to being everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body, reports Philippians 3.18-21. Chris is administering the Bread of the Saints and the Cup of life for remissions of sins. Thou art Christ our Lord and Saviour, Who wast born of the Virgin Mary. While we receive this most holy Cup, please deliver us from all sin. The Spiritual dispeller of darkness, the Spiritual Father is not only holy Himself but is also an experienced teacher of the way to holiness for others. One who takes upon oneself the task of guiding disciples should possess sure-footed experience gained by years of work with the most varied kinds of apprentices. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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The true mentor will possess a penetrating insight into one’s pupil’s needs. Such a guru seeks neither money nor personal power. One will be able to perceive from what source a person draws one’ life, whether from the impulsion of the ego or from the inspiration of God. The instantaneous and adequate nature of one’s replies to all questions shows a deeper understanding than the merely intellectual, hence must be intuitive, inspirational, or realizational. On such a basis a human’s fitness for guruship becomes more evident. The role of spiritual guide involves a code of ethics, a special moral responsibility on the part of the guide. The appellation of spiritual teacher should be given only to one who not only can communicate the spiritual truth intellectually but who also lives it fully. The teacher must not only provide instruction; one must also set an example of how to live and act in the World, and one must not only do both of these but one must also provide a profounder influence than other humans by virtue of one’s own attainment, as telepathically revealed by one’s mere presence. The perfect teacher is one who lives up to the teaching itself. The semi-perfect one tries to live up to the teaching. The imperfect one does not even try: avoid one. Actions, deeds, are the final test of the spiritual human or guru. The life one leads must be a pattern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The spiritual guide who ask one’s disciples to practise self-discipline and remodel their characters, will seem to them to be offering impossible counsels of perfection unless one oneself is willing to do or has already done what one asks. However sound one’s theoretical guidance may be, it will fail in persuasive power to the extent that it is not at one with one’s own experience. Whatever help one can give through teaching is limited on the other person’s side by both ability to understand and willingness to receive it. One can give a human no other Grace then this, to point out the way to God. However, there is none better. One seeks to bring humans back to the memory of one’s true native land. There is no room for such a human in rigid official Worlds. One could not even influence, let alone save, such a society. At best one can make some people more fully conscious of what they already dimly feel: that civilization is in danger and its leaders half-bankrupt; that society is sick unto death; that the individual needs spiritual help to endure and grapple with the depressing situation in which one finds oneself. What chance has the individual spiritual educator to continue one’s work when public and government alike accept the false suggestion that only through large organized groups and recognized traditional institutions can people be correctly led? #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The end of such a trend can only be as it has been in the past—monopoly, dictational religion, centralized tyrannical power, heresy-hunting persecution, and the death of individualism, which means the death of truth. Jesus was an individualists. One prefers to remain unrecognized for what ne genuinely is so that others will not even suspect one’s true status—unless one deliberately wishes them to be made aware in order to help them in a special way. Unless one has been invested with a special mission to speak or write to the World, the authentically illumined human will not publicly announce the fact for one’s illumination. Anyone who does is an impostor. We may turn over the multitudes of tomes in which the opinions of human lie locked up, but the self-actualized will tell us more Truth in a day than we are likely to learn from all that huge mass of speculation. If World history show little if any ethical progress on the part of humanity, are the self-actualized to be blamed as futile? No. That merely shows the intractability of the human material they are working on, for their lives are given to doing whatever they can. They are not miracle humans. The best help one can give is to put a human upright on one’s own feet by helping one get one’s own experience of the glimpse. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The human will then know that God really exists, that one’s own inner being is connected with God, and that one can draw upon this connection for moral strength and personal guidance, mental peace and spiritual knowledge. We have already seen that a revelatory situation is revelatory insofar as it permits an awareness of the Unconditional as perceived through, underneath, and beyond the many elements that constitute the concrete situation. There is no revelation without a concrete setting. And a concrete setting is not revelatory unless it point beyond itself, to an eternal abyss, ground and meaning. This is to say that in the existential experience of the Unconditional, the human and cosmic elements, whose convergence have formed the situation in question, are perceived as symbolic of their eternal ground. The Unconditioned makes itself known through symbolic situations. In other words, it reaches us through symbols. The symbol belongs to the World of appearances. It may be literally anything. For anything which has been involved in a concrete experience of the Unconditional may retain, for the mind which has known it in the fire of communion with being-itself, a flavour of remembrance. It has kept the power of reminding us of that experience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
It has been endowed with a sort of secondary revelatory power; and whenever we meet this symbol, we shall be thrown back into the revelatory constellation hat once connected with this particular symbol. This is the main use of the word symbol: it denotes the elements that have been associated with a revelation and that have retained some of the revelatory power then manifested. A second use of the term follows. We cannot speak of the Unconditional directly. Even to say “Unconditional” is to see it as a contrasted with the conditional, and this conditions the content of the word “Unconditional.” There is no way of expressing the ultimate ground of being unless we use symbolic terms. The terms are understood as pointers to, not as copies of, reality. God does not mean a God, but points to a realm where “a” is meaningful, beyond singular and plural; as Unconditional, one is neither subject of the verb “to be” nor object of the verb “to know,” but one is beyond object and subject. It is highly symbolic language which must be used at this point. However, its symbolic character foes not diminish its truth; on the contrary, it is a condition of its truth. To speak unsymbolically about being-itself falsifies the real situation. Our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Now our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them it signifies them by names. Therefore as names, which are symbols, are applied to God, the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards to what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. However, as regard their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification applies to creatures. Spiritual formation requires thinking. The Gospel of Jesus directly repudiates all false information about God and, therewith, about the meaning of human life; and it works to undermine the power of those ideas and images that structure life away from God. However, for it to have this effect we must use our ability to think. What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of given facts or assumptions. It extends the information we have and enables us to see the “larger picture”—to see it clearly and to see it wholly. And it undermines false or misleading ideas and images as well. It reveals their falseness to those who wish to know it. It is a powerful gift of God to be used in the service of truth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Here is Paul thinking under inspiration: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” reports Romans 8.31-32. Here is Martin Luther thinking and standing in the power of God before his examiners at Worms: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscious is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” The earliest printed version of his statement added the famous words: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” And so we must apply our thinking to and with the Word of God. We must thoughtfully take that Word in, dwell upon it, ponder its meaning, explore its implications—especially as it relates to our own lives. What are we to do in the light of the facts of the gospel and the revelation of God and of human destiny contained in the Bible? We must “pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it,” reports Hebrews 2.1. We must thoughtfully put it into practice. We must seek the Lord by devoting our powers of thinking to understanding the facts and information in the gospel. This is the primary way of focusing our minds on him, setting him before us. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
When we focus our minds on God, in doing so we will be assisted by God’s grace in ways far beyond anything we can understand on our own; and the ideas and images that governed the life of Christ through his thought life will possess us. However, two factors—self-contempt and anxiety—are largely responsible for the repression of sadistic impulses. The thoroughness and depth of repression vary. Often the destructive impulses are merely kept from awareness. By and large it is astonishing how much sadistic behaviour can be lived out without the individual’s knowing it. One is conscious only of occasional desires to mistreat a weaker person, of being excited when one reads about sadistic acts, or of having come obviously sadistic fantasies. However, these sporadic glimpses remain isolated. The bulk of what one does to others in one’s daily behaviour is for the most part unconscious. One numbness of feeling for oneself and others is one factor that blurs the issue; until this is dispelled one cannot emotionally experience what one does. Besides, the justifications brought to bear to conceal the sadistic trends are often clever enough to deceive not only the sadistic person oneself but even those affected by them. We must not forget that sadism is an end stage of a severe neurosis. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
And because sadism is a neurosis, the kind of justification employed will depend upon the structure of the particular neurosis from which the sadistic trends stem. The complaint type, for instance, will enslave the partner under the unconscious pretense of love. One’s demands will be attributed to one’s needs. Because one is so helpless or so apprehensive or so ill, the partner should do things for one. Because one cannot be alone, the partner should always be with one. One’s reproaches will be expressed indirectly by one’s demonstrating, unconsciously, how much others make one suffer. The aggressive type expresses sadistic trends quite undisguisedly—which, however, does not mean that one is any more aware of them. One has no hesitation in showing one’s discontent, one’s scorn, and one’s demands but feels that, besides being entirely justified, one is simply being frank. One will also externalize one’s lack of regard for others and the fact that one exploits them, and will intimidate them by telling them in no uncertain terms how much they abuse one. The detached person is singularly unobtrusive in expressing sadistic trends. One will frustrate others in a quiet way, making them feel insecure by one’s readiness to withdraw, conveying the impression that they are cramping or disturbing one, and taking secret delight in letting them make fools of themselves. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
However, sadistic impulses can be much more deeply repressed, and then give rise to what might be called an inverted sadism. What happens here is that the person so greatly fears one’s impulses that one leans over backward to keep them from being revealed to oneself or others. One will shun everything that resembles assertion, aggression, or hostility and as a result will be profoundly and diffusely inhibited. To lean over backward from enslaving others is to be incapable of giving any order, much less of assuming a position of responsibility or leadership. It makes for overcaution in exerting influence or giving advice. It involves the repression of even the most legitimate jealousy. A good observer will merely notice that the person gets a headache, a stomach ailment, or some other symptom when things do not go one’s way. Leaning over backward from exploiting others brings self-effacing tendencies to the fore. It shows in not daring to express any wish—not daring even to have a wish; in not daring to rebel against abuse or even to feel abused; in tending to regard the expectations or demands of others as better justified or more important then one’s own; in preferring to be exploited rather than assert one’s own. Such a person is between the devil and the deep blue sea. One is frightened of one’s impulses to exploit but despises oneself for one’s unassertiveness, which one registers as cowardice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
And when one is exploited—as will naturally happen—one is caught in an unsolvable dilemma and may react with a depression or some functional symptom. Similarly, instead of frustrating others one will be overanxious not to disappoint them, to be considerate and generous. One will go to great lengths to avoid anything that could conceivably hurt their feelings or in any way humiliate them. One will intuitively find something “nice” to say—an appreciative remark, for instance, that will heighten their self-confidence. One tends automatically to take blame on oneself and will be profuse in one’s apologies. If one must make a criticism one will make it in the mildest possible form. Even when others grossly abuse one, one will show nothing but “understanding.” However, at the same time one is hypersensitive to humiliation and suffers excruciatingly under it. The sadistic play on emotions, when deeply repressed, may give place o a feeling that one is powerless to attract anyone. Thus a person may honestly believe—often in spite of good evidence to the contrary—that one is unattractive to the opposite gender, that one has to content oneself with the crumbs. To speak in this case of a feeling of inferiority is merely to use another word for what the person is conscious of anyhow, and what may simply be an expression of one’s self-contempt. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
However, of relevance here is the fact that the notion of unattractiveness may be an unconscious recoil from the temptation of playing the exciting game of conquering and rejecting. During analysis it may gradually become clear that the individual has unconsciously falsified the whole picture of one’s love relations. And a curious change will take place: the “ugly Peking duckling” becomes aware of one’s desire and capacity to attract people, but turns against them with indignation and contempt as soon as they take one’s advances seriously. The consequent personality picture is deceptive and difficult to evaluate. Its similarity to the compliant type is striking. As a matter of fact, while the overtly sadistic person ordinarily belongs to the aggressive type, the inverted sadist began, as a rule, by developing predominately complaint trends. The likelihood is that one was especially hard hit and crushed into submission in childhood. One may have falsified one’s feelings, and, instead of rebelling against the oppressor, turned to loving one. As one grew older—perhaps around puberty—the conflicts because unbearable and one took refuge in detachment. However, when confronted with failure one could no longer stand the isolation of one’s ivory tower. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Looking to escape the ivory tower, one then seemingly revered to one’s former dependence, but with this difference: one’s need for affection became so desperate that one was willing to pay any price not to be left alone. At the same time one’s chances of finding affection were diminished because one’s need for detachment—which was still present—constantly interfered with one’s desire to attach oneself to someone. Worn out by this struggle, one becomes hopeless and developed sadistic tendencies. However, one’s need for people was so insistent that one had not only to repress one’s sadistic trends but to learn over backward to conceal them. Being with others is, in this event, a strain—though one may not realize it. One tends to be stilted and shy. One must constantly play a role that is contrary to one’s sadistic impulses. It is only natural that one oneself should think one is really found of people; and it comes as a shock to one when in analysis one wakes up to the fact that one has very little feeling for them at all, or at least is quite uncertain what one’s feelings are. At this point one is inclined to take this apparent lack for an unalterable fact. However, actually one is merely in process of relinquishing one’s pretense of positive feelings, and unconsciously prefer to feel nothing rather than face one’s own sadistic impulses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
A positive feeling for others can only begin to develop when one recognizes those impulses and starts to overcome them. There are certain elements in the picture, however, that to the trained observer will indicate the presence of sadistic trends. To begin with, here is always some insidious way in which one can be seen to intimidate, exploit, and frustrate others. There is usually a perceptible though unconscious contempt for others, superficially attributed to their lower moral standards. In addition, there are a number of incongruities which point to sadism. The person, for instance, may sometimes put up with sadistic behaviour directed at oneself with apparently limitless patience but at other times show hypersensitivity to the slightest domination, exploitation, or humiliation. Finally, one gives the impression of being “masochistic”—namely, of indulging in feeling victimized. However, since the term and the concept behind it are misleading, it is better to steer away from it and describe instead the element involved. Being pervasively inhibited in asserting oneself, the inverted sadist will in any case be readily abused. However, in addition, because one chafes under one’s own weakness, one is often actually attracted to openly sadistic persons, at once admiring and abhorring them—just as the latter, sensing in one a willing victim, are attracted to one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Thus one puts oneself in the way of exploitation, frustration, and humiliation. Far from enjoying such maltreatment, however, one suffers under it. What it gives one is an opportunity to live out one’s own sadistic impulses through someone else, without having to face one’s own sadism. One can feel innocent and morally indignant—while hoping at the same time that someday one will get the better of the sadistic partner and triumph over one. Dr. Freud observed the picture I describe but vitiated one’s findings with unwarranted generalizations. In fitting them into the frame of one’s whole philosophy, he took them as proof that no matter how good a person is on the surface, one is inherently destructive. Actually, the condition is particular outgrowth of a particular neurosis. We have come a long way from the point of view that regards a sadistic person as a pervert in regards to pleasures of the flesh or that uses elaborate terminology to say one is mean and vicious. The perversions in the pleasures of the flesh are comparatively rare. When they are present they are merely one expression of a general attitude toward others. The destructive trends are undeniable; but when we understand them we see a suffering human being behind the apparently inhuman behaviour. With this we open the possibility of reaching such a human being by therapy. We find one a desperate individual who seeks restitution for a life that has defeated one. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Therefore, we ought to worship God for the promise of God’s presence. We all know God is everywhere—He is omnipresent—and that He has promised us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you,” reports Hebrews 13.5. Nevertheless, He has given the Church the unique promise that “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them,” reports Matthew 18.20. That means that God’s presence is with us in a very special way when we assemble to focus on Him. The sense of Christ’s presence will bring a great blessing to a community, which ultimately results in some people establishing Bible studies. If we would just let the truth sink in, think what such an awareness of Christ’s presence would do to corporate worship of the confessing Church. One thing is for sure, discrimination, violence, riots, and crimes would cease in cathedral and chapel alike! Humans, when we meet for corporate worship, Chris is in our midst. He walks among the glowing lampstands of His churches (Revelation 1.20). He treads yacht and spirit and truth. He desires our praise. This being the highest priority, we must answer truthfully: do we worship as God desires? All the prophets worshipped the Father in the name of Christ—Abraham’s offering of Isaac was in similitude of God and His Only Begotten—Humans should reconcile themselves to God through the Atonement—the Jews will reject the foundation stone. About 544-421 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“Now behold, I came to pass that I, Jacob, having ministered much unto my people in word, (and I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates) and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain; but whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away; but we can write a few words upon plates, which will give our children, and also our beloved brethren, a small degree of knowledge concerning us, or concerning their fathers—now in his thing we do rejoice; and we labour diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents. For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory many hundred years before His coming; and not only we ourselves has a hope of his glory, but also all the holy prophets which were before us. Behold, they believed in Christ and worshipped the Father in His name, and also we worship the Father in his name. And for this intent we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him; and for this cause it is sanctified unto us for righteousness even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and His Only Begotten Son. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea. Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by His grace, and His great condescensions unto the children of humans, that we have power to do these things. Behold, great and marvelous are the words of the Lord. How unsearchable are he depths of the mysteries of one; and it is impossible that humans should find out all His ways save it be revealed unto them; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God. For behold, by the power of His word humans came upon the face of the Earth, which Earth was created by the power of His word. Wherefore, if God being able to speak and the World was, and to speak and humans were created, O then, why no able to command the Earth, or the work-personship of one’s hands upon the face of it, according to His will and pleasure? Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from His hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that He counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all His works. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“Wherefore, beloved brethren, be reconciled unto one through the atonement of Christ, His Only Begotten Son, and ye may obtain a resurrection, according to the power of the resurrection which is in Christ, and be presented as the first-fruits, and obtained a good hope of glory in Him before He manifesteth Himself in the flesh. And now, beloved, marvel not that I tell you these things; for why not speak of the atonement of Christ, and attain to a perfect knowledge of a resurrection and the World to come? Behold, my brethren, he that prophesieth, let him prophesy to the understanding of humans; for the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls. However, behold, we are not witnesses alone in these things; for God also spake them unto prophets of old. However, behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away His plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And now I, Jacob, am led on by the Spirit unto prophesying; for I perceive by the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that by the stumbling of the Jews they will reject the stone upon which they might build and have safe foundation. However, behold, according to the scriptures, this stone shall become the great, and the last, and the only sure foundation, upon which the Jews can build. And now, my beloved, how is it possible that these, after having rejected the sure foundation, can ever build upon it, that it may become the head of their corner? Behold, my beloved brethren, I will unfold this mystery unto you; if I do not, by any means, get shaken from my firmness in the Spirit, and stumble because of my over anxiety for you,” reports Jacob 4.1-18. We are guilty, O Father Almighty, through our frequent sins, guilty through the neglect of Thy graces. However, from these trespasses of our guilty conscience the Sacrifice of Thine Only Son, offered up to Thee with His Blood, hath cleansed us. And it may also be our succour when we offend after being redeemed, since even until the final day of doom it bestows the grace of repentance on those who do not sin against the Spirit. So may He Who for our redemption made Himself an Advocate with the Father, be Himself the Pleader for our iniquities, even Christ our Lord and eternal Redeemer. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Be reconciled, we pray Thee, unto sinners by the Blood of the Righteous One; acknowledge the Victim by Whose intervention Thou hast been propitiated: and receive as Thine adopted children those whose Father Thou hast become through grace. Heavenly Father, my faith in in Thee, my expectation is from Thee, my love goes out toward Thee, I believe Thee, accept Thy word, acquiesce in Thy will, rely on Thy promises, trust Thy providence. I bless Thee that the court of conscience proves me to be Thine. I do not need signs and wonders to believe, for Thy word is sure truth. I have cast my anchor in the port of peace, knowing that present and future are in nail-pierced hands. Thou art so good, wise, just holy, that no mistake is possible to Thee. Thou art fountain and source of all law; what Thou commandest is mine to obey. I yield to Thy sovereignty all that I am and have; do Thou with me as Thou wilt. Thou hast given me silence in my heart in pace of murmurings and complaints. Keep my wishes from growing into willings, my willings from becoming fault-finding with Thy providences, and have mercy on me please. If I sin and am rebellious, please help me to repent; then take away my mouring and give me music; remove my sackcloth and adorn me with beauty; please take away my sighs and fill my mouth with songs; and when I am restored and rest in Thee, give me Summer weather in my heart. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. There is currently a $30,000.00 incentive on this home, and an addtional $5,000.00 for using one of their prefeered lenders.
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