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Wise Humans, Good Humans, Patriotic Humans are to be Found in All Communities!
If Americans could be made to believe that their sufferings were for some remote, high sacrificial end, perhaps it would be possible for them to become reconciled to their plight; but sharing the culture that condemns them, and seeing that lust for trash is what blinds the nation to their claims, is what sets storms rolling in the soul of America. The United State of America is so unique from other nations because it is a nation of laws, not a nation of humans. A nation of laws means that legal decrees, not people rule. Whether it be the most common American members or members of Congress, high-ranking bureaucrats or the president of the United States of America, everyone is governed by the same laws, regardless of their station. All must be held to the just laws of America. America’s founds extolled a nation of laws, for they knew that only a fairly enforced legal system could protect liberty and property against corruption and tyranny. God is in fact the author of liberty and to retain it, the inhabitant of the land must be protected by His might hand. There is no other power that can protect that liberty. In order for us to enjoy this protection of His might, we must accept God as our God and keep His commandments. “Behold, this America is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under Heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ,” reports Ether 2.12. The God of this land is also the King of the land. And this is true. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Manifest Destiny is a phenomenon. Jesus spoke here in America, and He proclaimed, “This lad shall be a land of liberty, and there shall be no kings upon it. For I, the Lord, the king of Heaven, will be their king, and I will be light unto them forever, that hear my words. For it is a choice land, saith God, wherefore I will have all humans that dwell thereon that they shall worship me,” reports 2 Nephi 10.11-19. The alternative to enjoying this liberty and happiness through acceptance of and obedience to Jesus Christ is made clear by Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is a tangible blessing from God that has created American history. It is a systematic body of concepts and beliefs that powers American life and culture. The right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development and great creation of liberty and federative development of self government entrusted to us is a promise that we shall flourish. “Whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should serve him, the true and only God, or they should be swept off when hey are ripened in iniquity,” reports Ether 2.8-9. It is as a right that we serve God and obey the laws as that of the tree to the space of air and the Earth be suitable for the full expression of its principle and destiny of growth. When people follow the guidance of God of the land, they reach great heights. The Lord in the very beginning revealed to Adam a perfect form of government for the benefit of humans. We believe that governments are instituted of God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Individual freedom is necessary. No law shall be passed that takes away from a human the right of free choice. Free agency is fundamental as law of human conduct. Humans have a right to obey or disobey that laws as they please, and take the consequences. That government is best which has as its aim the administration of justice, social well-being and the promotion of prosperity among its members. We must recognize that property rights are essential to human liberty. The individual has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to one’s life, the right to one’s liberty, and the right to one’s property. The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a human one’s life, but to deny one one’s liberty, is to take from one all that makes life worth living. To give one liberty, but take from one the property which is the fruit and badge of one’s liberty, is to still leave one a slave. Laws are enacted for the protection of society, and have no value except when they are administered in righteousness and justice. If dishonest humans occupy administrative offices, laws cannot be so administered in righteousness and justice. The Lord says, “When the wicked rule, the people mourn.” Wise humans, good humans, patriotic humans are to be found in all communities, in all political parties, among all creeds. None but such humans should be chosen. Without beneficent laws, righteously administered, the foundations of civilization crumble, anarchy reigns, decay and dissolution follow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We call upon all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the World to honour the laws of God, and obey and uphold the law of the land; and we appeal to good humans everywhere, regardless of creed, party affiliation, race, culture, or condition to join with us in an effort to put into operation the words of President Lincoln, the great emancipator, that our country may continue to be a light to the World, a loyal, law-abiding, God-fearing nation. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience; and allow all humans the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. However, we claim absolutely no right, no prerogative whatever, to interfere with any other people. A good government must secure for every citizen the free exercise of conscience. Matters of belief or religious practice should not be interfered with, unless they oppose laws formulated for the common good. There should be no mingling of religious influence with the civil governments. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the laws. The main psychological root of the liability to envy is a lack of self-confidence in our own worth combined with a sense of impotence. Our way of life is without zest and we feel powerless to alter it or to acquire the means of doing what we still want to do. This creation the notion of resentment. By contrast, someone sure of the worth of one’s plan of life and one’s ability to carry it out is not given to rancor nor is one jealous of one’s good fortune. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Even if one could, one has no desire to level down the advantages of others at some expense to oneself. This hypothesis implies that the least favoured tend to be more envious of the better situation of the more favoured the less secure their self-respect and the greater their feeling that they cannot improve their prospects. Similarly the particular envy aroused by competition and rivalry is like to be stronger the worse one’s defeat, for the blow to one’s self-confidence is more severe and the loss may seem irretrievable. It is general envy, however, that mainly concerns us here. There are three conditions that encourage hostile outbreaks of envy. The first of these is the psychological condition we have just noted: persons lack a sure confidence in their own value and in their ability to do anything worthwhile. Second (and one of two social conditions), many occasions arise when this psychological condition is experienced as painful and humiliating. The discrepancy between oneself and others is made visible by the social structure and style of one’s society. The less fortunate are therefore often forcibly reminded of their situation, sometimes leading them to an even lower estimation of themselves and their mode of living. And third, they see their social position as allowing no constructive alternative to opposing the favoured circumstances of the more advantaged. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
To alleviate their feelings of anguish and inferiority, they have no choice but to impose a loss on those better placed even at some cost to themselves, unless of course they are to relapse into resignation and apathy. Now, if not to present these conditions, many aspects of a well-ordered society of to mitigate. It is clear that, although it is a psychological state, social institutions are a basic instigating cause. However, the contract conception of justice supports the self-esteem of the citizens generally more firmly than other political principles. In the public forum each person is treated with the respect due to a sovereign equal; and everyone has the same basic rights that would be acknowledged in an initial situation regarded as fair. The members of the community have a common sense of justice and they are bound by ties of civic friendship. Obedience implies a higher attitude than mere submission, for obedience has its root in good intent; submission may spring from selfishness or meanness of spirit. Though obedience and submission both imply restraint on one’s own will, we are obedient only from a sense of right; submissive from a sense of necessity. Honour expressed an act or attitude of an inferior towards a superior. When applied to things it is taken in the sense of holding honour. Thus, in honouring the law, we look upon it as something which is above selfish desires or indulgences. To sustain signifies to hold up; to keep from falling. To sustain the law, therefore, is to refrain from saying or doing anything which will weaken it or make it ineffective. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
We obey the law from a sense of right. We honour the law because of its necessity and strength to society. We sustain law by keeping it in good repute. This is in our connection with stability. The greater advantages of some are in return for compensating benefits for the less favoured; and no one supposes that those who have a larger share are ore deserving from a moral point of view. Happiness according to virtue is rejected as a principle of perfection: regardless of the excellences that persons or associations display, their claims to social resources are always adjudicated by principles of mutual justice. For all these reasons the less fortune have no cause to consider themselves inferior and the public principles generally accepted underwrite their self-assurance. The disparities between themselves and others, whether absolute or relative, should be easier for them to accept than in other forms of polity. Turning to the second condition, both the absolute and the relative differences allowed in a well-ordered society are probably less than those that have often prevailed. Although in theory the difference principle permits indefinitely large inequalities in return for small gains to the less favoured, the spread of income and wealth should not be excessive in practice, given the requisite background institutions. Moreover the plurality of associations in a well-ordered society, each with its secure internal life, tends to reduce the visibility, or at least the painful visibility, of variations in human’s purposes. For we tend to compare our circumstances with others in the same or in a similar group as ourselves, or in positions that we regard as relevant to our aspirations. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The various associations in society tend to divide it into so many noncomparing groups, the discrepancies between these divisions not attracting the kind of attention which unsettles the lives of those less well placed. And this ignoring of differences in wealth and circumstances is made easier by the fact that when citizens do meet one another, as they must in public affairs at least, the principles of equal justice are acknowledged. Moreover in everyday life the natural duties are honoured so that the more advantaged do not make an ostentatious display of their higher estate calculated to demean the condition of those who have less. After all, if the disposing conditions for envy are removed, so probably are those for jealousy, grudgingness, and spite, the converses of envy. When the less fortunate segments of society lack the one the more fortunate will lack the other. Taken together these features of a well-ordered regime diminish the number of occasions when the less favoured are likely to experience their situation as impoverished and humiliating. Even if they have some liability to envy, it may never be strongly envoked. Finally, considering the last condition, it would seem that a well-ordered society as much as any other offers constructive alternatives to hostile outbreaks of envy. The problem of general envy anyway does not force us to reconsider the choice of the principles of justice. As for particular envy, to a certain extent it is endemic to human life; being associated with rivalry, it may exist in any society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The more specific problem for political justice is how pervasive are the rancor and jealousy aroused by the quest for office and position, and whether it is likely to distort the justice of institutions. It is difficult to settle this latter in the absence of the more detailed knowledge of social forms available at the legislative stage. However, there sees to be no reason why the hazards of particular envy should be worse in a society regulated by justice as fairness than by any other conception. The principles of justice again seems relatively stable. A question has been asked man times. In the case of a conflict between requirements made by the law revealed by the word of God, and those imposed by the secular law, which of these authorities would members of the Church be bound to obey? The word of God is to come first. So essentially, God should be in and influence the government because the number one rule of God is to be honest and if one cannot honestly enforce the law, they have no right in government. In all civilized nations the people are accorded the right to pray, and this right is assured by what maybe properly called a common law of humankind. No earnest soul is cut off from communion with one’s God; and with such an open channel of communication, relief from burdensome laws and redress from grievances may be sought from the power that holds control of nations. “Bad laws, if they exist, should be repleaded as soon as possible; still, while they continue in force, they should be religiously observed,” reports President Abraham Lincoln. This is the view of the Church. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
While there are many forms of equality, and egalitarianism admits of degrees, there are conceptions of justice that are recognizably equalitarian, even though certain significant disparities are permitted. The two principles of justice fall under this heading. The different conception of equality which they define is acknowledged on the supposition that envy does not exist. For behold, you should not fear humans more than God, you should be faithful and God will extend His arm, and He will be with you in every time of trouble. Children of God are chosen to do the work of the Lord. Repent of that which thou hast done, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the world. Except thou doest this, thou shalt become as other humans, and have no more gift. When thou delivers up that which God has given thee sight and power to translate thou delivers up that which is sacred into the hands of a wicked human who depends upon one’s own judgment, and boasts in one’s own wisdom; and this is the reason that thou will lose thy privileges for a season. Nevertheless, God’s work shall go forth, for, inasmuch as the knowledge of the Saviour has come unto the World, through the testimony of the Jewish people, even so shall the knowledge of a Saviour come unto our people, and to the Americans through the testimony of their fathers. And this testimony shall come to the knowledge of all. For this very purpose are these plates preserved that the promises of the Lord might be fulfilled, which He made to His people. And the Americans might come to the knowledge of their fathers, and they might know the promise of the Lord. And they may believe the gospel and rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ, and be glorified through faith in his name and through their repentance they might be saved. I cancel every demonic assignment against you and your purpose. The plans of the enemy will not prevail. In Jesus’ name, Amen. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Joseph Smith was very sorry he had been unfaithful, and he humbled himself before God, determining to try harder to keep all of the Lord’s commandments. Later, within a month, the gift and the plates were returned to Joseph, but he was not allowed to translate the same record again. By revelation Joseph was told that wicked people had the lost manuscript. The Lord, Jesus Christ said; Behold, Satan, has put it into their hearts to alter the words, because they have altered the words, they read contrary from that which you translated and caused to be written. On this wise the Devil has sought to lay a cunning plan, the he may destroy this work. Verily I say unto you, that I will not suffer that Satan shall accomplish his evil design in this thing. Behold, they say and think in their hearts, We will see if God has given him power to translate, if so, he will also give him power again; and if he bringeth forth the same words, behold, we have the same with us, and we have altered them. Therefore, they will not agree, and we will say that he has lied in his words, and that he has no gift, and that he has no power; therefore, we will destroy him, and also the work. Behold, I say unto you, that you shall not translate again those words which have gone forth out of your hands. For, behold, if you should bring forth the same words, they will say that you have contradicted yourself. And, behold, they will publish his, and Satan will harden the hearts of the people to stir them up to anger against you, that they will not believe my words. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The Lord told Joseph that the part of the record he had translated which had been lost (about one hundred and sixteen pages) was a shorted story of the Nephite record; and that the golden plates also contained the complete story. Joseph was told he should translate the full record rather than the shortened one he had previously translated: the Lord said: I will not suffer that they shall destroy my work; yea, I will show unto them that y wisdom is greater than the cunning of the Devil. Behold, I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I came unto my own, and my own received me not. I am He who said, Other sheep have I which are not of this fold, unto my disciples, and many there were that understood me not. And I will show unto this people, that I had other sheep, and I will also bring to light my gospel, which was ministered unto them. And this I do, that I may establish my gospel, that there may not be so much contention. Yea, Satan doth stir up the hearts of the people to contention, concerning the points of my doctrine; and in these things they do err, for they do wrest the Scriptures, and do not understand them. Therefore, I will unfold unto them this great mystery; for behold, I will gather them as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if they will not harden their hearts. Behold, this is my doctrine: Whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church Whosoever is of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, one will I establish upon my Rock. And now, remember the words of your Redeemer, your Lord, and your God. Amen. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The important of separating envy from the moral feelings can be seen from several examples. Suppose first that envy is held to be pervasive in poor less affluent societies. The reason for this, it may be suggested, is the general belief that the aggregate of social wealth is more or less fixed, so that one person’s gain is another’s loss. The social system is interpreted, it might be said, as a naturally established and unchangeable zero-sum game. Now actually, if this belief were widespread and the stock of goods were generally thought to be given, then a strict opposition of interests would be assumed to obtain. In this case, it would be correct to think that justice requires equal shares. Social wealthy is not viewed as the outcome of mutually advantageous cooperation and so there is no fair basis for an unequal division of advantages. What is said to be envy may in fact be resentment which might or might not prove to be justified. Dr. Freud’s speculations about the origin of the sense of justice suffer from the same defect. He remarks that this sentiment is the outgrowth of envy and jealousy. As some members of the social group jealously strive to protect their advantages, the less favoured are moved by envy to take them away Eventually everyone recognizes that they cannot maintain their hostile attitudes toward one another without injury to themselves. Thus as a compromise they settle upon the demand of equal treatment. The sense of justice is a reaction-formation: what was originally jealousy and envy is transformed into a social feeling, the same sense of justice that insists upon equality for all. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Dr. Freud believes that this process is exemplified in the nursey and in many other social circumstances. Yet the plausibility of one’s account assumes that the initial attitudes are correctly described. With a few changes, the underlying features of the example he depicts correspond to those of the original position. That persons have opposing interests and seek to advance their own conception of the god is not at all the same thing as their being moved by envy and jealousy. As we have seen, this sort of opposition gives rise to the circumstances of justice. Thus if children compete for the attention and affection of their parents, to which one might say they justly have an equal claim, one cannot assert that their sense of justice springs form jealousy and envy. Certainly children are often envious and jealous; and no doubt their moral notions are so primitive that the necessary distinctions are not grasped by them. However, waiving these difficulties, we could equally well say that their social feelings arise from resentment, from a sense that they are unfairly treated. And similarly one could say to conservative writers that it is mere grudgingness when those better circumstances reject the claims of the less advantaged to greater equality. However, this contention also calls for careful argument. None of these charges and countercharges can be given credence without first examining the conceptions of justice sincerely held by individuals and their understanding of the social situation in order to see how far these claims are indeed founded on these motives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
None of these remarks is intended to deny that the appeal to justice is often a mask for envy. What is said to be resentment may really be rancor. However, rationalizations of this sort present a further problem. In addition to showing that a person’s conception of justice is not itself founded on envy, we must determine whether the principles of justice cited in one’s explanation are sincerely held as this is shown in their being applied by one to other cases in which one is not involved, or even better, in which one would suffer a loss from their being followed. Dr. Freud means to asset more than the truism that envy and jealousy, and that without this energy, there would be no (or much less) desire to give justice. Conceptions of justice have few attractions for us other than those deriving from these and similar feelings. It is claim that is supported by erroneously conflating envy and resentment. Unhappily the problem of the other special psychologies must go untouched. They should in any case be treated in much the same way as envy. One tries to assess the configuration of attitudes toward risk and uncertainty, domination and submission, and the like, that just institutions are likely to generate, and then to estimate whether they are likely to render theses institutions unworkable or ineffective. We also need to ask whether, from the point of view of the persons in the original position, the conception chosen is acceptable or at least tolerable whatever our special proclivities may turn out to be. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The most favourable alternative is that which allows a place for all these different tendencies insofar as they are likely to be encouraged by a just basic structure. There is a division of labour so to speak between persons with contrary inclinations. Of course some of these attitudes may earn a premium in the way that certain trained abilities do, as for example the willingness to be adventuresome and to take unusual risks. However, if so, the problem is o all fours with the return to natural assets and it is covered by the discussion of distributive shares. What a social system must not do clearly is to encourage propensities and aspirations that it is bound to repress and disappoint. So long as the pattern of special psychologies elicited by society either supports its arrangements or can be reasonably accommodated by them, there is no need to reconsider the choice of a conception of justice. I believe, though I have not shown, that the principles of justice as fairness pass this test. When people can measure the extent of their freedom in two or three paces, and realize for the first time in their lives they have nothing else to do, but sit on a bunk, as they say passes into night and they continue to sit there because they are in prison—that is when it dawns on them how important freedom is. Even the children of a wealthy family, children of charismatic, gregarious politicians may suddenly find themselves stripped of everything that has propped up their egos. All their plans, friends, their busy work schedule, all their carefully cultivated followers will be gone, and replaced by the sheer loneliness and boredom of the prison cell and the venomous hostility of their guards. And they will keep waiting for justice, for a deal. Surely the United States Constitution could not simply leave them to rot in prison! #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Imagine half a year going by before you are confronted with any charges. Then a fraudulently concocted murder case is brought, and a rigged military court condemns you to death. This is a bad dream, for the real reason for your imprisonment is the President is a communist and has lust for money and greed for power. Then imagine within his or her two-term limit as president due to expire in a few short weeks, the president declares martial law, granting him or herself almost unlimited powers. Then he or she can have you and other political opponents thrown into prison. The president may never intend to leave office—and may be determined never to let a popular rival out to silence him or her. Prison has the bewildering effect on many, which causes them to lose all sense of direction and perspective. One may become better not only at the president, but at the World, even at God. Injustice causes some to hate everyone and their prison guard may goad on an individual. Imagine if sometimes they put your dinner plate on the ground and let a mongrel dog wolf part of it down; then, kicking the dog aside, they give you what and left, and if you do not eat it, you get placed on suicide watch. In a matter of weeks, this could cause an individual to lose forty pounds, suffer two heart attacks. And when you are not longing for revenge, you want to die. However, much like Joseph Smith, if you keep your faith in God, He will show you that such losses are not in vain as you find your true life in Christ. What is this suffering is what draws you closer to the Lord and saves you from a life of eternal flames in the pits of hell? Therefore, continue to search for meaning in life. Find great inspiration in the Holy Bible to motivate your life and struggle for your country. Then, even if your prison is physical, or only in your mind, kneel in your jail cell and give your life to Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Even if you are overcome with grief for your anger towards God, please beg for forgiveness. There is a close connection between frequent and solid spiritual experiences between us and the development of faith in the elaborate and creative purposes of God. This is derived from the close connection between Father and child because we are here with God now, needing Him and He says, “I am thinking of you,” and even though we may not be able to see God, we are having Him as part of our current experience, even when we are unaware. The fortune individual will have had many times when one was with God but not are of Him except for the security of knowing that He was there when needed. We are fortune because our environment is fulfilling one of the essentials needed if one is to have highly developed creativity. Because we have somehow had God there when He was not an obvious part of our experience, one can discover the Lord after we think He is absent (from experience) for a while. The individual will have had the experience of tolerating God’s absence without having to feel the terror that He might be lost forever. As we build our faith our experience will flicker between “God here when He is not here,” and “God not here when He is here.” One has thereby discovered that one can hold on to a concept—the symbol—which stands for the available God—has become pleasantly and interestingly established. We can play peekaboo with it. We can make the symbol happen while waiting for God to come along. The symbol can fill the interval of waiting, a small space of time. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The symbol stands for God—it stands for “You who normally come soon after I realize that I need You. Something arouses in my mind, an anticipation, a phantasy of something good. Then there is a small gap an absence, an interval of time. Then You came.” All one’s viewpoints, one’s life, most of all one’s bitterness—all will change. One will have a sense that life has suddenly moved into a different channel with another purpose. It is for our doubting hearts to believe that spiritual power—which is peaceful, prayerful, humane, forgiving, willing to suffering on the side of the poor and oppressed—can change society. We know that the gospel affects the lives of individuals, but can it make an impact on institutions and governments, where the heartless realities of power pierce like a knife? It is hard to fathom this. Nevertheless, it can happen. It does happen. One can never quite calculate how one conversation in a mental or physical prison cell may set in motion a train of events to shake a nation. Many people in prisons want to die. However, when they find Christ, they acquire a new maturity, and, though one may also retain their natural ebullience, a relative serenity that have never had before manifests. Some people will sense an individual has undergone something like a religious conversion as a result of years of injustice inflicted in a cell or in their own community. And indeed they have, but it will take away none of their heartfelt concern for their nation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
In countries that suffer from communism, the president uses martial law as a cover while they rape the country. Leaders and their business cronies have been known to bleed nations dry, making huge profits through monopoly powers and putting the money into New York real estate and Swiss banks. Meanwhile, half the working population cannot find jobs. The ugly scabs of the slums, many without running water or flushing toilets, spread across Sacramento and other cities. Marxist guerrillas are quickly gaining around, and the some in positions of authority, riven by corruption, seem unable to stop them. They may find it easier to savage poor peasants than to fight the Communists. Things may even reach a pint where anyone who helps the poor will be under suspicion. Army units have arrested, killed, and tortured even Catholic priests and nuns who have chosen to work with the desperately poor in other countries. While in America, some people, even the rich and famous, are given bonuses and jobs to help extort those suffering injustices. A few Catholics have, it is true, take the side of the Marxists, but the vast majority simply minister in the name of Jesus to those in need. Between the Marxist insurgency and a president who becomes a dictator, there is little room in the middle. Some people, even many in America, have seen the ruthless side of communism—after all they suffer and lose their lives just because of who they are. It is true, one can fight hatred with a greater hatred, but it is more effective to fight hatred with greater Christian love. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Do much soul searching and pursue your freedom struggle through the path of nonviolence, fully cognizant that this ay be the longer and more arduous road. And you may suffer solitary confinement once again, and possibly death. However, by taking the road of revolution, how many lives, other then one’s, will have to be sacrificed? Humans are ordained to eternal life through the providence of God, it likewise is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from that end; this is called reprobation. Thus, as predestination is a part of providence, in regard to those ordained to eternal salvation, so reprobation is a part of providence in regard to those who turn aside from that end. Hence reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin. Symbols can stand for what will come. However, equally, they can stand for what may come, what may not come, or what will not come again. All kinds of conceptual processes can fill the interval between the moment when we have phantasy of something and the moment of finding something. Transitional objects and other symbols appear where there had been either nothing, or an experience of something not there. God loves all humans and all creatures, inasmuch as He wishes them all some good; but He does not wish every good to them all. So far, therefore, as He does not wish this particular good—namely, eternal life—He is said to hate or reprobate them. Reprobation different in its causality from predestination. This atter is the cause of what is expected in the future life by predestined—namely, glory—and of what is received in this life—namely grace. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what is in the present, namely sin; but it is the cause of abandonment by God. It is the cause, however, of what is assigned in the future—namely, eternal punishment. However, guilt proceeds from the free-will of the person who is reprobated and deserted by grace. In this way, the word of the prophet is true—namely, “Destruction is thy own, O Israel.” Reprobation by God does not take away from the power of the person reprobated. Hence, when it is said that the reprobated cannot obtain grace, this must not be understood as implying absolute impossibility: butt only conditional impossibility: as was said above does not do away with the liberty of choice. Whence, although anyone reprobated by God cannot acquire grace, nevertheless, that one falls into this or that particular sin comes from the use of one’s free will. Hence is rightly imputed to one as guilt. It is as if it were illuminated through a succession of continuously changing filters. You discover that the first phase of your involvement was no more than a prelude or an overture before the curtain vanished. You come to see that sin began by enticing you with an illusion—the illusion of a light-filled hedonistic joy, evil disguised by sun-drenched window—and to accept that what you are in fact confronted with is nothing more or less than the successive layers of the thinnest of honey-comb marks laid down gently in whispers of lies upon the canvas surface. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
However, when the curtain has risen and the any the painting of lies continues to such your eyes into itself, it will engulf your soul with its entertainment. The uniform skin of God’s grace evaporates in part because in tenuous existence came about only through the adhering to God’s commandments and your organization of forms of faith, which was a shimmering ray of love inviting the Holy Ghost in your temple. However, as this shimmer disintegrates, it gives way to billowing and boundless hazes of black smoke, to seemingly limitless vistas of your soul space. It is the duty of citizens of any country to remember that they have individua responsibilities, and that they must operate within the law of the country in which they have chosen to live. No member of the Church can be accepted as in good standing whose way of life is one of rebellion against the established order of decency and obedience to law. We cannot be in rebellion against the law and be in harmony with the Lord, for He has commanded us to “be subject to the powers that be, until He reigns whose right it is to reign,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 58.22. And one of these days He is going to come. The exception to this principle would be when the Lord directs His people through His prophets to take an opposing stand to government. Otherwise they recognize the established authority of government. Remember that the Lord holds all of us responsible for our conduct here. He held our father Adam responsible for his conduct, but no more than He does us, in proportion to the station we hold. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
The kings of the Earth will have to give an account to God, for their conduct in a kingly capacity. Kings are heads of nations, governors are heads of provinces; so are fathers or husbands governors of their own houses, and should act accordingly. Because some regard the theory and practice of one’s subject from the inside, they mystic can discuss it with a correctness and authority which most critics do not possess because they are outside it. They are largely in the dark about it—one is actually in the light. Those who has never felt it in themselves nor seen in demonstrated in others cannot understand the blessedness of such a state. Because they are unready for it, they cannot endure such an experience. The peace it imparts is too impersonal and would suffocate them. The detachment which it creates makes the Worldly life seem less important and is too frightening. The recognition that this experience does happen is increasingly rapidly in Western counties but in the East, it has never been doubted. The criticism that mystical experience is subjective and illusory is being dropped, as it ought to be Those who have never experienced this state yet venture to criticize it as illusory are dealing with mere words, not facts. If the ordinary human seldom gets these subtler experiences it is because one’s nature is too coarse, one’s mind too physically based, one’s focus too personal to permit one to receive them. Deep within one’s own heart, hidden within one’s own consciousness, every person carries all the evidence for the truth of these teachings that one is ever likely to need. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
That arrogance which denies Heaven to the unorthodox does not trouble the mystic. One finds Heaven here in this life, now before the transition of death. At such times, unexpected and unsought though they are, one feels the nearness of God, the love of God, the reality of God. Whoever ventures to call them delusions s oneself deluded. Those who are dead are never gone: they are there in the shimmering light. The dead are not under the Earth: they are there in the blue sky, they are in the clouds that drift above, they are in the rain that falls, they are in the sun that shines, they are in the moon the beams, they are in the trees that provide shade, they are in the crowd, the dead are not dead. Those who are dead are never gone, they are in your heart, they are in the eyes of an innocent child, they are in the flames in your fireplace. They are in the forest, they are in the house, they are not dead. When the Ark rested, Moses said: Mayest Thou, O Lord, dwell among the myriads of the families of America. Arise, O Lord, unto Thy sanctuary, Thou, and the Ark of Thy strength. Let Thy priest be clothed with salvation; and Thy faithful ones exult. For the sake of David, Thy servant, reject not Thine anointed. I have given your good teaching; forsake not My Torah. It is a Tree of Life to them that hold fast to it, and everyone who upholds it is happy. Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace. Turn us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of Heaven. This nation and all nations, together with president, queens, kings, emperors, judges, and all humans, righteous and wicked, have go to go into the spirit World and stand before the bar of God. They have got to give an account of the deeds done in the body. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Even the Truth Can Spread and Not Only the Popular Lie!
It is easy enough to praise humans for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the bravery of this confusion. The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school. The malignant forms of aggression—sadism and necrophilia—are not innate; hence, they can be substantially reduced when the socioeconomic conditions are replaced by conditions that are favourable to the full development of human’s genuine needs and capacities: to the development of human self-activity and human’s genuine need and capacities: to the development of human self-activity and human’s creative power as its own end. Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple human self-activity and all factors that make humans into a psychic cripple turn one also into a sadist or a destroyer. Humans, have in our day become a source of suspicion and distrust of all against all. Credulity is one our worst enemies, but that is the makeshift the neurotic always resorts to in order to quell the doubter in one’s own heart or to conjure one out of existence. The result is that modern humans know oneself only in so far as one can become conscious of oneself—a capacity largely dependent on environment conditions, knowledge and control of which necessitated of suggested certain modifications of one’s original instinctive tendencies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Their consciousness therefore orients itself chiefly by observing and investigating the World around one, and it is to the latter’s peculiarities that one must adapt one’s psychic and technical resources. This task is so exacting, and its fulfilment so profitable, that one forgets oneself in the process, losing sight of one’s instinctual nature and putting one’s own conception of oneself in place of one’s real being. In this way one slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual World where the products of one’s conscious activity progressively take the place of reality. The Communist revolution has debased humans far lower than collective psychology has done, because it robs one of one’s freedom not only in the social but in the moral and spiritual sphere. Aside from the political difficulties, this entailed a great psychological disadvantage for the West that had already made itself unpleasantly felt in the days of German Nazism: we can now point a finger at the shadow. Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to humans and their future, id est, concernedly and “responsibly,” one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of humans. The basis of rational faith in humans is the presence of a real possibility for one’s salvation; the basis for rational despair would be the knowledge that no such possibility can be seen. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Most people are quite ready to denounce faith in human’s improvement as unrealistic; but they do not recognize that despair is often just as unrealistic. It is easy to say: “Humans have always been killer.” However, the statement nevertheless is not correct, for it neglects to take into account the intricacies of history of destructiveness. It is equally easy to say, “The desire to exploit others is just human nature”; but again, the statement neglects (or distorts) the facts. In brief, that statement, “Human nature is evil,” is not a bit more realistic than the statement, “Human nature is good.” However, the first statement is much easier to make; anyone who wants to prove human’s evilness finds followers most readily, for one offers everybody an alibi for one’s own sins—and seemingly risks nothing. Yet the spreading of irrational despair is in itself destructive, as all untruth is; it discourages and confuses. Preaching irrational faith or announcing false Messiahs is hardly destructive—it seduces and then paralyzes. The attitude of the majority is neither that of faith nor that of despair, but, unfortunately, that of complete indifference to the future of humans. With those who are not entirely indifferent, the attitude is that of “optimism” or of “pessimism.” They are accustomed to identifying human achievement with technical achievement, human freedom with freedom from direct coercion and the consumer’s freedom to choose between many allegedly different commodities. The dignity, cooperativeness, kindness of the primitive do not impress them; technical achievement, wealth, toughness do. Centuries of rule over technically backward people of different colour have left their stamp on the optimists’ minds. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
How could a “savage” be human and equal, not to speak of superior, to the humans who can fly to the moon—or by pushing a button, destroy millions of living beings? The optimists live well enough, at least for the moment, and they can afford to be “optimists.” Or at least that is what they think because they are so alienated that even the threat to the future of their grandchildren does not genuinely affect them. The “pessimists” are really not very different from the optimists. They live just as comfortably and are just as little engaged. The fate of humanity is as little their concern as it is the optimists’. They do not feel despair; if they did, they would not, and could not, live as contentedly as they do. And while their pessimism functions largely to protect the pessimists from any inner demand to do something, by projecting the idea that nothing can be done, the optimists defend themselves against the same inner demand by persuading themselves that everything is moving in the right direction anyway, so nothing needs to be done. To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; it is the paradoxical hope to expect the Messiah every day, yet not to lose heart when He has not come at the appointed hour. This hope is not passive and it is not patient; on the contrary, it is impatient and active, looking for every possibility of action within the realm of real possibilities. Least of all is it passive as far as the growth and the liberation of one’s own person are concerned. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
There are several limitations to personal development determined by the social structure. However, those alleged radicals who counsel that no personal change is possible or even desirable within present-day society use their revolutionary ideology as an excuse for their personal resistance to inner change. The situation of humankind today is too serious to permit us to listen to the demagogues—least of all demagogues who are attacked to destruction—or even to the leaders who use only their brains and whose hearts have hardened. Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality humans are endowed with—the love of life. Hate, as a relation to objects is older than love. It derives from the narcissistic ego’s primordial repudiation of the external World. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some other thing or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulsions to self-destruction. A sad disclosure indeed for the moralist! Humans are looked upon as an isolated system, driven by two impulses: one to survive (ego instinct) and one to have pleasure by overcoming the tensions that in turn were chemically produced within the body and localized in the “erogenous zones.” However, there is no need for psychoanalysis to be ashamed to speak of love, for religion itself said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” This, however, is more easily said than done. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Emotional bonds are means of identification. Whatever leads humans to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human societies is to a large extent based on them. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” It is known throughout the World and is undoubtedly older than Christianity, which puts it forward as its proudest claim. Yet it is certainly not very old; even in historical times it was still strand to humankind. Let us adopt a naïve attitude towards it, as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment. Why should we do it? What good will it do us? However, above all, how shall we achieve it? How can it be possible? My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection It imposes duties on me for whose fulfillment I must be ready to make sacrifices. If I love someone, one must deserve it in some way. (I leave out of account the use one may be to me in important ways that I an love myself in one; and one deserves it if one is so much more perfect than myself that I can love my ideal of my own self in one. Again, I have to love one if one is my friend’s son, since the pain my friend would feel if any harm came to one would be my pain too—I should have to share it. However, if one is a stranger to me and if one cannot attract me by any worth of one’s own or any significance that one may already have acquired for my emotional life, it would be for hard for me to love one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Indeed, I should be wrong to do so, for my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them. However, I am to love one (with this universal love) merely because one, too, is an inhabitant of this Earth, like an insect, and Earth-worm or a grass-snake, then I fear that only a small modicum of my love will fall to one’s share—not by any possibility as much as, by the judgment of my reason, I am entitled to retain for myself. The contradiction between death instinct and Eros (fundamental and creative love) confronts humans with a real and truly trading alternative. A real alternative because one can decide to attack and wage war, to be aggressive, and to express one’s hostility because one prefers to do this rather than to be sick. That this alternative is a tragic one hardly needs to be proven. And now we are struck by the significance of the possibility that the aggressiveness may not be able to find satisfaction in the external World because it comes up against real obstacles. If this happens, it will perhaps retreat and increase the amount of self-destructiveness holding sway in the interior. Holding back aggressiveness is in general unhealthy and leads to illness. However, science and learning to control the environment and making is more palatable for habitation and cultivation of agriculture, along with religion and psychology is good for humans. Humans are freed from the tragic choice between destroying either others or oneself, because the energy of destructive instinct is used for the control over nature. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
However, we must ask, can this really be so? Can it be true that destructiveness becomes transformed into constructiveness? What can “control over nature” mean? Taming and breeding animals, gathering and cultivating plants, weaving cloth, building huts, manufacturing pottery, and many more activities including the construction of machines, railroads, airplanes, and skyscrapers. All these acts of constructing, building, unifying, synthesizing, and, indeed, if one wanted to attribute them to one of the two basic instincts, they might be considered as being motivated by Eros rather than by the death instinct. With the possible exception of the killing animals for their consumption and killing humans in war, both of which could be considered as rooted in destructiveness, control, and mastery over nature is not destructive but constructive. The death instinct turns into the destructive instinct when, with the help of special organs, it is directed outwards, on to objects. However, civilization leads to the holding back of aggressiveness and results in physical illness, and this is why so many people go to church, are in therapy, and on psychotropic drugs. Many human beings want to deal with their aggression in health ways and have a peaceful, well-behaved community. The forlorn state of consciousness in our World is due primarily to loss of instinct, and the reason for this lies in the development of the human mind over the past aeon. The more power humans have over nature, the more one’s knowledge and skill went to one’s head, and the deeper became one’s contempt for the merely natural and accidental, for all irrational data—including the objective psyche, which is everything that consciousness in not. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The Church recommends, in order to maintain society, that we develop more faith. Faith is a gift of grace and depends on human’s good will and pleasure. The seat of one’s faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual’s faith into immediate relation with God. Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd? To this question there is an optimistic answer only when the individual is willing to fulfil the demands of rigorous self-examination and self-knowledge. If one does this, one will not only discover some important truths about oneself but will also have gained a psychological advantage: one will have succeeded in deeming oneself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interests. One will have set one’s hand, as it were, to a declaration of one’s own dignity and taken the first step towards the foundations of one’s consciousness—that is, towards the unconscious, the only available source of religious experiences. This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in His place. It is simply the medium from which religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. When it comes to answering the crucial question that hangs over our time like a threat, the religious person enjoys a great advantage. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The religious person has a clear idea of the way one’s subjective existence is grounded in one’s relation to “God.” God is an anthropomorphic idea whose dynamism and symbolism are filtered through the medium of the unconscious psyche. Anyone who wants to can at least draw near to the source of such experiences, no matter whether one believes in God or not. Exotic races have ceased to be peepshows in ethnological museums. They have become our neighbours, and what was yesterday the private concern of the ethnologist is today a political, social, and psychological problem. We may hope for humans of understanding and humans of good will, and must therefore not grow weary of reiterating those thoughts and insights which are needed. Even the truth can spread and not only the popular lie. Only a fool can permanently disregard the conditions of one’s own nature. In fact, this negligence is the best means of making one an instrument of evil. Harmless and naivete are as little helpful as it would be for a cholera patient and those in one’s vicinity to remain unconscious of the contagiousness of the disease. One the contrary, they lead to the projection of the unrecognized evil in the “other.” This strengthens the opponent’s position in the most effective way, because the projection carries the fear which we involuntarily and secretly feel for our own evil over to the other side and considerably increases the formidableness of one’s threat. What is even worse, our lack of insight deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil. Here, of course, we come up against ne of the main prejudices of the Christian tradition, and one that is a great stumbling block to our policies. We should, so we are told eschew evil and, if possible, neither touch for mention it. For evil is also the thing of ill omen, that which is tabooed and feared. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
This apotropaic attitude toward evil, and the apparent circumventing of it, flatter the primitive tendency in us to shut our eyes to evil and drive it over some frontier or other, like the Old Testament scapegoat, which was supposed to carry the evil into the wilderness. However, if one can no longer avoid the realization that evil, without human’s ever having chosen it, is lodged in human nature itself, then it bestrides the psychological stage as the equal and opposite partner of good. This realization leas straight to a psychological dualism, already unconsciously prefigured in the political World schism and in the even more unconscious dissociation in modern humans. The dualism does not come from this realization; rather, we are in a split condition to begin with it. It would be an insufferable thought that we had to take personal responsibility for so much guiltiness. We therefore prefer to localize the evil in individual criminals or groups of criminals, while washing our hands in innocence and ignoring the general proclivity to evil. This sanctimoniousness cannot be kept up in the long run, because the evil, as experience shows, lies in humans—unless, in accordance with the Christian view, one is willing to postulate a metaphysical principle of evil. The great advantage of this view is that it exonerates human’s conscience of too heavy a responsibility and foists it off on the devil, in correct psychological appreciation of the fact that humans are much more the victims of their psychic constitution than its inventor. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Considering that the evil of our day puts everything that has ever agonized humankind in the deepest shade, one must ask oneself how it is that, for all our progress in the administration of justice, in medicine and in technology, for all our concern with life and health, monstrous engines of destruction have been invented which could easily exterminate the human race. No one will maintain that the atomic physicists are a pack of criminals because it is to their efforts that we owe that peculiar flower of human ingenuity, the hydrogen bomb. The vast amount of intellectual work that went into the development of nuclear physics was put forth by humans who dedicated themselves to their task with the greatest exertion and self-sacrifice, and whose moral achievement could therefore just as easily have earned them the merit of inventing something useful and beneficial to humanity. However, even though the first step along the road to a momentous invention may be the outcome of a conscious decision, here, as everywhere, the spontaneous idea—the hunch or intuition—plays an important part. In other words, the unconscious collaborates too and often makes decisive contributions. So it is not the conscious effort alone that is responsible for the result; somewhere or other the unconscious, with its barely discernible goals and intentions, has its finger in the pie. If it puts a weapon in your hand, it is aiming at some kind of violence. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Knowledge of the truth is the foremost goal of science, and if in pursuit of the longing for light we stumble upon an immense danger, then one has the impression more of fatality than of premeditation. It is not that present-day humans are capable of greater evil than the humans of antiquity or the primitive. One merely has incomparably more effective means with which to realize one’s propensity to evil. As one’s consciousness has broadened and differentiated, so one’s moral nature has lagged behind. That is the great problem before us today. Reason alone no loner suffices. If only because of their dangerousness, in theory, in lies within the power of reason to desist from experiments of such hellish scope as nuclear fission. However, fear of evil which one does not see in one’s own bosom but always in somebody else’s checks reason every time although everyone knows that the use of this weapon means the certain end of our present human World. The fear of universal destruction may spare us the worst, yet the possibility of it will nevertheless hang over us like a dark cloud so long as no bridge is found across the World-side psychic and political split—a bridge as certain as the existence of the hydrogen bomb. It is in the nature of political bodies always to see evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything one does not know and does not want to know about oneself by foisting it off on somebody else. The perfect have no needs of others, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force one into an inferior position and even humiliate one. When high idealism plays too prominent a role, this humiliation may happen only too easily. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Whenever unjust is uncertain and police spying an terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator State, since it is based on the greatest possible accumulation of depotentiated social units. To counter this danger, the free society needs a bond of an affective nature, a principle of a kind like caritas, the Christian love of your neighbour. However, it is just this love for one’s fellow humans that suffers most of all from the lack of understanding wrought by projection It would therefore by very much in the interest of the free society to give some thought to the question of human relationship from the psychological point of view, for in this resides its real cohesion and consequently its strength. Where love stop, power begins, and violence, and terror. What our age thinks as the “shadow” and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The very fact that through self-knowledge, that is, by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts and their World of imagery should throw some light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware so long as all goes well. We are living in what the Greeks called the right moment for a metamorphosis of the gods, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious within us who is changing. If humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science, coming generations will have to take to account of this momentous transformation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
As at the beginning of the Christian era, so again today we are faced with the problem of general moral backwardness which has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical, and social progress. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern humans. Are they capable of resisting the temptation to use their powers of the purpose of staging a World conflagration? Are humans conscious of the path they are treading, and what the conclusions are that must be drawn from the present World situation and their own psychic situation? Do they know that they are on the point of losing the life-preserving myth of the inner human which Christianity has treasured up for one? Does one realize what lies in store should this catastrophe ever befall one? Is one even capable of realizing that this would in fact be a catastrophe? And finally, does the individual know that one is the makeweight that tips the scales? Happiness and contentment, equability of mind and meaning—fulness of life—these can be experienced only by the individual and not by a State, which, on the one hand, is nothing but a convention agreed to by independent individuals and, on the other, continually threatens to paralyse and suppress the individual. The psychiatrist is one of those who know most about the conditions of the soul’s welfare, upon which so infinitely much depends in the social sum. The social and political circumstances of the time are certainly of considerable significance, but their importance for the weal or woe of the individual has been boundlessly overestimated in so far as they are taken for the sole deciding fact. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
In this respect all our social goals commit the error of overlooking the psychology of the person for whim they are intended and—very often—of promoting only one’s illusions. I hope, therefore that a psychiatrist, who in the course of a long life has devoted oneself to the causes and consequences of psychic disorders, may be permitted to express one’s opinion, in all the modesty enjoined upon one as an individua, about the questions raised by the World situation today. I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being—that infinitesimal unit on whom a World depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks His goal. Testimony to the existence and reality of the glimpse will be found in the literatures of all peoples through all times. It is not a newly manufactured idea, nor a newly manufactured fancy. A human who denies it is foolish so to limit one’s own possibilities, but one may learn better with time. These glimpses cannot rightly be dismissed by the scientist as merely self-suggested or wholly hallucinatory. Nor can they properly be regarded by the metaphysician as valueless for truth. As human beings we live by experience, and they are personal experiences which help to confirm the truth of the impersonal bases underneath them and which encourage us to continue on the same path. The Overself is a living reality. If the quest were merely an intellectual conception or an emotional fancy, nobody would waste one’s years, one’s endeavours, and one’s energies it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The Overself is not only a necessary conception of logical thought. It is also a beautiful fact of persona experience. There are three signs, among others, of the Soul’s presence in a Soul-denying generation. They are: moral conscience, artistic imagination, and metaphysical speculation. Criticism which knows only sensuous and intellectual experience can be litter valid here if, indeed, it is not entirely irrelevant. When a human confuses the nature of the mind with its own thoughts, when one is unable properly to analyse consciousness and memory, when one has never practised introspection and meditation successfully, one can know nothing of the soul and may well be sceptical of its existence. That the Overself is not the product of an inflated imagination but has a real existence, is a truth which any human who has the required patience and submits to the indispensable training may verify oneself. It is not a dim abstraction but a real presence. Not a vauge theory but a vital fact. To the human of insight there is something strange, ironic, and yet pathetic in the spectable of those who turn the consciousness and the understanding derived from the Overself against the acknowledgement of Its existence. If one can shed the mummy wrappings of acquired notions, complacent bigotries, and superstitious customs, and look at a problem with fresh eyes, one is more likely to succeed in one’s quest for truth. If one can re-examine the whole meaning of it as though it were a newly discovered problems, one is more likely to move towards it correct solution. If one will refuse to be intimidated by dietary precedent, and begin to rethink the whole matter of eating’s why and wherefore, one will reach astonishing results. For much nonsense about diet has come down to us by ignorant tradition and unthinking inheritance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
As one draws closer to the soul of things, one comes more into harmony with Nature. And if one is true to one’s instincts, one will eat one’s food more and more as Nature herself produces it. Inferior and even harmful foods have been eaten for so long that most people have become addicted to them and, through habitual use, come to like them. It is true that several of these food have been part of a civilized diet for generations, but the duration of an error does not make it less an error, and does not justify its continuance. It is a fact worthy speculating upon that many groups of early Christians were mystical and had a special diet. Had they not been ousted by the Emperor Constantine—whose imperialistic political purpose they did not serve—from the official Christianity which he (and not Jesus) established, we might today have seen half the Christian World holding a faith in mystical beliefs and eating special diets. The France of Louis XII saw some remnants of those early sects, such as the Albigenses, Montanists, and Camisards—and no less than one third of total population of the country—living on special diets. Luigi Cornaro lived to a hundred in Italy on a strictly limited daily quantity of food. Dr. Josiah Oldfield was nearing his hundred year when I last visited England and attributed the fact to avoiding eating too much, which he termed “the great evil.” He is also an enthusiastic advocate of special diets. In the moment when you feel that actual contact with the One Infinite Life-Power has been made, draw it into the body and let it permeate every part, every organ, and every atom. It will tend to dissolve sickness and drive out disease. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Healing powers are like prayers, they can cross oceans and traverse continents as readily and as speedily as can radio waves or thought. Telepathy is a fact and the basis of this operation. The ministrations of absent healing are most successful when the individual is passive and receptive to them. Hence the work of its power is most effective when the sufferer is sleeping or relaxing. I am the family of the Universe, and with all of us together I do not fear being alone; I can reach out and touch a rock or a hand or dip my feet in water Always there is some body close by, and when I speak I am answered by a plane’s roar or the bird’s whistling or the voice of others in conversation far apart from me When I lie down to sleep, I am in the company of the dark and the starts. Breathe to me, sheep in the meadow. Sun and moon, my father and my fathers brother, shine your light on me. My sister, Earth, hold me up to be blessed. Sun and moon, I smile at you both and spread my arms in affection and lay myself down at full length of the Earth to know I love it too and am never to be separated from it In no way shall death part us. Life up your heads, O ye gates, yea, lift them up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Life up your hears, O ye gates, yes, lift the up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who then is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts; He is the King of glory. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Humans Never Ask Who is Paying for this Paradise?
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the stage to write an autobiography. Today unconscious adaption is no longer adequate. Faced with the power to alter the gene, to create new species, to populate the planets or depopulate the Earth, humans must now assume conscious control of evolution itself. As the number of social components grows and change and makes the whole system less stable, it becomes less and less possible to ignore the demands of political minorities. The best way to deal with angry or recalcitrant minorities is to open the system further, bringing them into it as full partners, permitting them to participate in social goal-setting, rather than attempting to ostracize or isolate them. Young people forced into prolonged adolescence and deprived of the right to partake in social decision-making will grow more and more unstable until they threaten the overall system. In short, in politics, in industry, in education, goals set without the participation of those affected will be increasingly hard to execute. The continuation of top-down technocratic goal-setting procedures will lead to greater and greater social instability, less and less control over the forces of change; an ever-greater danger of cataclysmic, human-destroying upheaval. To master change, we shall therefore need both a clarification of important long-range social goals and a democratization of the way in which we arrive at them. And this means nothing less than the next political revolution in the techno-societies—a breathtaking affirmation of popular democracy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Avoiding future shock as one rides the waves of change, one must master evolution, shaping tomorrow to human need. Instead of rising in revolt against it, one must, from this historic moment on, anticipate and design the future. Our first and most pressing need, therefore, before we can begin to gently guide our evolutionary destiny, before we can build a humane future, is to halt the runaway acceleration that is subjecting multitudes to the threat of future shock while, at the very same moment, intensifying all the problems they must deal with—war, ecological incursions, racism, the obscene contrast between rich and poor, the revolt of the young, and the rise of a potentially deadly mass irrational. There is no facile way to treat this wild growth, this cancer in history. There is no magic medicine, either, for curing the unprecedented disease it bears in its rushing wake: future shock. We must take radically curative procedures for the society—new social services, a future-facing education system, new ways to regulate technology, and a strategy for capturing control of change. Other ways must also be found. Yet the basic thrust is diagnosis. For diagnosis precedes cure, and we cannot begin to help ourselves until we become sensitively conscious of the problem. By making imaginative use of change to channel change, we cannot only spare ourselves the trauma of future shock, we can reach out and humanize distant tomorrows. When the light of truth seems to depart from humans, there will be souls looking for light, and who are filled with perplexity and sorrow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Seeking salvation, people will be thirsting for the knowledge of the living God, for some assurance of life beyond the grave. A rational individual is not subject to envy, at least when the differences between oneself and others are not thought to be the result of injustice and do not exceed certain limits. Nor are the parties influenced by different attitudes toward risk and uncertainty, or by various tendencies to dominate or to submit, and the like. These special psychologies I have also imagine to be behind the veil of ignorance along with the parties’ knowledge of their conception of the god. One explanation for these stipulations is that as far as possible, the choice of a conception of justice should not be affected by accidental contingencies. The principles adopted should be invariant with respect to differences in these inclinations for the same reason that we want them to hold irrespective of individual preferences and social circumstances. These assumptions tie in with the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness and greatly simplify the argument from the standpoint of the original position. The parities are not swayed by individual differences in these propensities, thereby avoiding the complications in the bargaining process that would result. If any, without rather definite information about which configuration of attitudes existed, one might not be able to say what agreement would be reached. In each case it would be contingent upon the particular hypothesis laid down. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Unless we could show some distinctive merit from a moral point of view in the postulated array of special psychologies, the principles adopted would be arbitrary, no longer the outcome of reasonable conditions. And if possible, since envy is generally regarded as something to be avoided and feared, at least wen it becomes intense, it seems desirable that the choice of principles should not be influenced by this trait. Therefore, for reasons both of simplicity and moral theory, I have assumed an absence of envy and lack of knowledge of the special psychologies. Nevertheless these inclinations do exist and in some way they must be reckoned with. First of all, we proceed on the presumptions just mentioned, and it is illustrated by most of the argument so far; secondly, we must ask whether the well-ordered society corresponding to the conception adopted will actually generate feelings of envy and patterns of psychological attitudes that will undermine the arrangements it counts to be just. At first we reason as if there is no problem of envy and the special psychologies; and then having ascertained which principles would be settled upon, we check to see whether just institutions so defined are likely to arouse and encourage these propensities to such an extent that the social system becomes unworkable and incompatible with human good. If so, the adoption of the conception of justice must be reconsidered. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
However, should the inclinations engendered support just arrangements, or be easily accommodated by them, the first part of the argument is confirmed. The essential advantage of the two-step procedure is that no particular constellation of attitudes is taken as given. We are simply checking the reasonableness of our initial assumptions and the consequences we have drawn from them in the light of the constraints imposed by the general facts of our World. The reasons why envy poses a problem, namely the fact that the inequalities sanctioned by the difference principle may be so great as to arouse envy to a socially dangerous extent. The envy experienced by the least advantaged towards those better situated is normally general envy in the sense that they envy the more favoured for the kinds of good and not for the particular objects they possess. The upper classes say are envied for their greater wealthy and opportunity; those envying them want similar advantages for themselves. By contrast, particular envy is typical of rivalry and competition. Those who lose out in the quest for office and honour, or for the affections of another, are liable to envy the success of their rivals and to covet the same thing that they have won. Our problem then is whether the principles of justice, and especially the difference principle with fair equality of opportunity, is likely to engender in practice too much destructive general envy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The definition of envy that seems appropriate for this question deals with fixed ideas. Suppose that the necessary interpersonal comparisons are made in terms of the objective primary goods, liberty, and opportunity, income and wealth, which for simplicity I have normally used to define expectations in applying the difference principle. Then we may think of envy as the propensity to view with hostility the greater good of others even though their being more fortunate than we are does not detract from our advantages. We envy persons whose situation is superior to ours (estimated by some agreed index of goods as noted above) and if it is necessary to five up something of ourselves, we are willing to deprive them of their greater benefits. When others are aware of our envy, they may become jealous of their better circumstances and anxious to take precautions against the hostile acts to which our envy makes us prone. So understood envy is collectively disadvantageous: If only the discrepancy between them is sufficiently reduced, the individual who envies another is prepared to do things that make them both worse off. Thus Kant, whose definition I have pretty much followed, quite properly discusses envy as one of the vices of hating humankind. Envy and spite are passions; their names already imply badness. As Kant observers, there are many occasions when we openly speak of the greater good of others as enviable. Thus we may remark upon the enviable harmony and happiness of a marriage or a family. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Similarly, one might say to another that one envies one’s greater opportunities or attainments. In these cases, those of benign envy, there is no ill will intended or expressed. We do not wish, for example, that the marriage or family should be less happy or harmonious. By these conventional expressions we are affirming the value of certain things that others have. We are indicating that, although we possess no similar good of equal value, they are indeed worth striving for. Those to whom we address these remarks are expected to receive them as a kind of praise and not as a foretaste of our hostility. A somewhat different case is that of emulative envy which leads us to try to achieve what others have. The sight of their greater good moves us to strive in socially beneficial ways for similar things for ourselves. Thus envy proper, in contrast with benign envy which we freely express, is a form of rancor that tends to hard both its object and its subject. It is what emulative envy may become under certain conditions of defeat and sense of failure. A further point is that envy is not a moral feeling. No moral principle need be cited in its explanation. It is sufficient to say that the better situation of others catches our attention. We are downcast by their good fortune and no longer value as highly what we have; and this sense of hurt and loss arouses our rancor and hostility. Thus one must be careful not to conflate envy and resentment. For resentment is a moral feeling. If we resent our having less than others, it must be because we think that their being better off is the result of unjust institutions, or wrongful conduct on their part. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Those who express resentment must be prepared to show why certain institutions are unjust or how others have injured them. What marks off envy from the moral feelings is the different way in which it is accounted for, the sort of perspective from which the situation is viewed. We should note also the nonmoral feelings connected with envy but not to be mistake for it. In particular, jealousy and grudgingness are reverse, so to speak, to envy. A person who is better off may wish those less fortunate than one to stay in their place. One is jealous of one’s superior position and begrudges them the greater advantages that would put them on a level with oneself. And should this propensity extend to denying them benefits that one does not need and cannot use oneself, then one is moved by spite. Spite is characterizes as being pleased at the bad fortune of others, whether deserved or not. For the idea that jealousy, grudgingness, and spite are the reverse of envy, the feelings of those who envied and who possess what is wanted. These inclinations are collectively harmful in the way that envy is, since the grudging and spiteful human is willing to give up something to maintain the distance between oneself and others. Envy and grudgingness are vices. As we have seen, the moral virtues are among the broadly based traits of character which it is rational for persons to want in one another as associates. Thus vices are broadly based traits that are not wanted, spitefulness and envy being clear cases, since they are to everyone’s detriment. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
He parties will surely prefer conceptions of justice the realization of which does not arouse these propensities. We are normally expected to forbear from the actions to which they prompt us and to take the steps necessary to rid ourselves of them. Yet sometimes the circumstances evoking envy are as compelling that given human beings as they are no one can reasonably be asked to overcome one’s rancorous feelings. A person’s lesser position as measured by the index of objective primary goods may be so great as to wound one’s self-respect; and given one’s situation, we my sympathize with one’s sense of loss. Indeed, we can resent being made envious, for society may permit such large disparities in these goods that under existing social conditions these differences cannot help but cause a loss of self-esteem. For those suffering this hurt, envois feelings are not irrational; the satisfaction of their rancor would make the better off. When envy is a reaction to the loss of self-respect in circumstances where it would be unreasonable to expect someone to feel differently, this is excusable. Since self-respect is the main primary good, the parties would not agree, I shall assume, to count this sort of subjective loss as irrelevant. Therefore the question is whether a basic structure which satisfies the principles of justice is likely to arouse so much excusable envy that the choice of these principles should be reconsidered. As the dialectical discussion proceeds, a point is reached when an evaluation of these individual impulses becomes necessary. By that time the individual should have acquired enough certainty of judgment to enable one to act on one’s own insight and decision and not from the mere wish to copy convention—even if one happens to agree with the collective opinion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Unless one stands firmly on one’s own feet, the so-called objective values profit one noting, since they then only serve as a substitute for character and so help to suppress one’s individuality. Naturally, society has an indisputable right to protect itself against arrant subjectivisms, but, in so far society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individuals. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes—it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individua personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A millions zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally shortsighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations, though one would think that the World has seen more than enough of what a well-disciplined mob can do in the hands of a single madman. Unfortunately, this realization does not seem to have penetrated very far—and our blindness is extremely dangerous. People go on blithely organizing and believing in the sovereign remedy of mass action, without the least consciousness of the fact that the most powerful organizations can be maintained only by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans. Curiously enough, the Churches too want to avail themselves of mass action in order to cast of the devil with Beelzebub—the very Churches whose care is the salvation of the individual soul. They do not appear to have heard of the elementary axiom of mass psychology that the individual becomes morally and spiritually inferior in the mass, and for this reason they do not bother themselves overmuch with their real task of helping the individual to achieve a metanoia, a rebirth of the spirit—Deo concedente. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
If the individual is not truly a regenerated spirit, it is, unfortunately, only too clear that society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption. I can therefore see it only as a delusion when the Churches try—and they apparently do—to rope the individual into some social organization and reduce one to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising one out of the torpid, mindless mass and making clear to one that one is the one important factor and that the salvation of the World consists in the salvation of the individual soul. It is true that mass meetings parade these ideas before one and seek to impress them on one’s mind by dint of mass suggestion, with the melancholy result that once the intoxication has worn off the mass human promptly succumbs to another even more obvious and still louder slogan. One’s individual relation to God would be an effective shield against these pernicious influences. Did Christ, perchance, call his disciples to him any followers who did not afterwards cry with the rest, “Crucify him!” when even the rock named Peter showed signs of wavering? And are not Jesus and Paul prototypes of those who, trusting their inner experience, have gone their individual ways in defiance of the World? This argument should certainly not cause us to overlook the reality of the situation confronting the Church. When the Church tries to give shape to the amorphism mass by uniting individuals into a community of believers and to hold such an organization together with the help of suggestion, it is not only performing a great social service, but it also secures for the individual the inestimable boon of a meaningful form life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
These, however, are gifts which as a rule only confirm certain tendencies and do not change them. As experience unfortunately shows, the inner human remains unchanged however much community one has. One’s environment cannot give one as a gift something which one can win for oneself only with effort and suffering. On the contrary, a favourable environment merely strengthens the dangerous tendency to expect everything from outside—even that metamorphosis which external reality cannot provide. By this I mean a far-reaching change of the inner man, which is all the more urgent in view of the mass phenomena of today and the still greater problems of overpopulation looming in the future. It is time we asked ourselves exactly what we are lumping together in mass organizations and what constitutes the nature of the individual human being, id est, of the real human not the statistical human. This is hardly possible except by a new process of self-reflection. All mass movements, as one might expect, slip with the greatest ease down an incline plane made up of large numbers. Where the many are, there is security; what the many believe must of course be true; what the many want must be worth striving for, and necessary, and therefore good. In the clamour of the many resides the power to snatch wish-fulfilments by force; sweetest of all, however, is that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care, into happy-go-luckiness and irresponsibility. All the thinking and looking after are done from the top; to all questions there is an answer, and for all needs the necessary provision is made. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The infantile dream state of the mass human is so unrealistic that one never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes. Whenever social conditions of this type develop on a large scale, the road to tyranny lies open and the freedom of the individual turns into spiritual and physical slavery. Since every tyranny is ipso facto immoral and ruthless, it has much more freedom in the choice of its methods than an institution which still takes account of the individual. Should such an institution come into conflict with the organized State, it is soon made aware of the very real disadvantage of its morality and therefore feels compelled to avail itself of the same methods as its opponent. In this way the evil spreads almost of necessity, even when direct infection might be avoided. The danger of infection is greater when decisive importance is attached to larger numbers and to statistical values, as is everywhere the case in our New World. The suffocating power of the mases is paraded before our eyes in one form or another every day in the newspapers, and the insignificance of the individual is rubbed into one so thoroughly that one loses all hope of making oneself heard. The outworn ideals of liberte, egalite, fraternite help one not at all, as one can direct this appeal only to one’s executioners, the spokesman of the masses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the person who is as well organized in one’s individuality as the mass itself. I fully realize that his proposition must sound well-neigh unintelligible to the human of today. The helpful medieval view that humans are a microcosm, a reflection of the great cosmos in miniature, has long since dropped away from one, although the very existence of one’s World-embracing and World-conditioning psyche might have taught one better. Not only is the image of the macrocosm imprinted upon one’s psychic nature, but one also creates this image for oneself on an ever-widening scale. One bears this cosmic “correspondence” within one by virtue of one’s reflecting consciousness on the one hand, and, on the other, thanks to the hereditary, archetypal nature of one’s instincts, which bind one to one’s environment. However, one’s instincts not only attach one to the macrocosm, they also, in a sense, tear one apart, because one’s desires pull one in different directions. In this way one falls into continual conflict with oneself and only very rarely succeeds in giving one’s life an undivided goal—for which, as a rule succeeds in giving one’s life an undivided goal—for which, as a rule, one must pay very dearly by repressing other sides of one’s nature. One often has to ask oneself whether this kind of single-mindedness is worth forcing at all, seeing that the natural state of the human psyche consists in a jostling together of its components and their contradictory behaviour—that is, in a certain degree of dissociation. The Buddhist name for this is attachment to the “ten thousand things.” Such a condition cries out for order and synthesis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Just as the chaotic movements of the crowd, all ending in mutual frustration, are impelled in a definite direction by a dictatorial will, so the individual in one’s dissociated state needs a directing and ordering principle. Ego-consciousness would like to let its own will play this role, but overlooks the existence of powerful unconscious factors which thwart its intentions. If it wants to reach the goal of synthesis, it must first get to know the nature of these factors. It must experience them, or else it must possess a numinous symbol that expresses them and leads to their synthesis. A religious symbol that comprehended and visibly represented what is seeking expression in modern humans might possibly do this; but our conception of the Christian symbol to date has certainly not been able to do so. On the contrary, that frightful World split runs right through the domains of the “Christian” American man, and our Christian outlook on life has proved powerless to prevent the recrudescence of an archaic social order like Communism. This is not to day that Christianity is finished. I am, on the contrary, convinced that it is not Christianity, but our conception and interpretation of it, that has become antiquated in the face of the present World situation. The Christian symbol is a living thing that carries in itself the seeds of further development. It can go on developing; it depends only on us, whether we can make up our minds to mediate again, and more thoroughly, on the Christian premises. This requires a very different attitude towards the individual, towards the microcosm of the self, from the one we have adopted hitherto. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
That is why nobody knows what ways of approach are open to humans, what inner experiences one could still pass through and what psychic facts underlie the religious myth. Over all this hangs so universal a darkness tat no one can see why one should be interested or to what end one should commit oneself. Before this problem we stand helpless. This is not surprising, since practically all the trump cards are in the hands of our opponents. They can appeal to the big battalions and their crushing power. Politics, science, and technology stand ranged on their side. The imposing arguments of science represent the highest degree of intellectual certainty yet achieved by the mind of humans. So at least it seems to the human of today, who has received hundred-fold enlightenment concerning the backwardness and darkness of past ages and their superstitions. That one’s teachers have themselves gone seriously astray by making false comparisons between incommensurable factors never enters one’s head. All the more so as the intellectual elite to whom one puts one’s questions are almost unanimously agreed that what science regards as impossible today was impossible at all other times as well. Above all, the facts of faith, which might give one the chance of an extramundane standpoint, are treated in the same context as the facts of science. Thus, when the individual questions the Churches and their spokesperson, to whom is entrusted the cure of souls, one is informed that to belong to a church—a decidedly Worldly institution—is more or less de rigueur; that the facts of faith which have become questionable for one were concrete historical events; that certain ritual actions produce miraculous effects; and that the sufferings of Christ have vicariously saved one from sin and its consequences (id est, eternal damnation). #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
If, with the limited means at one’s disposal, one begins to reflect on these things, one will have to confess that one does not understand them at all and that only two possibilities remain open to one: either to believe implicitly, or to reject such statements because they are flatly incomprehensible. Whereas the humans of today can easily think about and understand all the “truth” dished out to one by the State, one’s understanding of religion is made considerably mire difficult owing to the lack of explanations. (“Do you understand what you re reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” Acts 8.30.) If, despite this, one has still not discarded all one’s religious convictions, this is because the religious impulse rests on an instinctive basis and is therefore a specifically human function. You can take away human’s gods, but only to give one others in return. The leaders of the mass State could not help being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsessive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy—money, work, political influence and so forth. When any natural human function gets lost, id est, is denied conscious and intentional expression, a general disturbance results. Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern humans should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the World today by the Iron Curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern humans, no matter on which side one lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of one’s shadow in one’s neighbour or in the human beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking within. However, just as the neurotic, despite unconsciousness of one’s other side, has a dim premonition that all is not well with one’s psychic economy, so Western humans have developed an instinctive interest in one’s psyche and in “psychology.” Thus it is that the psychiatrist is summoned willy-nilly to appear on the World stage, and questions are addressed to one which primarily concern the most intimate and hidden life of the individual, but which in the last analysis are the direct effects of the Zeitgeist. Because of its personal symptomatology this material is usually considered to be “neurotic”—and rightly so, since it is made up of infantile fantasies which ill accord with the contents of an adult psyche and are therefore repressed by our moral judgment, in so far as they reach consciousness at all. Most fantasies of this kind do not, in the nature of things, come to consciousness in any form, and it is very improbable, to say that the least of it, that they were ever conscious and were consciously repressed. Rather, they seem to have been present from the beginning or, at any rate, to have arisen unconsciously and to have persisted in that state until the psychologist’s intervention enabled them to cross the threshold of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The activation of unconscious fantasies is a process that occurs when consciousness find itself in a situation of distress. Were that not so, the fantasies would be produced normally and would then bring no neurotic disturbances in their train. In reality, fantasies of this kind belong to the World of childhood and give rise to disturbances only when prematurely strengthened by abnormal conditions of conscious life. This is particularly likely to happen when unfavourable influences emanate from the parents, poisoning the atmosphere and producing conflicts which upset the psychic balance of the child. When a neurosis breaks out in an adult, the fantasy World of childhood reappears, and one is tempted to explain the onset of neurosis causally, as due to the presence of infantile fantasies. However, that does not explain why the fantasies did not develop any pathological effects during the interim period. These effects develop only when the individual is faced with a situation which one cannot overcome by conscious means. The resultant standstill in the development of personality opens a sluice for infantile fantasies, which, of course, are latent in everybody but do not display any activity so long as the conscious personality can continue on its way unimpeded. When the fantasies reach a certain level of intensity, they begin to break through into consciousness and create a conflict situation that becomes perceptible to the individual oneself, splitting one into two personalities with different characters. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The dissociation, however, had been prepared long before in the unconscious, when the energy flowing off from consciousness (because unused) reinforced the negative qualities of the unconscious and particularly the infantile traits of the personality. Since the normal fantasies of a child are nothing other, at bottom, than the imagination of instincts, and may thus be regarded as preliminary exercises in the use of future conscious activities, it follows that the fantasies of the neurotic, even though pathologically altered and perhaps perverted by the regression of energy, contain a core of normal instinct, the hallmark of which is adaptedness. A neurotic illness always implies an unadapted alteration and distortion of normal dynamisms and of the “imagination” proper to them. Instincts, however, are highly conservative and of extreme antiquity as regards both their dynamism and their form. Their form, when represented to the mind, appears as an image which expressed the nature of the instinctive impulse visually and concretely, like a picture. If we could look into the psyche of the yucca moth, for instance, we would find in it a pattern of idea, of a numinous or fascinating character, which not only compels the moth to carry out its fertilizing activity on the yucca plant but helps it to “recognize” the total situation. Instinct is anything but a blind and indefinite impulse, since it proves to be attuned and adapted to a definite external situation. This latter circumstance gives it its specific and irreducible form. Just as instinct is original and hereditary, so, too, its form is age-old, that is to say, archetypal. It is even older and more conservative than the human form. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
These biological considerations naturally apply also to Homo sapiens, who still remain within the framework of general biology despite the possession of consciousness, will, and reason. The fact that our conscious activity is rooted in instinct and derives from it its dynamism as well as the basic features of its ideational forms has the same significance for human psychology as for all other members of the animal kingdom. Human knowledge consists essentially in the constant adaptation of the primordial patterns of ideas that were given us a priori. These need certain modifications, because in their original form, they are suited to an archaic mode of life but not to the demands of a specially differentiated environment. If the flow of instinctive dynamism into our life is to be maintained, as is absolutely necessary for our existence, then it is imperative that we should remould these archetypal forms into ideas which are adequate to the challenge of the present. The Overself is not something imagined or supposed. Its presence is definitely felt. If a human asks why one can find no trace of God’s presence in oneself, I answer that one is fully of evidence, not merely traces. God is present in one as consciousness, the state of being aware; as thought, the capacity to think; as activity, the power to move; and as stillness, the condition of ego, emotion, intellect, and body which finally and clearly reveals what these other things simply point to. “Be still, and know that I am God” is a statement of being whose truth can be tested by experiment and whose value can be demonstrated by experience. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
When we realize that the intellect can put forth as man arguments against this theme as for it, we realize that there is in the end only one perfect proof of the Overself’s existence. The Overself must prove itself. This can come about faintly through the intuition or fully through the mystical experience. Whoever needs proofs of the authenticity of this experience has not had it. The difficulty of collecting and studying, sifting and describing the varieties of mystical experience which may be found is a barrier to the expansion of scientific psychology. For those persons who are most eager to talk about their own experiences are the most dubious and unreliable source. Those who are the least eager, feeling the matter to be too private, personal, intimate, and sacred, are able to offer valuable evidence. The human whose mind is rounded out to perfection knows full well truth cut in half and things do not exist apart from the mind. We know ourselves to be made from this Earth. We know this Earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeing nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. Nature weeping. Nature speaking of nature. The Earth is the Lord’s and all its fulness, the World, and they that dwell thereon. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend the mountains of the Lord? And who shall stand in His holy place? One that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not set one’s mind on what is false, and hath not sworn deceitfully. One shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of one’s salvation. Such is the generation of them that seek God, that seek the presence of the God of Jacob. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Why then the World’s Mine Oyster, Which I with Sword Will Open!
The “generation gap” is the cause of the brewing social revolution. Parents teach their children to obey and to have a blind trust for authority, so their only other option is to rebel because they are not taught to communicate and negotiate or compromise. By the time parents realize there is a problem, then their sons and daughters are unreasonable and beyond their command. The youth are now edging the middle age out of power. Corporations, a last stronghold of maturity and responsibility, are now recruiting vice presidents whose major qualifications are a B.A. degree and an age under thirty. In the end, however, social futurism must cut even deeper. For technocrats suffer, too, from the virus of elitism. To capture control of change, we shall, therefore, require a final, even more radical breakaway from technocratic tradition: we shall need a revolution in the very way we formulate our social goals. Rising novelty renders irrelevant the traditional goals of our chief institutions—state, church, corporation, army, and university. Acceleration produces a faster turnover of goals, a greater transience of purpose. Diversity or fragmentation leads to a relentless multiplication of goals. Caught in this churning, goal-cluttered environment, we stagger, future shocked, from crisis to crisis, pursuing a welter of conflicting and self-cancelling purposes. Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in our pathetic attempts to govern our cities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
New Yorkers, within a short span, have suffered a nightmarish succession of disasters: the death of Aaliyah in a preventable airplane crash, Twin Towers destroyed by airplanes and over 3,500 lives lost in a single day, a water shortage, a subway strike, racial violence in the community and schools, hackers shutdown of a pipeline that supplies gasoline, a housing shortage, a fuel oil strike, a pandemic, a breakdown of telephone service, a teacher walkout, a power blackout, to name just a few. In its City Hall, as in a thousand city halls all over the high-technology nations, technocrat dash, firebucket in fist, from one conflagration to another without the least semblance of a coherent plan or policy for the urban future. This is not to say no one is planning. On the contrary; in this seething social brew, technocratic plans, sub-plans, and counter-plans pour fourth. They call for new highways, new roads, new power plants, new schools, more parking, new malls, and high-speed Internet. They promise better hospitals, housing, mental health centers, welfare programs. However, the plans cancel, contradict and reinforce one another by accident. Few are logically related to one another, and none to any overall image of the preferred city of the future. No vision—utopia or otherwise—energizes our efforts. No rationally integrated goals bring order to the chaos. And at the national and international levels, the absence of coherent policy is equally marked and doubly dangerous. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
It is not simply that we do not know which goals to pursue, as a city or as a nation. The trouble lies deeper. For accelerating change has made obsolete the methods by which we arrive at social goals. The technocrats do not yet understand this, and, reacting to the goals crisis in knee-jerk fashion, they reach for the tried and true methods of the past. Thus, intermittently, a change-dazed government will try to define its goals publicly. Instinctively, it establishes a commission. In 2019 President Trump pressed into service, among others, a general, a judge, a couple of industrialist, border security, a few college presidents, and a labour leader to “develop a broad outline of coordinated national policies and programs” and to “set up a series of goals in various areas of national activity.” In due course, a red-white-and-blue paperback appeared with the commission’s report, Goals for Americans. Neither the commission nor its goals were able to reach their objective because federal judges and politicians and the mainstream screens news media, and some of the public fought against the American First agenda. The battle continued and the juggernaut of change continued to roll through America not fully realized, as it were, by a managerial intelligence. A far more significant effort to tidy up governmental priorities was still being initiated by President Trump as he successfully rolled out life saving vaccines, tax cuts, and relief checks to help the public. There was also the introduction of a planning program budgeting system throughout the federal establishment. The goal was to try to run programs much more closely and rationally to organizational goals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Thus, for example, by applying it, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare can assess the costs and benefits of alternative programs to accomplish specified goals. However, who specifies these larger, more important goals? The inception of the planning and budgeting program and the systems approach is a major governmental achievement. It is of paramount importance in managing large organizational efforts. However, it leaves entirely untouched the profoundly political question of how the overall goals of a government or a society are to be chosen in the first place. President Trump wanted to Make America Great Again. He said it was “time we addressed ourselves, consciously and systematically, to the question of what kind of a nation we want to be.” He thereupon put his finger on the quintessential question. However, once more the method chosen for answering it proved to be inadequate. “Today, I have ordered the establishment, within the White House, of a National Goals Research Staff,” the President announced. “This will be a small, highly technical staff, made up of experts in the collection…and processing of data relating to social needs, and in the projection of social trends.” Such a staff, located within shouting distance of the Presidency, could be extremely useful in compiling goal proposals, in reconciling (at least on paper) conflicts between agencies, in suggesting new priorities. If it did nothing but force high officials to question their primary goals, staffed with excellent social scientists and futurists, it could earn its keep. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Yet even this step, like the two before it, bear the unmistakable imprint of the technocratic mentality. For it, too, evades the politically charged core of the issue. How are preferable futures to be defined? And by whom? Who is to set goals for the future? Behind all such efforts runs the notion that national (and, by extension, local) goals for the future of society ought to be formulated at the top. This technocratic premise perfectly mirrors the antiquated bureaucratic forms of organization in which line and staff were separated, in which rigid, undemocratic hierarches distinguished leader from led, manager from managed, planner from plannee. Yet the real, as distinct the glibly verbalized, goals of any society on the path to super-industrialism are already too complex, too transient and too dependent for their achievement upon the willing participation of the governed, to be perceived and defined so easily. We cannot hope to harness the runaway forces of change by assembling a kaffee klatsche of elders to set goals for us or by tuning the risk over to a “highly technical staff.” A revolutionary new approach to goal-setting is needed. Nor is this approach likely to come from those who play-act at revolution. One radical group, seeing all problems as a manifestation of the “maximization of profits” displays, in all innocence, an econocentricism as narrow as that of the technocrats. Another hopes to plunge us willy-nilly back into the pre-industrial past. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Still another sees revolution exclusively in subjective and psychological terms. None of these groups is capable of advancing us toward post-technocratic forms of change management. By calling attention to the growing ineptitude of the technocrats and by explicitly challenging not merely the means, but the very goals of industrial society, today’s young radicals do us all a great service. However, they no more know how to cope with the goals crisis than the technocrats they scorn. An orientation toward the future has been the hallmark of every revolutionary—but many people suffer from a disbelief in the future. The masses find themselves incapable of formulating a future. We must urge people to incorporate the future in the present by, in effect, living the life styles of tomorrow today. However, if this only leads to a pathic charade—free societies, cooperatives, pre-industrial communes, few of which have anything to do with the future, and most of which reveal, instead, only a passionate penchant for the past, then we need to try harder. Yet, the irony is compounded when we consider that some (though hardly all) of today’s young radicals also share with the technocrats a streak of virulent elitism. While decrying bureaucracy and demanding “participatory democracy” they, themselves, frequently attempt to manipulate the very groups of workers, marginalized groups or students on whose behalf they demand participation. The working mases in the high-technology societies are totally indifferent to calls for a political revolution aimed at exchanging one form of property ownership for another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
For most people, the rise in affluence has meant a better, not a worse, existence, and they look upon their much envied “suburban middle-class lives” as fulfillment rather than deprivation. Faced with this stubborn reality, undemocratic element in America seems to indicate that the masses are too bourgeosified, too corrupted and addled by Madison Avenue to know what is good for them. And so, even if it means stuffing it down the throats of thee who are too unenlightened to know their own interests, a revolutionary elite must establish a more humane and democratic future. In short, the goals of society have to be set by an elite. Technocrat and anti-technocrat often turn out to be elitist brothers under the skin. Yet systems of goal formulation based on elitist premises are simply no longer “efficient.” In the struggle to capture control of the forces of change, they are increasingly counter-productive. For under super-age of information, democracy becomes not a political luxury, but a primal necessity. Democratic political forms arose in the New World not because a few geniuses willed them into being or because man showed an “unquenchable instinct for freedom.” They arose because the historical pressure toward social differentiation and toward faster paced systems demanded sensitive social feedback. In complex, differentiated societies, vast amounts of information must flow at ever faster speeds between the formal organizations and subcultures that make up the whole, and between the layers and sub-structures within these. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
We have already seen that despite the individualistic features of justice as fairness, the two principles of justice provide an Archimedean point for appraising existing institutions as well as the desires and aspirations which they generate. These criteria provide an independent standard for guiding the course of social change without invoking a perfectionist or an organic conception of society. However, the question remains whether the contract doctrine is a satisfactory framework for understanding the values of community and for choosing among social arrangements to realize them. It is natural to conjecture that the congruence of the right and the good depends in large part upon whether a well-ordered society achieves that good of community. One of the conditions of the original position is that the parties know that they are subject to the circumstances of justice. They assume that each has a conception of one’s good in the light of which one presses claims against the rest. So although they view society as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. Now there are two ways of viewing these suppositions. The first is taken by the theory of justice: the idea is to derive satisfactory principles from the weakest possible assumptions. The premises of the theory should be simple and reasonable conditions that everyone or most everyone would grant, and for which convincing philosophical arguments can be given. At the same time, the greater the initial collision of claims into which the principles can introduce an acceptable order, the more comprehensive the theory is likely to be. Therefore a deep opposition of interests is presumed to obtain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The other way to think of these suppositions is to regard the as describing a certain kind of social order, or a certain aspect of the basic structure that is actually realized. Thus we are led to the notion of private society. Its chief features are first that the persons comprising it, whether they are human individuals or associations, have their own private ends which either competing or independent, but not in any case complementary. And second, institutions are not thought to have any value in themselves, the activity of engaging in them not being counted as a good but if anything as a burden. Thus each person assesses social arrangements solely as a means to one’s private aims. No one takes account of the good of others, or of what they possess; rather everyone prefers the most efficient scheme that gives one the largest share of assets. (Expressed more formally, the only variables in an individual’s utility function are commodities and assets held by one, and not items possessed by others nor their level of utility.) We may suppose also that the actual division of advantage is determined largely by the balance of power and strategic position resulting from existing circumstances. Yet this division may of course be perfectly fair and satisfy the claims of mutuality. By good fortune the situation may happen to lead to this outcome Public goods consist largely of those instrumentalities and conditions maintained by the state for everyone to use for one’s own purposes as one’s means permit, in the same manner that each has one’s own destination when traveling along the highways. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The theory of competitive markets is a paradigm description of this type of society. Since the members of this society are not moved by the desire to act justly, the stability of just and efficient arrangements when they exist normally requires the use of sanctions. Therefore the alignment of private and collective interests is the result of stabilizing institutional devices applied to persons who oppose one another as indifferent if not hostile powers. Private society is not held together by a public conviction that its basic arrangements are just and good in themselves, but by the calculations of everyone, or of sufficiently many to maintain the scheme, that any practicable changes would reduce the stock of means whereby they pursue their personal ends. It is sometimes contended that the contract doctrine entails that private society is the ideal, at least when the division of advantages satisfies a suitable standard of reciprocity. However, this is not so, as the notion of a well-ordered society shows. And as I have just said, the idea of the original position has another explanation. The account of goodness as rationality and the social nature of humankind also requires a different view. Now the sociability of human beings must not be understood in a trivial fashion. It does not imply merely that society is necessary for human life, or that by living in a community humans acquire needs and interests that prompt them to work together for mutual advantage in certain specific ways allowed for and encouraged by their institutions. Nor is it expressed by the truism that social life is a condition for our developing the ability to speak and think, and to take part in the common activities of society and culture. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
No doubt even the concepts that we use to describe our plans and situation, and even to give voice to our personal wants and purposes, often presuppose a social setting as well as a system of belief and thought that are the outcome of the collective efforts of a long tradition. These facts are certainly not trivial; but to use them to characterize our ties to one another is to give a trivial interpretation of human sociability. For all of these things are equally true of persons who view their relations purely instrumentally. The social nature of humankind is best seen by contrast with the conception of private society. Thus human beings have in fact shared final ends and they value their common institution and activities as good in themselves. We need one another as partners in ways of life that are engaged in for their own sake, and the successes and enjoyments of others are necessary for and complimentary to our own good. These matters are evident enough, but they call for some elaboration. In the account of goodness as rationality we came to the familiar conclusions that rational plans of life normally provide for the development of at least some of a person’s powers. The Aristotelian Principle points in this direction. Yet one basic characteristic of human beings is that no one person can do everything that one might do; nor a fortiori can one do everything that any other person can do. The potentialities of each individual are greater than those one can hope to realize; and they fall short of the powers among humans generally. Thus everyone mist select which of one’s abilities and possible interests one wishes to encourage; one must plan their training and exercise, and schedule their purist in an orderly way. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Different persons with similar or complementary capacities may cooperate so to speak in realizing their common or matching nature. When humans are secure in the enjoyment of the exercise of their own powers, they are disposed to appreciate the perfections of others, especially when their several excellences have an agreed place in a form of life the aims of which all accept. Thus we may say that it is through social union founded upon the needs and potentialities of its members that each person can participate in the total sum of the realized natural assets of the others. We are led to the notion of the community of humankind the members of which enjoy one another’s excellences and individuality elicited by free institutions, and they recognize the good of each as an element in the complete activity the whole scheme of which is consented to and gives pleasure to all. This community may also be imagined to extend over time, and therefore in this history of a society the joint contributions of successive generations can be similarly conceived. Every human being, then, can act with only one dominant faculty at a time; or rather, our whole nature disposes us at any given time to some single form of spontaneous activity. It would therefore seem to follow from this that humans are inevitably destined to a partial cultivation, since one only enfeebles one’s energies by directing them to a multiplicity of objects. However, humans have it in their power to avoid this one-sidedness, by attempting to unite the distinct and generally separately exercised faculties of this nature, by bringing into spontaneous cooperation, at each period of one’s life, the dying sparks of activity, and those which the future will kindle, and endeavouring to increase and diversify the powers with which one works, by harmoniously combining them, instead of looking for mere variety of objects for their separate exercise. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
What is achieved, in the case of the individual, by union of past and future with the present, is produced in society by the mutual cooperation of its different members; for, in all stages of one’s life, each individual can achieve only one of those perfections, which represent the possible features of human character. It is through a social union, therefore, based on the internal wants and capacities of its members, that each is enabled to participate in the rich collective resources of all the others. As a pure cause to illustrate this notion of social union, we may consider a group of musicians every one of whom could have trained oneself to play equally as well as the others any instrument in the orchestra, but who each have by a kind of tacit agreement set out to perfect their skills on the one they have chosen so as to realize the powers of all in their joint performances. If one were to learn how to make complete use of all one’s natural capacities, every individual human will have to live for a vast length of time, and therefore it will require perhaps an incalculable series of generations of humans. A communist society is one in which each person completely realizes one’s own nature, in which one expresses all of one’s power. In any event, it is important not to confuse the idea of social union with the high value put upon human diversity and individuality, or with the conception of the good as the harmonious fulfillment of natural powers by (complete) individuals; nor finally, with gifted individuals, artists, states-people, and so one, achieving this for the rest of humankind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Rather, in the limiting case where the powers of each are similar, the group achieves, by a coordination of activities among peers, the same totality of capacities latent in each. Or when these powers differ and are in suitable ways complementary, they express the sum of potentialities of the membership as a whole in activities that are intrinsically good and not merely cooperation for social or economic gain. In either case, persons need one another since it is only in active cooperation with others that one’s powers reach fruition. Only in a social union is the individual complete. Our predecessors in achieving certain things leave it up to us to pursue them further; their accomplishments affect our choice of endeavours and define a wider background against which our aims can be understood. To say that humans are historical beings is to day that the realization of powers of human individuals living at any one time takes the cooperation of many generations (or even societies) over a long period of time. It also implies that this cooperation is guided at any moment by an understanding of what has been done in the past as it is interpreted by social tradition. By contrast with humankind, every individual terrestrial being can and does do what for the most part it might do, or what any other of its kind might or can do that lives at the same time. The range of realized abilities of a single individual of the species is not in general materially less than the potentialities of others similar to it. The striking exception is the difference of pleasures of the flesh. This is perhaps why an affinity of pleasures of the flesh is the most obvious example of the need of individuals both human and other terrestrial beings for each other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Yet this attraction may take but a purely instrumental form, each individual treating the other as a means to one’s own pleasure or the continuation of one’s line. Unless this attachment is fused with elements of affection and friendship, it will not exhibit the characteristic features of social union. Now many forms of life possess the characteristic of social union, shared final ends and common activities valued for themselves. Science and art provide ready-to-hand illustrations. Likewise families, friendships, and other groups are social unions. There is some advantage though in thinking about the simpler instances of games. Here we can easily distinguish four sorts of ends: the aim of the game as defined by its rules, say to score the most runs; the various motives of the players in playing the game, the excitement they get from it, the desire for exercise, and so on, which may be different for each person; the social purposes served by the game which may be unintended and unknown to the players, or even to anyone in the society, these being matters for the reflective observer to ascertain; and then finally, the shared end, the common desire of all the players that there should be a good play of the game. If the same is played fairly according to the rules, if the sides are more or less evenly matched, and if they players all sense that they are playing well, only then can this shared end be realized. However, when this aim is attained, everyone takes pleasure and satisfaction in the very same thing. A good play of the game is, so to speak, a collective achievement requiring the cooperation of all. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Now the shared end of a social union is clearly not merely a common desire for the same particular thing. Grant and Lee were one in their desire General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee were one in their desire to hold Richmond, Virginia USA but this desire did not establish community between them. Persons generally want similar sorts of things, liberty and opportunity, shelter and nourishment, yet these wants may put them at odds. Whether individuals have a shared end depends upon the more detailed features of the activity to which the excellences and enjoyments of each are complementary to the good of all. Each can then take pleasure in the actions of the other as they jointly execute a plan acceptable to everyone. Despite their competitive side, many games illustrate this type of end in a clear way: if everyone’s zest and pleasure are not to be languish, the public desire to execute a good and fair play of the game must be regulative and effective. The development of art and science, of religion and culture of all kinds, high and low, can of course be thought of in much the same way. Learning from one another’s efforts and appreciating their several contributions, human beings gradually build up systems of knowledge and belief; they work out recognized techniques for doing things and elaborate styles of feeling and expression. In these cases the common aim is often profound and complex, being defined by the respective artistic, scientific, or religious tradition; and to understand this aim often takes years of discipline and study. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The essential thing is that there be a shared final end and accepted ways of achieving it which allow for the public recognition of the attainments of everyone. When this end is achieved, all find satisfaction in the very same thing; and this fact together with the complementary nature of the good of individuals affirms the tie of community. I do not wish to stress, however, the cases of art and science and high forms of religion and culture. In line with the rejection of the principle of perfection and the acceptance of democracy in the assessment of one another’s excellences, they have no special merit from the standpoint of justice. Indeed the reference to games not only has the virtue of simplicity but in some ways is more appropriate. It helps to show that the primary concern is that there are many types of social union and from the perspective of political justice we are not to try to rank them in value. Moreover these unions have no definite size; they range from families and friendships to much larger associations. Nor are there limits of time and space, for those widely separated by history and circumstance can nevertheless cooperate in realizing their common nature. A well-ordered society, and indeed most societies, will presumably contain countless social unions of many different kinds. With these remarks as preface, we can now see how the principles of justice are related to human sociability. The main idea is simply that a well-ordered society (corresponding to justice as fairness) is itself a form of social union. Indeed, it is social union of social unions. Both characteristic features are present: the successful carrying out of just institutions is the shared final end of all the members of society, and these institutional forms are prized as good in themselves. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Let us consider these features in turn. The first is quite straightforward. In much the same way that players have the shared end to execute a good and fair play of the game, so the members of a well-ordered society have the common aim of cooperating together to realize their own and another’s nature in ways allowed by the principles of justice. This collective intention is the consequence of everyone’s having an effective sense of justice. Each citizen wants everyone (including oneself) to act from principles to which all would agree in an initial situation of equality. This desire is regulative, as the condition of finality on moral principles requires; and when everyone acts justly, all find satisfaction in the very same thing. The explanation of the second feature is more involved, yet clear enough from what has been said. We have only to note the various ways in which the fundamental institutions of society, the just constitution and the main parts of the legal order, can be found good in themselves once the idea of social union is applied to the basic structure as a whole. Thus first of all, we can say that everyone’s acting to uphold just institutions is for the good of each. Human beings have a desire to express their nature as free and equal moral persons, and this they do most adequately by acting from the principles that they would acknowledge in the original position. When all strive to comply with these principles and each succeeds, then individuality and collectively their nature as moral persons is most fully realized, and with it their individual and collective good. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Further, a just constitutional order, when adjoined to the smaller social unions of everyday life, provides a framework for these many associations and sets up the most complex and diverse activity of all. In a well-ordered society each person understands the first principles that govern the whole scheme as it is to be carried out over many generations; and all have a settled intention to adhere to these principles in their plan of life. Thus the plan of each person is given a more ample and rich structure than it would otherwise have; it is adjusted to the plans of others by mutually acceptable principles. Everyone’s more private life is so to speak a plan within a plan, this superordinate plan being realized in the public institutions of society. However, this larger plan does not establish a dominant end, such as that of religious unity or the greatest excellence of culture, much less national power and prestige, to which the aims of all individuals is rather that the constitutional order should realize the principles of justice. And if the Aristotelian Principle is sound, this collective activity must be experienced as a good. We have seen that the moral virtues are excellences, attributes of the person that it is rational for persons to want in themselves and in one another as things appreciated for their own sake, or else as exhibited in activities so enjoyed. Now it is clear that these excellences are display in the public life of a well-ordered society. Therefore the companion principle to the Aristotelian Principle implies that human appreciate and enjoy these attributes in one another as they are manifested in cooperating to affirm just institutions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
It follows that the collective activity of justice in the preeminent form of human flourishing. For given favourable conditions, it is by maintaining these public arrangements that persons best express their nature and achieve the widest regulative excellences of which each is capable. At the same time just institutions allow for and encourage the diverse internal life of associations in which individuals realize their more particular aims. Thus the public realization of justice is a value of community. A well-ordered society does not do away with the division of labour in the most general sense. To be sure, the worst aspects of this division can be surmounted: no one need be servilely dependent on others and made to choose between monotonous and routine occupation which are deadening to human thought and sensibility. Each can be offered a variety of tasks so that the different elements of one’s nature find a suitable expression. However, even when work is meaningful for all, we cannot overcome, nor should we wish to, our dependence on others. In a fully just society persons seek their good on ways peculiar to themselves, and they rely upon their associates to do things they could not have done, as well as things they might have done but did not. It is tempting to suppose that everyone might fully realize one’s powers and that some at least can become complete exemplars of humanity. However, this is impossible. It is a feature of human sociability that we are by ourselves but parts of what we might be. We must look to others to attain the excellences that we must leave aside, or lack altogether. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The collective activity of society, the many associations and the public life of the largest community that regulates the, sustains our efforts and elicits our contribution. Yet the good attained from the common culture far exceeds our work in the sense that we cease to be mere fragments: that art of ourselves that we directly realize is joined to a wider and just arrangement the aims of which we affirm. The division of labour is overcome not by each becoming complete in oneself, but by willing and meaningful work within a just social union of social union in which all can freely participate as they so incline. The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God, can not be frustrated, neither can they come to naught, for God does not walk in crooked paths. Remember, remember, that it is not the work of God that is frustrated, but the work of humans. For although a human may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet, if one boasts in one’s own strength, and follows after the dictates of one’s own will, one must fall and insure the vengeance of a just God upon one. Behold, you have been intrusted with these things, but how strict were your commandments. And remember, also, the promises which were made to you, if you did not transgress them. Clouds are flowing in the river, waves are flying in the sky. Life is laughing in pebble. Does a pebble ever die? Flowers grow out of the Earth, such a miracle to see. What seems dead and what seems dying makes for butterflies to be. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Life is laughing in a pebble, flowers bathe in morning dew. Dust is dancing in my footsteps, and I wonder who is who. Clouds are flowing in the river, clouds are drifting in my teas, on a never-ending journey, what a miracle to be! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for is name alone is exalted. His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto Hi people, praise to all His faithful ones, to the children of America, a people near to Him. Hallelujah. Ascribe unto the Lord, ye ministering Angels, ascribe unto the Lord glory and power. Render unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thundereth! The Lord is over the great waters. The voice of the Lord is mighty; the voice of the Lord is fully of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord shattereth the cedars of Tahoe. He maketh the mountains leap like a calf, Tahoe and Sacramento like a wild ox. The voice of the Lord causeth the desert to tremble; the Lord maketh the desert a Heavenly temple. The voice of the Lord maketh the oak trees dance, and strippeth the forest bare; while in His Temple everything proclaims His glory. The Lord was King at the Flood; the Lord shall remain King forever. May the Lord give strength unto His people; may the Lord bless His people with peace. There is no other way to settle doubts concerning the soul with incontestable certainty than the way of getting personal knowledge of it by a mystical glimpse. Even when a human denies the Overself and thinks it out of one’s view of life, one is denying and thinking by means of the Overself’s own power—attenuated and reflected though it be. One is able to reject the divine presence with one’s mind only because it is already in one’s mind. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!
Welcome to Cresleigh Homes, America’s Favourite! Our homes are designed for seamless integration between indoors and outdoors. The colors, the trim, the sightlines – everything combines to make you feel like you’re experiencing the best of both worlds – at the same time! See more pictures from our Brighton Station Res 4 model via the link in profile. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
We Cannot Shift the Responsibility for What We Do on to Others!
It is not only that you cannot go home again; you cannot pretend to be from a place you only visited. While imaginetic centers concentrate on partial images of tomorrow, defining possible futures for a single industry, an organization a city or its subsystems, however, we also need sweeping, visionary ideas about the society as a whole. Multiplying our images of possible futures is important; but these images need to be organized, crystallized into structured form. In the past, utopian literature did this for us. It played a practical, crucial role in ordering human’s dreams about alterative futures. Today we suffer for lack of utopian ideas around which to organize competing images of possible futures. Most traditional utopias picture simple static societies—id est, societies that have nothing in common with super-age of information. B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two,the model for several existing experimental communes, depicts a pre-industrial way of life—small, close to the Earth, built on farming and handcraft. Even those two brilliant anti-utopias, Brave New World and 1984, now seem oversimple. Both describe societies based on high technology and low complexity: the machines are sophisticated but the social and culture relationships are fixed and deliberately simplified. Today we need powerful new utopian and anti-utopian concepts that look forward to super-age of informationism, rather than backward to simpler societies. These concepts, however, can no longer be produced in the old way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
First, no book, by itself, is adequate to describe a super-age of information future in emotionally compelling terms. Each conception of a super-age of information utopia or anti-utopia needs to be embodied in many forms—films, plays, noels and works of art-rather than a single work of fiction. Second, it may now be too difficult for any individua writer, no matter how gifted, to described a convincingly complex future. We need, therefore, a revolution in the production of utopias: collaborative utopianism. We need to construct “utopia factories.” One way might be to assemble a small group of top social scientists—an economist, a sociologist, an anthropologist, and so on—asking them to work together, even live together, long enough to hammer out among themselves a set of well-defined values on which they believe a truly super-age of information utopia society might be based. Each member of the team might then attempt to describe in nonfiction form a sector of an imagined society built on these values. What would its family be like? Its economy, laws, religion, pleasures, youth culture, music, art, its sense of time, its degree of differentiation, its psychological problems? By working together and ironing out inconsistencies, where possible, a comprehensive and adequately complex picture might be drawn of a seamless, temporary form of the super-age of information. At this point, with the completion of detailed analysis, the project would move to the fiction stage. Novelists, film-makers, science fiction writers and others, working closely with psychologists, could prepare creative works about the lives of individual characters in the imagined society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Meanwhile, other groups could be at work on counter-utopias. While Utopia A might stress materialist, success-oriented values, Utopia B might base itself on sensual, hedonistic values, C on the primacy of aesthetic values, D on individualism, E on collectivism, and so forth. Ultimately, a stream of books, plays, film, and television programs would flow from this collaboration between art, social science and futurism, thereby educating large numbers of people about the cost and benefits of the various proposed utopias. Finally, if social imagination is in short supply, we are even more lacking in people willing to subject utopian ideas to systematic test. More and more young people, in their dissatisfaction with the age of information, are experimenting with their own lives, forming utopian communities, trying new social arrangements, from group marriage to living-learning communities. Today, as in the past, the weight of established society comes down hard on the visionary who attempts to practice, as well as merely preach. Rather than ostracizing utopians, we should take advantage of their willingness to experiment, encourage them with money, if not respect. Most of today’s “intentional communities” or utopian colonies, however, reveal a powerful preference for the past. These may be of value to the individuals in them, but the society as a whole would be better served by utopian experiments based on super- rather than pre-industrial forms. Instead of a communal farm, why not a computer software company whose program writers live and work all in one residential neighbourhood? #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Why not an education technology company whose members pool their money and merge their families? Instead of raising radishes or crafting sandals, why not an oceanographic research installation organized along utopian lines? Why not a group medical practice that takes advantage of the latest medical technology but whose members accept modest pay and pool their profits to run a completely new-style medical school? Why not recruit living groups to try out the proposals of the utopia factories? In short, if we base our experiments on the technology and society of tomorrow rather than that of the past, we can use utopianism as a tool rather than an escape. And once done, why not the most rigorous, scientific analysis of the results? The findings could be priceless, were they to save us from mistakes or lead us toward more workable organizational forms for industry, education, family life or politics. Such imaginative explorations of possible futures would deepen and enrich our scientific study of probable futures. They would lay a basis for the radical forward extension of the society’s time horizon. They would help us apply social imagination to the future of futurism itself. Indeed, with these as a background, we must consciously begin to multiply the scientific future-sensing organs of society. Scientific futurist institutes must be spotted like nodes in a loose network throughout the entire governmental structure in the techno-societies, so that in every department, local or national, some staff devotes itself systematically to scanning the probable long-term future in its assigned field. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Futurists should be attached to every political party, university, corporation, professional association, trade union and student organization. We need to train thousands of young people in the perspectives and techniques of scientific futurism, inviting them to share in the exciting venture of mapping probable futures. We also need national agencies to provide technical assistance to local communities in creating their own futurist groups. And we need a similar center, perhaps jointly funded by American and European foundations, to help incipient futurist centers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We are in a race between rising levels of uncertainty produced by the acceleration of change, and the need for reasonably accurate images of what at any instant is the most probable future. The generation of reliable images of the most probable future thus becomes a matter of the highest national, indeed, international urgency. As the globe is itself dotted with future-sensors, we might consider creating a great international institute, a World futures data bank. Such an institute, staffed with top caliber men and women from all the sciences and social sciences, would take as its purpose the collection and systematic integration of predictive reports generated by scholars and imaginative thinkers in all the intellectual disciplines all over the World. Of course, those working in such an institute would know that they could never create a single, static diagram of the future. Instead, the product of their effort would be constantly changing geography of the future, a continually re-created overarching image based on the best predictive work available. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The men and women engaged in this work would know that they must work with inadequate data; they would appreciate the difficulties inherent in exploring the uncharted territories of tomorrow. However, humans already know more about the future than they have ever tried to formulate and integrate in any systematic and scientific way. Attempts to bring this knowledge together would constitute one of the crowing intellectual efforts in history—and one of the most worthwhile. Only when decision-makers are armed with better forecasts of future events, when by successive approximation we increase the accuracy of forecast, will our attempts to manage change improve perceptibly. For reasonably accurate assumptions about the future are a precondition for understanding the potential consequence of our own actions. And without such understanding, the management of change is impossible. If the humanization of the planner is the first stage in the strategy of social futurism, therefore, the forward extension of our time horizon is the second. To transcend technocracy, we need not only to reach beyond our economic philistinism, but to open our minds to more distant futures, both probable and possible. One consequence of trying to be objective, of attempting to frame our moral conceptions and judgments from a shared point of view, is that we are more likely to reach agreement. Indeed, ceteris paribus (other things equal), the preferred description of the initial situation is that which introduces the greatest convergence of opinion. It is partly for this reason that we accept the constraints of a common standpoint, since we cannot reasonably expect our views to fall into line when they are affected by the contingencies of our different circumstances. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
However, of course our judgments will not coincide on all questions, and in fact many is not most social issues may still be insoluble, especially if viewed in their full complexity. This is why the numerous simplifications of justice as fairness are acknowledged. We have only to recall the reasons for such notions as the veil of ignorance, pure procedural justice (as opposed to allocative justice), lexical ordering, the division of the basic structure into two parts, and so on. Taken all together the parties hope that these and other devices will simplify political and social questions so that the resulting balance of justice, made possible by the greater consensus, outweighs what may have been lost by ignoring certain potentially relevant aspects of moral situations. The complexity of problems of justice is up to the persons in the original position to decide. Although ethical differences are bound to remain, seeing the social World from the original position does permit essential understandings to be reached. The acceptance of the principles of right and justice forges the bonds of civic friendship and establishes the basis of comity amidst the disparities that persist. Citizens are able to recognize one another’s good faith and desire for justice even though agreement may occasionally break down on constitutional questions and most certainly on many issues of policy. However, unless there existed a common perspective, the assumption of which narrowed differences of opinion, reasoning and argument would be pointless and we would have no rational grounds for believing in the soundness of our convictions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is clear that this interpretation of autonomy and objectivity depends upon the theory of justice. The idea of the original position is used to give a consistent rendering of both notions. Of course, if it is believed that the principles of justice would not be chosen, the content of these conceptions would have to be suitably altered. One who holds that the principle of utility would be consented to thinks that our autonomy is expressed by following this criterion. Nevertheless, the general will be the same, and both autonomy and objectivity are still explicated by reference to the initial situation. However, some have characterized autonomy and objectivity in an entirely different way. They have suggested that autonomy is the complete freedom to form our moral opinions and that the conscientious judgment of every moral agent ought absolutely to be respected. Objectivity is then attributed to those judgments which satisfy all the standards that the agent oneself has in one’s liberty decided are relevant. These standards may or may not have anything to do with taking up a common point of view that others might reasonably be expected to share; nor of course is the corresponding idea of autonomy connected with such a perspective. I mention these other interpretations only to indicate by contrast the nature of the contract doctrine. From the standpoint of justice as fairness it is not true that the conscientious judgements of each person ought absolutely to be respected; not is it true that individuals are completely free from their moral convictions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
If they mean that, having arrived at our moral opinions conscientiously (as we believe), we always have a claim to be allowed to act on them, these contentions are mistaken. The problem here is that of our deciding how one is to answer those who strive to act as their erring conscience directs them. How do we ascertain that their conscience and not ours is mistaken, and under what circumstances can they be compelled to desist? Now the answer to these questions is found by ascending to the original position: when one seeks to impose on us conditions that violate the principles to which we would each consent in that situation, a person’s conscience is misguided. And when the conflict is viewed from that perspective, we can resist one’s plans in those ways that would be authorized. We are not literally to respect the conscience of an individual. Rather we are to respect one as a person and we do this by limiting one’s actions, when this proves necessary, only as the principles we would both acknowledge permit. In the original position the parties agree to be held responsible for the conception of justice that is chosen. There is no violation of our autonomy so long as is principles are properly followed. Moreover, these principles stipulate that on many occasions we cannot shift the responsibility for what we do on to others. Those in authority are accountable for the policies they pursue and the instructions they lay down. And those who acquiesce in carrying out unjust commands or in abetting evil deigns cannot in general plead that they did not know better or that the fault rests solely with those in higher positions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
The details concerning these matters belong to partial compliance theory. The essential point here is that the principles that best conform to our nature as free and equal rational beings themselves establish our accountability. Otherwise autonomy is likely to lead to a mere collision of self-righteous wills, and objectivity to the adherence to a consistent yet idiosyncratic system. God has told us through His prophets that we are free to choose between good and evil. We may choose liberty and eternal life by following Jesus Christ. We are also free to choose captivity and death by following Satan. “Wherefore, humans are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto humans. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all humans, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all humans might be miserable like unto himself,” reports 2 Nephi 2.27. In our premortal life we have moral agency. One purpose of Earth life is to show what choices we will make. “And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of humans, after he had created our first parents, and the beast of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto humans that they should act for themselves. Wherefore humans could not act for oneself save it should be that ne was enticed by the one,” reports 2 Nephi 2.15-16. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If we are forced to choose the right, we would not be able to show what we would choose for ourselves. Also, we are happier doing things when we have made our own choices. Agency was one of the principal issues to arise in the premotal Council in Heaven. It was one of the main causes of the conflict between the followers of Christ and the followers of Satan. Satan said, “Behold, here am I, send me, I will by thy son, and I will redeem all humankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honour,” reports Moses 4.1. In saying this, he “rebelled against God and sought to destroy the agency of human.” Reports Moses 4.3. His offer was rejected, and he was cast out of Heaven with his followers. “And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil—for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, “Give me thine honour, which is my power; and also a third part of the hosts of Heaven turned he away from me because of the agency; and they were thrust down, and this came the devil and his angels,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 29.36-37. Agency makes our life on Earth a period of testing. When planning the mortal creation of His children, God said, “We will prove [test] them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” reports Abraham 3.25. Without the gift of agency, we would have been unable to show our Heavenly Father whether we would do all that He commanded us. Because we are able to choose, we are responsible for our actions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
When we choose to live according to God’s plan for us, our agency is strengthened. Right actions increase our power to make more right choices. “And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto oneself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto oneself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free. He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored,” reports Helaman 14.30-31. As we obey each of our Father’s commandments, we grow in wisdom and strength of character. Our faith increases. We find it easier to make right choices. We began to make choices as spirit children in our Heavenly Father’s presence. Our choices there made us worthy to come to Earth. Our Heavenly Father wants us to grow in faith, power, knowledge, wisdom, and all other good things. If we keep His commandments and make right choices, we will learn and understand. We will become like Him. “One that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.28. In times of social doubt and loss of faith in long established values, there is a tendency to fall back on the virtues of integrity: truthfulness and sincerity, lucidity and commitment, or, as some say, authenticity. If no one knows what is true, at least we can make our beliefs our own way and not adopt them as handed to us by others. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
If the traditional moral rules are no longer relevant and we cannot agree which ones should take their place, we can in any event decide with a clear head how we mean to act and stop pretending that somehow or other it is already decided for us and we must accept this or that authority. Now of course the virtues of integrity are virtues, and among the excellences of free persons. Yet while necessary, they are not sufficient; for their definition allows for mist any content: a tyrant might display these attributes to a high degree, and by doing so exhibit a certain charm, not deceiving oneself by political pretenses and excuses of fortune. It is impossible to construct a moral view from these virtues alone; being virtues of form they are in a sense secondary. However, joined to the appropriate conception of justice, one that follows for autonomy and objectivity correctly understood, they come into their own. The idea of the original position, and the principles chosen there, show how this is achieved. A well-ordered society affirms that autonomy of persons and encourages the objectivity of their considered judgments of justice. Any doubts that its members may entertain about the soundness of their moral sentiments when they reflect upon how these dispositions were acquired may be dispelled by seeing that their convictions match the principles which would be chosen in the original position or, if they do not, by revising their judgments so that they do. However, Christians should not unwarily plunge into the political marshlands, thinking they will drain the swamp. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
There are traps. Political classics use strategies to curry the favour of disparate special-interest groups, one by one, assembling voting blocs into a surprise majority. They often write off the marginalized groups like people of certain ethnic groups or status, like the disabled and/or senior citizens, but reach out to popular causes or traditional supporters in business and political party; they ignore people who do not have much of a voice, but exploit whatever allies that will allow themselves to be cultivated. Then key leaders are invited to the White House, following a scenario staged for maximum benefit. They are allowed to dine with politicians in the executive dining room located in the basement of the West Wing. Guest are escorted past saluting guards, down a long corridor lined with dramatic photographs of the president in action, then pause at the door of the dining room, where the situation room is pointed out. Everyone knows of the legendary super-secret national-security nerve center. The very words conjure up images of map covered walls, whirring computers, and a bevy of generals studying the movements of other nations. (Actually, it is nothing more than a large, crowded office with some communications equipment and old charts on the wall; the real command centers have been moved to the Pentagon after World War II.) The executive dining room is paneled in rich, hand-rubbed mahogany, lined with a waiting row of red-jacket Navy stewards. Seated at the dozen tables, huddled in conversation, are most of the cabinet and senior staff. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The dramatic effect overwhelms even the staunchest adversary. Some people who have never been to the White House before will be so impressed that during their first lunch they will declare their allegiance to help in your campaign. When you properly seduce people, they will willingly sign up to get played. Most people want to be razzle dazzled and made to feel special, even if they know it is temporary and not authentic. And of course, if the does not sell them, then the crowd is walked upstairs to the Oval Office to mee the president. The president is the master at the game. He will always give his dazzled visitor gold-plated cuff links with the presidential seal. The person will be so overwhelmed as the president leaves almost bowing, not more than sixty seconds later. It is not easy to resist the allure of the Oval Office. All kind of groups are taken to see the president, from friendly cattlemen to sophisticated educators enraged over budget cuts or the pandemic. It is always the same. In the reception room they rehearse their angry lines and reassure one another, “I’ll tell him what’s going on. He’s got to do something.” When the assistant comes to escort the group in, they set their jaws and march toward the door. However, once it swings open, the assistant announcing, “The president will see you,” it is as if they have suddenly sniffed some intoxicating fragrance. Most people become as self-conscious as Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden after eating the forbidden fruit about even stepping on the blue carpet on which is sculpted the Great Seal of the United State of America. And the president’s voice and presence fills the room. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Invariably, the lions of the waiting room become the lambs of the Oval Office. No one ever shows outward hostility. Most, except the labour leaders, forget their best-rehearsed lines. They nod when the president speaks, and in those rare instances when they disagree, they do so apologetically, assuring the president that they personally respect his opinion. And that is why the fake news media is used to spread propaganda. People do not realize how powerful the president is until they meet him. They have no idea how blessed they will feel in the ornate White House, it is like their minds have been erased and they are under a spell. Ironically, none are more complaint than the religious leaders. Of all people, they should be the most aware of the sinful nature of humans and the least overwhelmed by pomp and protocol. However, theological knowledge sometimes wilts in the face of Worldly power. That is why meetings for evangelical groups, denominational councils, and individual religious leaders are frequently scheduled. The weekly church services scheduled most Sundays for the East Room provide great opportunities as well. To select the preacher, it is determined who will give the White House the greatest impact—politically, that is, not spiritually. Many people in the White House are nominal Christians at best and have no way to judge the spiritual. And there are always two hundred or more seats to be filled, the tickets are like keys to the political kingdom. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Then there are invitations to social functions and state dinners. The quota for this event is filled with the support from people the White House covets the most. It is difficult to resist the allure of the most regal of events, the state dinner, held in honour of visiting World leaders. Each of the twelve tables seat ten of the most influential people in America—Supreme Court justices, senators, ambassadors, film stars, cabinet members—and targets for political support. For instance, if the White House needs several electoral-rich Northeastern and Midwestern states to win an election, one may call a prominent Christian leader whose influence is particularly great in that region and invite one for a private dinner cruise with the president. As they arrive at the Washington Navy Yard, sailors in white dress uniforms line the gangway at attention and salute as the crew boards the presidential yacht, Sequoia. Its mahogany sides and brass fitting make it sparkle like the most grand Victorian mansion as it eases away from the dock. The Washington skyline fades into the distance, and the president escorts the guests to dinner in the main salon. White House china, silver, and crystal appoint the starched white tablecloth; stewards scurry back, back, forth and forth serving chateaubriand and the vintage La Fete Rothschild. The dinner discussion is as impressive as the food. When the guest musters the courage to raise points of concern to the religious community, the president shows an amazing grasp of even the intricate details of those issues (being briefed thoroughly by a dutiful assistant that afternoon). Every now and then, the president will stop and say to his assistant, “I want this done. This man is right. You order the attorney general to take care of that tomorrow morning.” Then he will resume the conversation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
It is all sham, of course. The president means what he is saying, and the people present even think some of the things will be accomplished. However, whatever else happens, that religious leader is convinced that the president is on his side. You can attract more bees with flowers, than force and daggers. Before arriving at Mount Vernon, the president will then lead the crew to the foredeck and stand at attention as the colours are retired, his hand over his heart. The guest will do the same. When the bugle has faded, the ship will be docked; a waiting Marine helicopter takes their new friend back to the airport, and other returns the president and assistant back to the White House lawn. It is wrong to suggest that the leader is unduly influenced; but even such a wise, honourable, and religious man cannot help but be impressed by the trappings of power. He gets what he wants—the president’s ear on certain key issues. And they get what they want. The president’s prominent public friendship with this leader sends a powerful sign to millions of voters. And in the fall, it can allow one to carry more than 58 percent of the vote in many Northeastern and Midwestern precincts that have never before voted for a Republican. This is not to suggest that the White House is engaged in a sinister conspiracy to corrupt the church It is simply the way political systems work. People in power use power to keep themselves in power. Even if they are genuinely interested in a special-interest group’s agenda—or naturally disposed to their position—they will work that relationship for everything they can get out of it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
In totalitarian regimes some officials are so unscrupulous as to feign religious interest simply to ensnare Christians. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega maintains two offices. When he is receiving church people or American visitors, he sits in a Bible-laden office adored with crucifixes. When he meets with government officials or visitors from socialist nations, he occupies an office displaying Marxist slogans and pictures of such revolutionary heroes as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. I am not advocating that religious groups of leaders boycott the White House or the palaces and parliaments of the World. That is where the political action is and Christian need to influence policies for justice and righteousness. That is in the best biblical tradition of Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, Daniel, and a host of others—though many prophets clearly preferred the desert to the palace. However, Christians (and others as well) need to do so with eyes open, aware of the snares. The demon inherent in every [political] part is at all times ready enough to disguise oneself as the Holy Ghost. Governments, to have a rational foundation for the control of the masses, are obliged to pretend that they are professing the highest religious teaching known to humans Consider several of the most dangerous pitfalls awaiting the unwary. The church is not and must never allow itself to become another special-interest group lined up at the public trough. For in doing so, it would sacrifice its claim to objective ethical concern which [is the church’s] chief political as well as moral resource. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
If the church were to become a mere interest group, it would then be measured and honoured according to political and not moral criteria. The great strength of the American church is that it is not linked to a partisan cause. By way of contrast, European people reject the clergy less because they are representatives of God than because they are friends of authority. A second danger is the politics can be like the tabloid girlfriend, or the lead model for a popular brand who forgets they are merely playing a role and no more than a public servant. Christian leaders who are courted by political forces may soon begin to overestimate their own importance. The head of one large international relief agency mistakenly came to believe that heads of state welcomed him because of who he was rater than what he represented. It was not delusions of power. He left his family and was eventually removed from his position—after doing great harm to the cause he had served for much of his life. A side effect of this delusion is that rather than lose their access to political influence, some church leaders have surrendered their independence. “If I speak out against this policy, they reason, “I will not get invited to dinner and my chances to become minister will be cut off.” While such rationalizing is understandable, the result is exactly the opposite; they keep their place but lose their voice and thus any possibility of holding government to moral account. In this way the gospel becomes hostage to the political fortunes of a particular movement. This is the third and perhaps most dangerous snare. Both liberals and conservatives have made this mistake of aligning their spiritual goals with a particular political agenda. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
People of faith must never be made to feel that if they disagree with the pastor’s partisan politics, that they are not people of faith. Several years ago, a prominent leader of a large Christian mission visited a developing nation ruled by an authoritarian leader. Th leader was friendly to the United States of America and held a regal dinner party at the palace honouring the mission executive. The awestruck visitor publicly and effusively praised the head of state. Months later when that head of state was deposed, the Christian’s mission work in that country was deposed right along with him. Inevitably, this kind of political alignment compromises the gospel. All successful Christian social theory in the immediate future must be based on this truth: the religion be not made an instrument of political ideology. Because it tempts one to water down the truth of the gospel, ideological alignment, whether on the left or right, accelerates the church’s secularization. When the church aligns itself politically, it gives priority to the compromises and temporal successes of the political World rather than its Christian confession of eternal truth. And when the church gives up its rightful place as the conscience of the culture, the consequences for a society can be horrific. As we have seen, many German churches in the 1930s allied themselves with the new nationalistic movement. One churchman even described the Nazis as a “gift and miracle of God.” It was the confessing church, not the politically-minded church, which retained its orthodoxy and thus resisted the perceived evils of Mr. Hitler’s state. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Today’s liberation theologians have fallen into this trap, putting ideology ahead of orthodoxy. It began, as did many Christian political movements, with noble intentions. Righteously outraged at injustices to the poor in so-called Christian cultures, priests and church workers began to organize communities for actions. So far, so good. However, as those organizations failed to solve problems, frustrations grew; attacks on structures became more strident. When Christians put economic issues ahead of spiritual salvation, they are embracing economic determinism; it is then but a short step to revolutionary politics, Marxism, and the fatal mistake of believing the Kingdom of God can be ushered in by political means, as Father Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan government official, well illustrates: “A World of perfect communism is the Kingdom of God on Earth.” Does all this mean that Christian cannot work with political groups? Certainly not. In fact, often Christians must work with coalitions of like-minded people who have different motivations. However, in order to maintain their Christian identity, they must inwardly detach themselves from the motivations and ultimate goals of their ideological colleagues. In World War II, for example, a devout Christian might have fought to stop the ethnical cleansing of Nazism and the Holocaust because one believed God commanded that the state is to restrain evil. Next to one in the same position might have been a soldier fighting solely for national pride or honour. Both would have been shooting at the same enemy, but for different reasons. Today Christians may find themselves suspect—I have experienced this myself—to the very people on whose side they are fighting. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
However, this is the price they must pay to preserve their independence and not be beholden to any political ideological alignment. Only a church free of any outside domination can be the conscience of society and hold government morally accountable before God to live up to its own claims. And as the church faithfully fulfills this role, even the most determined of tyrants topple. Justice without mercy is tyranny, and mercy without justice is weakness. Justice without love is pure socialism, and love without justice is baloney. “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house they were sitting,” reports Acts 2.12. Receive the power of Pentecost for increase, multiplication, and miracles. If you have been asking God for a supernatural turnaround in your life, healing, deliverance, or a financial breakthrough know that Miracles are coming! Increase is coming! Multiplication is coming! The great sea has set me in motion. Set me adrift, and I move as a fish in the river. The arch of sky and mightiness of storms encompasses me, and I am left trembling with joy. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee, God, and Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand, and satisfies every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in al His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all humans bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Bear in Mind that Even Impossibility is Often Temporary!
When you look directly at an insane person, all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that one is insane, which is not to see one at all. To see one, you must see what one saw. In a World of accelerant change, next year is nearer to us than next month was in a more leisurely era. This radically altered fact of life must be internalized by decision-makers in industry, government and elsewhere. Their time horizons must be extended. To plan for a more distant future does not mean to tie oneself to dogmatic programs. Plans can be tentative, fluid, subject to continual revision. Yet flexibility need not mean shortsightedness. To transcend technocracy, our social horizons must reach decades, even generations, into the future. This requires more than a lengthening of our formal plans. It means an infusion of the entire society, from top to bottom, with a new socially aware future-consciousness. One of the healthiest phenomena of recent years has been the sudden proliferation of organizations devoted to the study of the future. This recent development is, in itself, a homeostatic response of society to the speed-up of change. Within a few year we have seen the creation of future-oriented think tanks like the Institute for the Future; the Commission on the Year 2000, and the Harvard Program on Technology and Society; the appearance of futurist journals in England, France, Italy, Germany and the United States of America; the spread of university courses in forecasting and related subjects; the spread of university courses forecasting and related subjects; the convocation of international futurist meetings in Oslo, Berlin, and Kyoto; the coalescence groups like Futuribles, Europe 2000, Mankind 2000, the World Future Society. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Future centers are to be found in West Berlin, in Prague, in London, in Moscow, Rome and Washington, in Caracas, even in the remote jungles of Brazil at Belem and Belo Horizonte. Unlike conventional technocratic planners whose horizons usually extend no further than a few years into tomorrow, these groups concern themselves with change fifteen, twenty-five, even fifty years in the future. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. The management of change is the effort to convert certain possibilities into probables, in pursuit of agreed-on preferables. Determining the probably calls for science of futurism. Delineating the possible calls for an art of futurism. Defining the preferable calls for a politics of futurism. The Worldwide futurist movement today does not yet differentiate clearly among these functions. Its heavy emphasis is on the assessment of probabilities. Thus in many of these centers, economists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologist, physicists, operations researchers and others invent and apply methods for forecasting future probabilities. At what date could aquaculture feed half the World’s population? What are the odds that electric cars will supplant gasoline automobile in the next fifteen years? What changes are most probably in leisure patterns, urban governments, race relations? Stressing the interconnectedness of disparate events and trends, scientific futurists are also devoting increasing attention to the social consequences of technology. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The Institute for the Future is, among other things, investigating the probable social and culture effects of advanced communications technology. The group at Harvard is concerned with social problems likely to arise from bio-medical advances. Futurists in Brazil examine the probable outcomes of various economic development policies. The rationale for studying probable futures is compelling. It is impossible for an individual to live through a single working day without making thousands of assumptions about the probable future. The commuter who calls to say, “I will be home at six” bases one’s prediction on assumptions about the probability that the train will run on time. When mother sends Johnny to school, she tacitly assumes the school will be there when he arrives. Just as a pilot cannot steer a ship without projecting its course, we cannot steer our personal lives without continually making such assumptions, consciously or otherwise. Societies, too, construct an architecture of premises about tomorrow. Decision-makers in industry, government, politics, and other sectors of society could not function without them. In periods of turbulent change, however, these socially-shaped images of the probable future become less accurate. The breakdown of control in society today is directly linked to our inadequate images of probable futures. Of course no one can “know” the future in any absolute sense. We can systematize and deepen our assumptions and attempt to assign probabilities to them. Even this is difficult. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Attempts to forecast the future inevitably alter it. Similarly, once a forecast is disseminated, the act of dissemination (as distinct from investigation) also produces a perturbation. Forecasts tend to become self-fulfilling or self-defeating. As the time horizon is extended into the more distant future, we are forced to rely on informed hunch and guesswork. Moreover, certain unique events—assassinations, for example—are, for all intents and purposes, unpredictable at present (although we can forecast classes of such events). Despite all thus, it is time to erase, once and for all, the popular myth that the future is “unknowable.” The difficulties ought to chasten and challenge, not paralyze. We should admit into our thinking the idea of approximations, that is, that there are varying degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy of estimate. A rough idea of what lies ahead is better than none, and for many purposes extreme accuracy is wholly unnecessary. We are not, therefore, as helpless in dealing with future probabilities as mist people assume. The British social scientist Donald G. MacRae correctly assert that “modern sociologists can in fact make a number of comparatively short term and limited predictions with a good deal of assurance.” Apart from the standard methods of social science, however, we are experimenting with potentially powerful new tools for probing the future. These range from complex ways of extrapolating existing trends, to the construction of highly intricate models, games and simulations, the preparation of detailed speculative scenarios, the systematic study of history for relevant analogies, morphological research, relevance analysis, contextual mapping and the like. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
In comprehensive investigation of technological forecasting, Dr. Erich Jantsch, formerly a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a research associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has identified scores of distinct new techniques either in use or in the experimental stage. The Institute for the Future in Middletown, Connecticut, a prototype of the futurist think tank, is a leader in the design of new forecasting tools. One of these is Delphi—a method largely developed by Dr. Olaf Helmer, the mathematician-philosopher who is one of the founders of the IFF. Delphi attempts to deal with very distant futures by making systematic use of the “intuitive” guesstimates of large numbers of experts. The work Delphi has led to a further innovation which has special importance in the attempt to prevent future shock by regulating the pace of change. Pioneered by Theodore J. Gordon of the IFF, and called Cross Impact Matrix analysis, it traces the effect of one innovation on another, making possible, for the first time, anticipatory analysis of complex chains of social, technological and other occurrences—and the rates at which they are likely to occur. We are, in short, witnessing a perfect extraordinary thrust toward more scientific appraisal of future probabilities, a ferment likely, in itself, to have a powerful impact on the future. It would be foolish to oversell the ability of science, as yet, to forecast complex events accurately. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Yet the danger today is not that we will overestimate our ability; the real danger is that we will under-utilize it. For even when our still-primitive attempts at scientific forecasting turn out to be grossly in error, the very effort helps us identify key variables in change, it helps clarify goals, and it forces more careful evaluation of policy alternatives. In these ways, if no others, probing the future pays off in the present. If we are to shift the planner’s time horizon and infuse the entire society with a greater sense of tomorrow, anticipating probably futures, however, is only part of what needs doing. For we must also vastly widen our conception of possible futures. To the rigorous discipline of science, we must add the flaming imagination of art. Today as never before we need a multiplicity of visions, dreams and prophecies—images of potential tomorrows. Before we can rationally decide which alternative pathways to choose, which cultural styles to pursue, we must first ascertain which are possible. Conjecture, speculation and the visionary view thus become as coldly practical a necessity as feet-on-the-floor “realism” was in an earlier time. This is why some of the World’s biggest and most touch-minded corporations, once living embodiment of presentism, today hire intuitive futurists, science fiction writers and visionaries as consultants. A gigantic European chemical company employs a futurist who combines a scientific background with training as a theologian. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
An American communications empire engages a future-minded social critic. A glass manufacturer searches for a science fiction writer to imagine the possible corporate forms of the future. Companies turn to these “blue-skyers” and “wild birds” not for scientific forecasts of probabilities, but for mind-stretching speculations about possibilities. Corporations must not remain the only agencies with access to such services. Local government, schools, voluntary associations and others also need to examine their potential futures imaginatively. One way to help them do so would be to establish in each community “imaginetic centers” devoted to technically assisted brainstorming. These would be places where people noted for creative imagination, rather than technical expertise, are brought together to examine present crises, to anticipate future crises, and to speculate freely, even playfully, about possible futures. What, for example, are the possible futures of urban transportation? Traffic is a problem involving the movement of humans and objects through spaces? To speculate about this question, an imaginetic center might enlist artists, sculptors, dancers, furniture designers, parking lot attendants, and a variety of other people who, in one way or another, manipulate space imaginatively. Such people, assembled under the right circumstances, would inevitably come up with ideas of which the technocratic city planners, the highway engineers and transit authorities have never dreamed of. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Musicians, people who live near airports, jackhammer people and subway conductors might well imagine new ways to organize, mask or suppress noise. Groups of young people might be invited to ransack their minds for previously unexamined approaches to urban sanitation, crowding, ethic conflict, care of the aged, or a thousand other present and future problems. In any such effort, the overwhelming majority of ideas put forward will, of course, be absurd, funny or technically impossible. Yet the essence of creativity is a willingness to play the fool, to toy with the absurd, only later submitting the stream of ideas to harsh critical judgment. The application of the imagination to the future thus requires an environment in which it is safe to err, in which novel juxtaposition of ideas can be freely expressed before being critically sifted. We need sanctuaries for social imagination. While all sorts of creative people ought to participate in conjecture about possible futures, they should have immediate access—in person or via telecommunications—to technical specialists, from acoustical engineers to zoologists, who could indicate when a suggestion is technically impossible (bearing in mind that even impossibility is often temporary). Scientific expertise can employ skilled specialists not to predict the future, but examine alternative futures to show the choices open. An appropriate model, for example, could help a group of imagineers visualize the impact on a city if its educational expenditures were to fluctuate—how this would affect, let us say, the transportation system, the theaters, the occupational structure and healthy of the community. Conversely, it could show how changes in these other factors might affect education. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The rushing stream of wild, unorthodox, eccentric or merely colorful ideas generated imagination must, after they have been expressed, be subjected to merciless screening. Only a tiny fraction of them will survive this filtering process. These few, however, could be of the utmost importance in calling attention to new possibilities that might otherwise escape notice. As we move from poverty toward affluence, politics changes from what mathematicians call a zero sum game into a non-zero sum game. In the first, if one player wins another must lost. In the second, all players can win. Finding non-zero sum solutions to our social problems requires all the imagination we can muster. A system for generating imaginative policy ideas could help us take maximum advantage of the non-zero opportunities ahead. If congruence fails for a well-ordered society, it seems bound to fail everywhere. On the other hand, it is by no means a foregone conclusion even in this instance that the right and the good are congruent. For this relation implies that the members of a well-ordered society, when they appraise their plan of life by the principles of rational choice, will decide to maintain their sense of justice as regulative of their conduct toward one another. The requisite match exists between the principles of justice that would be agreed to in the absence of information and the principles of rational choice that are not chosen at all and applied with full knowledge. Principles accounted for in strikingly different ways nevertheless fit together when those of justice are perfectly realized. Of course, this congruence has its explanation in how the contract doctrine is set up. However, the relation is not a matter oof course and its basis needs to be worked out. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
When we reflect on their psychological origins, we sometimes doubt the soundness of our moral attitudes. Thinking that these sentiments have arisen in situations marked say by submission to authority, we may wonder whether they should not be rejected altogether. Since the argument for the good of justice depends upon the members of a well-ordered society having an effective desire to act justly, we must allay these uncertainties. Imagine then that someone experiences the promptings of one’s moral sense as inexplicable inhibitions which for the moment one is unable to justify. Why should one not regard them as simply neurotic compulsions? If it should turn out that these scruples are indeed largely shaped an accounted for by the contingences of early childhood, perhaps by the course of our family history and class situation, and that there is nothing to add on their behalf, then there is surely no reason why they should govern our lives. However, of course to someone in a well-ordered society there are many things to say. One can point out to one the essential features of the development of the sentiment of justice and how eventually the morality of principles is to be understood. Moreover one’s moral education itself has been regulated by the principles of right and justice to which one would consent in an initial situation in which all have equal representation as moral persons. As we have seen, the more conception adopted is independent of natural contingencies and accidental social circumstances; and therefore the psychological process by which one’s moral sense has been acquired conform to principles that one oneself would choose under conditions that one would concede are fair and undistorted by fortune and happenstance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Nor can someone in a well-ordered society object to the practices of moral instruction that inculcate a sense of justice. For in agreeing to principles of right the parties in the original position at the same time consent to the arrangements necessary to make these principles effective in their conduct. Indeed, the adaptability of these arrangements to the limitations of human nature is an important consideration in choosing a conception of justice. Thus no one’s moral convictions are the result of coercive indoctrination. Instruction is throughout as reasoned as the development of understanding permits, just as the natural duty of mutual respect requires. None of the ideals, principles, and precepts upheld in the society takes unfair advantage of human weakness. A person’s sense of justice is not a compulsive psychological mechanism cleverly installed by those in authority in order to insure one’s unswerving compliance with rules designed to advance their interests. Nor is the process of education simply a casual sequence intended to bring about as an end result the appropriate moral sentiments. As far as possible each stage foreshadows in its teaching and explanations the conception of right and justice at which it aims and by reference to which we will later recognize that the moral standards presented to us are justified. These observations are evident consequences of the contract doctrine and the fact that its principles regulate the practices of moral instruction in a well-ordered society. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Following the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness, we can say that by acting from these principles persons are acting autonomously: they are acting from principles that they would acknowledge under conditions that best express their nature as free and equal rational beings. To be sure, these conditions also reflect the situation of individuals in the World and their being subject to the circumstances of justice. However, this simply means that the conception of autonomy is that fitting for human beings; the notion suited to superior or inferior natures is most likely different. Thus moral education is education for autonomy. In due course everyone will know why one would adopt the principles of justice and how they are derived from the conditions that characterize one’s being an equal in a society of moral persons. It follows that in accepting these principles on the basis we are not influenced primarily by tradition and authority, or the opinions of others. However necessary these agencies may be in order for us to reach complete understanding, we eventually come to hold a conception of right on reasonable grounds that we can set out independently for ourselves. Now on the contract view the notions of autonomy and objectivity are compatible: there is no antinomy between freedom and reason. Both autonomy and objectivity are characterized in a consistent way by reference to the original position. The idea of the initial situation is central to the whole theory and other basic notions are defined in terms of it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus acting autonomously is acting from principles that we would consent to as free and equal rational beings, and that we are to understand in this way. Also, these principles are objective. They are the principles that we would want everyone (including ourselves) to follow were we take up together the appropriate general point of view. The original position defines this perspective, and its conditions also embody those of objectivity: its stipulations express the restrictions on arguments that force us to consider the choice of principles unencumbered by the singularities of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The veil of ignorance prevents us from shaping our moral view to accord with our own particular attachments and interests. We do not look at the social order from our situation but take up a point of view that everyone can adopt on an equal footing. In this sense we look at our society and our place in its objectively: we share a common standpoint along with others and do not make our judgments from a personal slant. Thus our moral principles and convictions are objective to the extent that they have been arrived at and tested by assuming this general standpoint and by assessing the arguments for them by the restrictions expressed by the conception of the original position. The judicial virtues such as impartiality and considerateness are the excellences of intellect and sensibility that enable us to do these things well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If it moves the minds and hearts of an increasing number of humans, Christian faith may work wonders. However, if professed Christians forsake Heaven as their destination and come to fancy that the state may be converted into the terrestrial paradise—why they are less wise than Marx. Christians in politics can make a difference. Human plant, and God, using many people, brings the crop. In recent years many Christians have urged a more direct approach for bringing needed social change: simply elect Christians to political office. One spokes persons has even suggested a religious version of affirmative action; if, for example, 24 percent of the people are born again, then at least 24 percent of the officeholders should be born again. Others have argued that Christians should “take dominion” over government, with those in public office speaking “for God as well as for the American people.” On the surface this shortcut might seem to some an appealing answer to America’s declining morality. It is, however, simplistic and dangerous triumphalism. To suggest that electing Christians to public office will solve all public ills is not only presumptuous and theologically questionable, it is also untrue. Today’s misspent enthusiasm for political solutions to the moral problems of our culture arises from a distorted view of both politics and spirituality—too low a view of the power of a sovereign God and too high a view of the ability of humans. The idea that human systems, reformed by Christian influence, pave the road to the Kingdom—or at least, to revival—has the same utopia n ring that one finds in Marxist literature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
This idea about human systems, which are reformed by Christian influence being the path to the Kingdom of God also ignores the consistent lesson of history that shows that laws are most often reformed as a result of powerful spiritual movements. I know of no case where a spiritual movement was achieved by passing laws. In addition, history puts the lie to the notion that just because one is devout, one will be a just and wise ruler. Take the nineteenth-century leader who forged a unified Germany from a cluster of minor states. Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen was a committed Christian who regularly read the Bible, spoke openly of his devotion to God, and claimed divine guidance in response to prayer. “If I were no longer a Christian, I would not serve the king another hour,” he once declared. Yet Mr. Bismarck was also the ruthless architect of Deutaschland Uber Alles (Germany Over All), a Worldview that allegedly started two World wars. Historians describe Mr. Bismarck as a Machiavellian master of political duplicity who specialized in blood and iron. Power can be just as corrupting—or confusing—to the Christian as to the non-Christian. And the results in some ways are more horrible when power corrupts men or women who believe they have a divine mandate. Their injustices are then committed in God’s name. This is why an eminent conservative historian has suggested that “religious claims in politics should vary inversely with the power or prospects for power one has.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
It is a fair distinction: Prophets should make religious claims. Political leaders should not—otherwise they can become ayatollahs. So the first test for public office should not be a spiritual one. The celebrated claim that “the ability to hear from God should be the number one qualification of U.S. presidency” is dangerously misguided. The Church’s mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to elect politicians. The Church is neutral in matters of party politics. This applies in all of the many nations in which it is established. The Church encourages its members to play a role as responsible citizens in the communities, including become informed about issues and voting in elections. It expects its members to engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner, respecting the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters. Request candidates for office not to imply that their candidacy or platforms are endorsed by the Church, and reserves the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interest of the Church. Politicians, like those in any other specialized field, should be selected on the basis of their qualifications and abilities as well as on their moral character. Even in Israel’s theocracy, Jethro advised Moses to select “capable men…who fear God,” to help in governing the Jewish nation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Mr. Jethro’s advice makes sense. If terrorists were to take control of an airport, would we want police officers who were merely devout Christians handling the situation, or would we choose those who had specialized training in hostage negotiations? Luther had it right when he said he would rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian. The triumphalist mindset also fails to make the crucial distinction between a Christian’s function as a private citizen and as an officeholder. As private citizens, Christians are free to advocate their Christian view in any and every form. In American that is a fundamental constitutional right. Christian citizens should be activists about their faith, striving by their witness to “Christianize” their culture—not by the force of the sword, but by the force of their ideas. However, Christians elected to public office acquire a different set of responsibilities. Now they hold the power of the sword, which God has placed with government to preserve order and maintain justice. Now they act not for themselves but for all whom they serve. For this reason, they cannot use their office to evangelistically “Christianize” their culture. Their duty is to ensure justice and religious liberty for all citizens and beliefs. This does not mean they can compromise their faith or their first allegiance to God; they should speak freely of their Christian faith and witness Christian values in their lives. However, they cannot use their offices to seek a favoured position for Christianity of the church. “We have this treasure in Earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.7. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Christian state is one that gives no special public privilege to Christian citizens but seeks justice for all as a matter of principle. At the turn of the century a towering Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, was elected prime minister of the Netherlands. His opponents voiced fears of theocratic oppression. Instead, his administration was a model of tolerance and public pluralism as Kuyper affirmed proportional representation, that the legitimate rights of all be fully represented. If we Christians today understood this distinction between the role of the private Christians citizen and the Christian in government, they might sound less intimidating. If secularists understood correctly the nature of Christian public duty they would not fear, but welcome responsible Christian political involvement. If they keep the commandments of the Lord, I believe many of today’s adults will be active participants in temporal blessings. With prosperity will come a unique challenge—a test that will try many to their spiritual core. As you step into this new World of property and engage in converting your education and skills into financial success, you will always have to distinguish between wants and needs. You will have two choices. Will your motivation to build and acquire the blessings of the Lord be for personal gratification, for the recognition of humans, and for power, influence, and self-aggrandizement? Or will your motivation be to glorify God, to work to help usher in the growth and expansion of His Church? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Lord is not telling us that we should not be prosperous or that prosperity is a sin. On the contrary, He has always blessed His obedient children However, He is telling us that we should seek prosperity only after we seek, find, and serve Him. Then, because our hearts are right, because we love Him first and foremost, we will choose to invest our resources wisely in preparing for the Kingdom of God. If you choose to seek riches for the sake of riches, you will fall short. You will never be satisfied. You will be empty, never finding true joy and lasting happiness. The trial of your faith in the next few years will likely not be that you lack the material things of this World. Rather it will be in choosing what to do with the temporal blessing you receive. Every situation in human life can be approached from two possible points of view. The first is the limited one and is that of the personal self. The second is the larder one and is that of Universal Self. The larger and longer view always justifies itself in the end. Each Overself is like a circle whose center is in some individual but whose circumference is not in any individual. We must not imagine that the subordination of this personal identity leads to any loss of consciousness—rather the reverse. Humans become more, not less, for one emerges into the fullness and freedom of one Universal life. One thinks of oneself as: “I, A. B., am a point within the Overself,” whereas before one only thought: “I am A.B.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The higher self keeps the same kind of individuality without being separate that each facet of diamond keeps. The light which shines through it shines equally through all facets alike, remaining one and the same. The individuality is beyond personality—its level is higher. The one must prompt while the other must watch the pitiless destruction of its wishes and hopes, its values and desires, until only the pure being of individuality is left. It is a kind of impersonal being but it is not utterly devoid of all individuality. As a wave sinks back into the sea, so the consciousness which passes out of the personal self sinks back into its higher individuality. This is the general mind being our small personal minds, the one behind the many. God has saved for the final inning some of His strongest children, who will help bear off the Kingdom triumphantly. Birds nest in my arms, on my shoulder, behind my knees, by my heart there are quail, they must think I am a tree. The swans think I am a fountain, they all come down and drink when I walk. When sheep stroll by, they pass over me, and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat, the ants think I am the Earth, and humans think I am nothing. Believers shall declare the glory of Thy Kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of man His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His Kingdom. Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generation. The Lord upholdeth all who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. God will put you on the heart of someone to restore you and bless you big time, in the name of Jesus Christ! Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Those Who Can Give Justice are Owed Justice!
There is no yesterday, so what is left is today. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. The signs of the Kingdom of God are like a human planting a seed. We do our part; but then God makes the seed grow. For it is God who produces the signs of His Kingdom on this Earth. We are merely the instruments. The Kingdom of God will transform places of hopelessness in the kingdom of man. Justice and hope will be found where there was once only inequity and despair. When we consider the basis of equality, the features of human beings in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice, what are our relationships with other human persons supposed to be like? We examine what determines the range of application of conceptions of justice. We may distinguish three levels where the concept of equality applies. The first is to the administration of institutions as public systems of rules. In this case equality is essentially justice as regularity. It implies the impartial application and consistent interpretation of rules according to such precepts as to treat similar cases similarly (as defined by statutes and precedents) and the like. Equality at this level is the least controversial element in the commonsense idea of justice. The second and much more difficult application of equality is to the substantive structure of institutions. Here the meaning of equality is specified by the principles of justice which require that equal basic rights be assigned to all persons. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Presumably this excludes animals; they have some protection certainly but their status is not that of human beings. However, this outcome is still unexplained. We have yet to consider what sort of beings are owed the guarantees of justice. This brings us to the third level at which the question of equality arises. The natural answer seems to be that it is precisely the moral persons who are entitled to equal justice. Moral persons are distinguished by two features: first they are capable of having (and are assumed to have) a conception of their good (as expressed by a rational plan of life); and second they are capable of having (and are assumed to acquire) a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree. We use the characterization of the persons in the original position to single out the kind of beings to whom the principles chose apply. After all, the parties are though of as adopting these criteria to regulate their common institutions and their conduct toward one another; and the description of their nature enters into the reasoning by which these principles are selected. Thus equal justice is owed to those who have the capacity to take part in and to act in accordance with the public understanding of the initial situation. One should observe that moral personality is here defined as a potentiality that is ordinarily realized in due course. It is this potentiality which brings the claims of justice into play. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
We see, then, that the capacity for moral personality is a sufficient condition for being entitled to equal justice. This fact can be used to interpret the concept of natural rights. For one thing, it explains why it is appropriate to call by this name the rights that justice protects. These claims depend solely on certain natural attributes the presence of which can be ascertained by natural reason pursuing common sense methods of inquiry. The existence of these attributes and the claims based upon them is established independently from social conventions and legal norms. The propriety of the term “natural” is that is suggests the contrast between the rights identified by the theory of justice and the rights includes the idea that these rights are assigned in the first instance to persons, and that they are given a special weight. Claims easily overridden for other values are not natural rights. Now the rights protected by the first principle have both of these features in view of the priority rules. This justice as fairness has the characteristic marks of a natural rights theory. Not only does it ground fundamental rights on natural attributes and distinguish their bases from social norms, but it assigns rights to persons by principles of equal justice, these principles having a special force against which other values cannot normally prevail. Although specific rights are not absolute, the system of equal liberties is absolute practically speaking under favourable conditions. Nothing beyond the essential minimum is required. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Whether moral personality is also a necessary condition, I shall leave that aside. I assume that the capacity for a sense of justice is possessed by the overwhelming majority of humankind, and therefore this question does not raise a serious problem. That moral personality suffices to make one a subject of claims is the essential thing. We cannot go far wrong in supposing that the sufficient condition is always satisfied. Even if the capacity were necessary, it would be unwise in practice to withhold justice on this ground. The risk to just institutions would be too great. It should be stressed that the sufficient condition for equal justice, the capacity for moral personality, is not all stringent. When someone lacks the requisite potentiality either from birth or accident, this is regarded as a defect or deprivation. There is no race or recognized group of human beings that lacks this attribute. Only scattered individuals are without this capacity, or its realization to the minimum degree, and the failure to realize it is the consequence of unjust and impoverished social circumstances, of fortuitous contingencies. Furthermore, while individuals presumably have varying capacities for a sense of justice, this fact is not a reason for depriving those with a lesser capacity of the full protection of justice. Once a certain minimum is met, a person is entitled to equal liberty on a par with everyone else. A greater capacity for a sense of justice, as shown say in a greater skill and facility in applying the principles of justice and in marshaling arguments in particular cases, is a natural asset like any other ability. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The special advantages a person receives for its exercises are to be governed by the difference principle. Thus is some have a preeminent degree the judicial virtues of impartiality and integrity which are needed in certain positions, they may properly have whatever benefits should be attached to these offices. Yet the application of the principle of equal liberty is not affected by these differences. It is sometimes thought that basic rights and liberties should vary with capacity, but justice as fairness denies this: provided the minimum for moral personality is satisfied, a person is owed all the guarantees of justice. First of all, when considering the basis of equality, it may be objected that equality cannot rest n natural attributes. There is no natural feature with respect to which all human being are equal, that is, which everyone has (or which sufficiently many have) to the same degree. If we wish to hold a doctrine of equality, it might appear we must interpret it in another way, namely as a purely procedural principle. Thus to say that human beings are equal is to say that none has a claim to preferential treatment in the absence of compelling reasons. The burden of proof favours equality: it defines a procedural presumption that persons are to be treated alike. Departures from equal treatment are in each case to be defended and judged impartially by the same system of principles that hold for all; the essential equality is thought to be equality of consideration. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There are several difficulties with this procedural interpretation. For one thing, it is nothing more than the precept of treating similar cases similarly applied at the highest level, together with an assignment of the burden of proof. Equality of consideration puts no restrictions upon what grounds may be offered to justify inequalities. There is no guarantee of substantive equal treatment, since slave and caste systems (to mention extreme cases) may satisfy this conception. The real assurance of equalities lies in the content of the principles of justice and not in these procedural presumptions. The placing of the burden of proof is not sufficient. However, further, even if the procedural interpretation imposed some genuine restrictions on institutions, there is still the question why we are to follow the procedure in some instances and not others. Surely it applies to creatures who belong to some class, but which one? We still need a natural basis for equality so that this class can be identified. Moreover, it is not the case that founding equality on natural capacities is incomplete with an egalitarian view. All we have to do is to select a range property (as I shall say) and to give equal justice to those meeting its conditions. For example, the property of being in the interior of the unit circle is a range of property points in the plane. All points inside this circle have this property although their coordinates vary within a certain range. And they equally have this property, since no point interior to a circle is more or less interior to it than any other interior point. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Now whether there is a suitable range property for singling out the respect in which human beings are to be counted equal is settled by the conception of justice. However, the description of the parties in the original position identifies such a property, and the principles of justice assure us that any variations in ability within the range are to be regarded as any other natural asset. There is no obstacle to thinking that a natural capacity constitutes the basis of equality. How then can it seem plausible that founding equality on natural attributes undermines equal justice? The notion of a range property is too obvious to be overlooked. There must be a deeper explanation. The answer, I think, is that a teleological theory is often taken for granted. Thus, if the right is to maximize the net balance of satisfaction, say, then rights and duties are to be assigned so as to achieve this end. Among the relevant aspects of the problem are human’s different productive skills and capacities for satisfaction. It may happen that maximizing aggregate welfare requires adjusting basic rights to variations in these features. Of course, given the standard utilitarian assumptions, there is a tendency to equality. The relevant thing, however, is that in either case the correct natural basis and the appropriate assignment of rights depend upon the principle of utility. It is the content of the ethical doctrine, and the fact that it is a maximizing notion, that allows variations in capacity to justify unequal fundamental rights, and not the idea that equality is founded on natural attributes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
An examination of perfectionism would, I believe, lead to the same conclusion. However, justice as fairness is not a maximizing theory. We are not directed to look for differences in natural features that affect some maximand and therefore serve as possible grounds for different grades of citizenship. Although agreeing with many teleological theories in the relevance of natural attributes, the contract view needs much weaker assumptions about their distribution to establish equal rights. It is enough that a certain minimum is generally fulfilled. First of all, when considering some other points, it should be noted that the conception of moral personality and the required minimum may often prove troublesome. While many concepts are vague to some degree, that of moral personality is likely to be especially so. However, these matters are, I think, best discussed in the context of definite moral problems. The nature of the specific issue and the structure of the available general facts may suggest a fruitful way to settle them. In any case, one must not confuse the vagueness of a conception of justice with the thesis that basic rights should vary with natural capacity. The minimal requirements defining moral personality refer to a capacity and not to the realization of it. A being that has this capacity, whether or not it is yet developed, is to receive the full protection of the principles of justice. Since infants and children are thought to have basic rights (normally exercised on their behalf by parents and guardians), this interpretation of the requisite conditions seems necessary to match our considered judgments. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Moreover, regarding the potentiality as sufficient accords with the hypothetical nature of the original position, and with the idea that as far as possible the choice of principles should not be influenced by arbitrary contingencies. Therefore it is reasonable to say that those who could take part in the initial agreement, were it not for fortuitous circumstances, are assured equal justice. Now of course none of this is literally argument. I have not set out the premises from which this conclusion follows, as I have tried to do, albeit not very rigorously, with the choice of conceptions of justice in the original position. Nor have I tried to prove that the characterization of the parties must be used as the basis of equality. Rather this interpretation seems to be the natural completion of justice as fairness. The problem of those who have lost their realized capacity temporarily through misfortune, accident, or mental stress can be regarded in a similar capacity of children in connection with paternalism. However, those are more or less permanently deprived of moral personality may present a difficulty. It is assumed that the account of equality would not be materially affected. First of all, the simplicity of the contract view of the basis of equality is worth emphasizing. The minimum capacity for the sense of justice insures that everyone has equal rights. The claims of all are to be adjudicated by the principles of justice. Equality is supported by the general facts of nature and not merely by a procedural rule without substantive force. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Nor does equality presuppose an assessment of the intrinsic worth of persons, or a comparative evaluation of their conceptions of the good. Those who can give justice are owed justice. When other accounts of equality are examined, the advantages of these straightforward proposition become more evident. For example, one might think that equal justice means that society is to make the same proportionate contribution to each person’s realizing the best life which one is capable of. Offhand this may seem an attractive suggestion. It suffers however from serious difficulties. For one thing it not only requires a method of estimating the relative goodness of plans of life, but it also presupposes some way of measuring what counts as an equal proportionate contribution to persons with different conceptions of their good. The problem in applying this standard are obvious. A more important difficulty is that the greater abilities of some may give them a stronger claim on social resources irrespective of compensating advantages to others. One must assume that variations in natural assets will affect what is necessary to provide equal proportionate assistance to those with different plans of life. However, in addition to violating the principle of mutual advantage, this conception of equality means that the strength of human’s claims is directly influenced by the distribution of natural abilities, and therefore by contingencies that are arbitrary from a moral point of view. The basis of equality in justice as fairness avoids these objections. The only continency which is decisive is that of having or nor having the capacity for a sense of justice. By giving justice to those who can give justice in return, the principle of reciprocity is fulfilled at the highest level. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
A further observation is that we can now more fully reconcile two conceptions of equality. Some writers have distinguished between equality as it is invoked in connection with the distribution between equality as it is invoked in connection with the distribution of certain goods, some of which will almost certainly give higher status or prestige to those who are more favoured, and equality as it applies to the respect which is owed to persons irrespective of their social position. Equality of the first kind is defined by the second principle of justice which regulates the structure of organizations and distributive shares so that social cooperation is both efficient and fair. However, equality of the second kind is fundamental. It is defined by the first principle of justice and by such natural duties as that of mutual respect; it is owed to human beings as moral persons. The natural basis of equality explains its deeper significance. The priority of the first principle over the second enables us to avoid balancing these conceptions of equality in an ad hoc manner, while the argument from the standpoint of the original position shows how this precedence comes about. The consistent application of the principle of fair opportunity requires us to view persons independently from the influences of their social position. However, how far should this tendency be carried? It seems that even when fair opportunity (as it has been defined) is satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction. However, within the context of the theory of justice as a whole, there is much less urgency to take this course. The acknowledgment of the difference principle redefines the grounds for social inequalities as conceived in the system of liberal equality; and when the principle of fraternity and redress are allowed their appropriate weight, the natural distribution of assets and the contingencies of social circumstances can more easily be accepted. We are more ready to dwell upon our good fortune now that these differences are made to work to our advantage, rather than to be downcast by how much better off we might have been had we had an equal chance along with others if only all social barriers had been removed. The conception of justice, should it be truly effective and publicly recognized as such, seems more likely than its rivals to transform our perspective on social World and to reconcile us to the dispositions of natural order and the conditions of human life. Last of all, we should recall here the limits of a theory of justice. Not only are many aspects pf morality left aside, but no account is given of right conduct in regard to animals and the rest of nature. A conception of justice is but one part of a moral view. While I have not maintained that the capacity for a sense of justice is necessary in order to be owed the duties of justice, it does seem that we are not required to give strict justice anyway to creatures lacking this capacity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
However, it does not follow that there are no requirements at all in regard to them, not in our relations with the natural order. Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the forms of life which of animals are capable clearly imposes duties of compassion and humanity in their case. These beliefs, however, are outside the scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extent the contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way. A correct conception of our relations to animals and to nature would seem to depend upon a theory of the natural order and our place in it. One of the tasks of metaphysics is to work out a view of the World which is suited for this purpose; it should identify and systematize the truths decisive for these questions. How far justice as fairness will have to be revised to fit into this larger theory it is sound as an account of justice among persons, it cannot be too wrong when these broader relationships are taken into consideration. Technocrats, experts in science or technology who have a lot of power in or influence with the government of industry, suffer from econo-think. They look at the World and analyze the way the World works by comparing the cost of an action with the benefit generated. Except during war and dire emergency, they start from the premise that even non-economic problems can be solved with economic remedies. Social futurism challenges this root assumption of both Marxist and Keynesian managers. In its historical time and place, industrial society’s single-minded pursuits of material progress served the human race well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
As we hurtle toward the super age of information, however, a new ethos emerges in which other goals begin to gain parity with, and even supplant those of economic welfare. In personal terms, self-fulfillment, social responsibility, aesthetic achievement, hedonistic individualism, and an array of other goals vie with and often overshadow the raw drive for material success. Affluence serves as a base from which humans begin to strive for varied post-economic ends. At the same time, in societies arrowing toward super-age of information, economic variables—wages, balance of payments, productivity—grow increasingly sensitive to change in the non-economic environment. Economic problems are plentiful, but a whole range of issues that are only secondarily economy break into prominence. Racism, the battle between the generations, crime, cultural autonomy, violence—all these have economic dimensions; yet none can be effectively treated by econocentic measures alone. The move from manufacturing to health-care and social assistance, the psychologization of both goods and services, and ultimately the shift toward experiential production all tie the economic sector much more tightly to non-economic forces. Consumer preference turn over in accordance with rapid life style changes, so that the coming and going of subcults is mirrored in economic turmoil. Super-age of information production requires workers skilled in symbol manipulation, and computer information science, so that what goes on in their heads becomes much more important than in the past, and much more dependent upon computers, technology, and algorithm. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Because many more American corporations are investing part of their sizeable portfolios in companies selected not for economic payout alone, but for their potential contribution to solving urban problems, providing jobs for hard-core unemployed, in organizing literacy and job-training programs, and scores of other unfamiliar activities, including worrying about water, air, and noise pollution, improving the aesthetic appearance of the company’s trucks and equipment, and fostering experimental preschool learning programs in underserved communities, and supporting cultural groups; although this is accurately signaling the direction of change, none of this necessarily implies that big companies are growing altruistic; it merely underscores the increasing intimacy of the links between the economic sector and powerful cultural, psychological, and social forces. While these forces batter at our doors, however, most technocratic planners and managers behave as though nothing had happened. They continue to act as though the economic sector were hermetically sealed off from social and psychocultural influences. Indeed, econocentric premises are buried so deeply and held so widely in both capitalist and communist nations, that they distort the very information systems essential for management of change. For example, all modern nations maintain elaborate machinery for measuring economic performance. We know virtually day by day the directions of change with respect to productivity, prices, investment, and similar factors. Through a set of “economic indicators” we gauge the overall health of the economy, the speed at which it is changing, and the overall directions of change. Without these measures, our control of the economy would be far less effective. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
By contrast, we have no such measures, no set of comparable “social indicators” to tell us whether the society, as distinct from the economy, is also healthy. We have no measures of the “quality of life.” We have no systematic indices to tell us whether people are more or less alienated from one another; whether education is more effective; whether art, music and literature are flourishing; whether civility, generosity or kindness are increasing. Gross National Product is our Holy Grail, but we have no environmental index, no census statistics to measure whether the country is more livable from year to year. On the surface, this would seem a purely technical matter—something for statisticians to debate. Yet it has the most serious political significance, for lacking such measures it becomes difficult to connect up national or local policies with appropriate long-term social goals. The absence of such indices perpetuates vulgar technocracy. Little known to the public, a polite, but increasingly bitter battle over this issue has begun in Washington. Technocratic planners and economists see in the social indicators idea a threat to their entrenched position at the ear of the political policy maker. In contrast, the need for social indicators has been eloquently argued by such prominent social scientists as Dr. Bertram M. Gross and Wayne State University, Eleanor Sheldon and Wilbert Moore of the Russell Sage Foundation, Daniel Bell and Raymond Bauer of Harvard. We are witnessing, says Gross, a “widespread rebellion against what has been called the ‘economic philistinism’ of the Untied States government’s resent statistical establishment.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
This revolt has attracted vigorous support from political and government officials who recognize our desperate need for a post-technocratic social intelligence system. In the near future, we can expect the same revolt to break out in other World capitals as well, once again drawing a line between technocrats and post-technocrats. The danger of future shock, itself, however, points to the need for new social measures not yet even mentioned in the fast-burgeoning literature on social indicators. We urgently need, for example, techniques for measure the level of transience in different communities, different populations groups, and in individual experience. It is possible, in principle, to design a “transience index” that could disclose the rate at which we are making and breaking relationships with the things, places, people, organizations and informational structures that comprise our environment. Such an index would reveal, among other things, the fantastic differences in the experiences of different groups in society—the static and tedious quality of turnover in the lives of others. Government policies that attempt to deal with both kinds of people in the same way are doomed to meet angry resistance from one or the other—or both. Similarly, we need indices of novelty in the environment. How often do communities, organizations or individual have to cope with first-time situations? How many of the articles in the home of the average working-class family are actually “new” in function or appearance; how many are traditional? #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
What level of novelty—in terms of things, people or any other significant dimension—is required for stimulation without over-stimulation? How much more novelty can children absorb than their parents—if it is true that they can absorb more? In what way is gaining related to lower novelty tolerances, and how do such differences correlate with the political and intergenerational conflict now tearing the techno-societies apart? By studying and measuring the invasion of newness, we can begin, perhaps, to control the influx of change into our social structures and personal lives. And what about choice and over choice? Can we construct measures of the degree of significant choice in human lives? Can any government that pretends to be democratic not concern itself with such an issue? For al the rhetoric about freedom of choice, no government agency in the World can claim to have made any attempt to measure it. The assumption simply is that more income or affluence means more choice and that more choice, in turn, means freedom. Is it not time to examine these basic assumptions of our political systems? If we are to prevent future shock and build a humane super-age of informational society, post-technocratic planning must deal with precisely such issues. A sensitive system of indicators geared to measuring the achievement of social and cultural goals, and integrated with economic indicators, is part of the technical equipment that any society needs before it can successfully reach the next stage of eco-technological development. It is an absolute precondition for post-technocratic planning and change management. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
This humanization of planning, moreover, must be reflected in our political structures as well. To connect the super-age of information social intelligence system with the decisional centers of society, we must institutionalize a concern for the quality of life. Thus it has been proposed by people in the social indicators movement that there is a creation of a Council of Social Advisers to the President. Such a Council, as they see it, would be modeled after the already existing Council of Economic Advisers and would perform parallel functions in the social field. The new agency would monitor key social indicators precisely the way the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) keeps its eye on economic indices, and interpret changes to the President. It would issue an annual report on the quality of life, clearly spelling out our social progress (or lack of it) in terms of specified goals. This report would thus supplement and balance the annual economic report prepared by the CEA. By providing reliable, useful data about our social condition, the Council of Social Advisers would begin to influence planning generally, making it more sensitive to social costs and benefits, less coldly technocratic and econocentric. Proponents differ as to whether the Council of Social Advisers ought to be organizationally independent or become a part of a larger Council of Economic and Social Advisers. All sides agree, however, on the need for integrating economic and social intelligence. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The establishment of such councils, not merely at the federal level but at state and municipal levels as well, would not at the federal level but at state and municipal levels as well, would not solve all our problems; it would not eliminate conflict; it would not guarantee that social indicators are exploited properly. In brief, it would not eliminate politics from political life. However, it would end recognition—and political force—to the idea that the ais of progress reach beyond economics. The designation of agencies to watch over the indicators of change in the quality of life would carry us a long way toward that humanization of the planner which is the essential first stage of the strategy of social futurism. Replace fear with faith—faith in God and the power of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we think of the future, we should be filled with faith and hope. Always remember that Jesus Christ—the Creator of the Universe, the architect of our salvation, and the head of this Church—is in control. He will not permit His work to fail. He will be victorious over all darkness and evil. And He invites us all, members of His church and others who are the honest in heart, to join in the battle for the souls of God’s children. Along with all else we will do in life, we must also dedicate and consecrate our heart, might, mind, and strength to His cause, walking in faith and working with conviction. Face the future with optimism. I believe we are standing on the threshold of a new era of growth, prosperity, and abundance. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I think the next few years will bring a resurgence in the World economy as new discoveries are made in communication, medicine, energy, transportation, physics, computer technology, and other fields endeavor. Many of these discoveries, as in the past, will be the result of the spirit whispering insights into and enlightening the minds of truth-seeking individuals. With these discoveries and advances will come new employment opportunities and prosperity for those who work hard and especially for those who strive to keep the commandments of God. This has been the case in other significant periods of national and international economic growth. People, we rainclouds closer to the sun and full of life soaking up the knowledge of the Earth and storing it within ourselves, moving on to spread truth through the World. We clouds are loved and feared, ready to explore and give new life to a dying planet. Beautiful clouds, casting shadows of love, shadows of dignity, shadows of healing. Giving of ourselves to promote life, while realizing our ability to destroy rainclouds, we are nature, natural! People, we rainclouds are closer to the run and full of life. May the Father of mercies who dwells on high, in His mighty compassion, remember the loving, upright and blameless souls and all the holy communities in America who laid down their lives for the sanctification of the divine name. Even as they were devoted and faithful in life, so in death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions to do the will of their Master and the desire of their Rock. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
May our God remember them for good with other righteous of the World, and bring retribution for blood of His servants which has been shed, in accordance with the promise given in the in the Law of Moses, reiterated in the Books of the Prophets and again stated in the Sacred Writings: Sing aloud, O ye nations, for God des bring to judgment those who shed the blood of His servants. Wherefore should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let the retribution of Thy servants’ blood be made known among the nations in our sight. For God, the Avenger of bloodshed, will not forget the cry of the humble. He will judge among the nations, and crushing evil, will emerge triumphant. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare thy might acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendor, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts, and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in Thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy faith one shall bless Thee. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Ethics are Responsibility without Limit Towards All that Lives!
The concept of a united family that lives and progresses forever is at the core of Latter-day Saint doctrine. Within families led by a father and a mother, children develop virtues such as love, trust, loyalty, cooperation and service. We must rally to protect marriage, family, so we can strengthen our loved ones and protect their faith and freedom. There is a young and impressionable mind out there that is very hungry for information. Instead of fighting for freedom of the press, maybe we should be fighting for freedom from the press. I am worried about present-day journalism. The emphasis on negative happenings is much too strong. Not infrequently, news about events marking great progress is overlooked or minimized. It tends to make for a negative and discouraging atmosphere. If humans feel that very little happens to support that faith in the salvation of humanity, there is a danger that people may lose faith in the forward direction of Kingdom of God. And real progress is related to the belief that salvation and the Kingdom God will be established in our lifetime. Another hinderance to civilization today is the over-organization of our public life. While it is certain that a properly ordered environment is the condition and, at the same time, the result of civilization, it is developed at the expense of the spiritual life. Personality and ideas are often subordinated to institutions, when it is really thee which ought to influence the latter and keep them inwardly alive. Humans have lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. They will end by destroying the Earth. Simply investigating and apportioning responsibility after the fact is hardly sufficient. We must create an environmental screen to protect ourselves against dangerous intrusions as well as a system of public incentives to encourage technology that is both safe and socially desirable. This means governmental and private machinery for reviewing major technological advances before they are launched upon the public. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
So great was His love for the World, that God covenanted to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should not peris, but have everlasting life. Lucifer has said, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. This was a voluntary sacrifice. Jesus might have retained the glory of Heaven, and the homage of the angels. However, He chose to give back the scepter into the Father’s hands, and to step down from the throne of the Universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing. Over two thousand years, a voice of mysterious import was heard in Heaven, from the throne of God, “Lo, I come.” “Sacrifice and offering Thou would not, but a body has Thou prepared Me. Lo, I come (in the volume of the Book it is written of Me,) to do Thy will, O God.” In these words is announced the fulfillment of the purpose that had been hidden from eternal ages. Christ was about to visit our World, and become incarnate. He says, “A body has Thou prepared Me.” Had He appeared with the glory that was His with the Father before the World was, we could not have endured the light of His presence. That we might behold it and not be destroyed, the manifestation of His glory was shrouded. His divinity was veiled with humanity—the invisible glory in the visible form. This great purpose had been shadowed forth in types and symbols. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The burning bush, in which Christ appeared to Moses, revealed God. The symbol chosen for the representation of the Deity was a humble shrub, that seemingly has no attractions. This enshrined the Infinite. The all-merciful God shrouded His glory in a most humble type, that Moses could look upon it and live. So in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, God communicated with America, revealing to humans His will, and imparting to them His grace. God’s glory was subdued, and His majesty veiled, that the weak vision of finite humans might behold it. So Christ was to come in the body of our humiliation in the likeness of humans. In the eyes of the World He possessed no beauty that they should desire Him; yet He was the incarnate God, the light of Heaven and Earth. His glory was veiled, His greatness and majesty were hidden, that He might draw near to sorrowful, tempted men. God commanded Moses for America, “Let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them,” and he abode in the sanctuary, in the midst of His people. Through all their weary wandering in the desert, the symbol of His presence was with them. So Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character. “The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.” Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with out trials, and sympathizes with our griefs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Every son and daughter of Adam may understand that our Creator is the friend of sinners. For in every doctrine of grace, every promise of joy, every deed of love, every divine attraction presented in the Saviour’s life on Earth, we see “God with us.” Satan represents God’s law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading humans to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us Jesus was to give an example of obedience. His life testifies that it is possible for us also to obey the law of God. By His humanity, Christ touched humanity; by His divinity, He lays hold upon the throne of God. As the Son of man, He gave us an example of obedience; as the Son of God, He gives us power to obey. “God with us” is the surety of our deliverance from sin, the assurance of our power to obey the law of Heaven. Christ revealed a character the opposite of the character of Satan. By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin. It was Satan’s purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God, like we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. “God so loved the World, that he gave His only-begotten Son. He gave Him not only to bear our sins, and to die as our sacrifice; He gave Him to the fallen race. To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, God gave His only-begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This is the pledge that God will fulfill His Word. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder.” God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest Heaven. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” whose name shall be called, “Wonderful,” Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite Love. The exaltation of the redeemed will be an eternal testimony to God’s mercy. In the ages to come, God will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. To the intent that unto the principalities and the powers in the Heavenly places might be made known the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through Christ’s redeeming work, the government of God stand justified. The Omnipotent One is made known as the God of love. Satan’s charges are refuted, and his character unveiled. Rebellion can never again arise. Sin can never again enter the Universe. Through eternal ages all are secure from apostasy. By love’s self-sacrifice, the inhabitants of Earth and Heaven are bound to their Creator in bonds of indissoluble union. The work of redemption will be complete. In the place where sin abounded, God’s grace much more abounds. The Earth itself, the very field that Satan claims as his, is to be not only ransomed but exalted. Our little World, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in His glorious creation, will be honoured above all other Worlds in the Universe of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Here, where the Son of God tabernacle in humanity; where the King of glory lived and suffered and died—here, when He shall make all things new, the tabernacle of God shall be with humans, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And through endless ages as the redeemed walk in the light of the Lord, they will praise Him for His unspeakable Gift—God with us. God has a word for us to release increase, multiplication, and miracles right now in our lives. Our obedience to His Word leads to restoration and authority like a rushing river. “If you love me, you will obey what I command,” reports John 14.15. If you have been asking God for a supernatural turnaround in your life, Miracles are coming! Increase is coming! Multiplication is coming! God works in seasons, cycles, patterns. Understanding His timing is key to activating His greatest blessing in your life! A season means a “set time.” When you do not discern the shift of a season, you will lack in some area of your life! It is possible to be in a season that you are not cooperating with and therefore you are experiencing scarcity! This will change with your obedience! No more missed moments in Jesus’ name! “And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God,” reports Luke 24.52-53. One hundred and twenty of them remined in prayer until the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) arrived, and then it did, they were he gathered together. “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave this command: ‘Do not leave America, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have hear me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,’” reports Acts 1.4-5. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
What we seem to forget is that, yes, the sun will continue to rise and set and the moon will continue to move across the skies, but humankind can create a situation in which the sun and moon can look down upon the Earth that has been stripped of all life. “They joined all together in constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, ‘Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the moth of David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus—he was one of our number and shared in this ministry,’” reports Acts 1.14-17. “When the day of the Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them,” reports Acts 2.1-4. Those who conduct an atomic war for freedom will die, or end their lives miserably. Instead of freedom, they will find destruction. Radioactive clouds resulting from a war between The Old World and the New World would imperil humanity. There would be no need to use up the remaining stock of atom and H-bombs. An atomic war is therefore the most senseless and lunatic act that could ever take place. At all costs, it must be prevented. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Corporations might be expected to set up their own “consequence analysis staffs” to study the potential effects of the innovations they sponsor. They might, in some cases, be required not merely to test new technology in pilot areas but to make a public report about its impact before being permitted to spread the innovation through the society at large. Much responsibility should be delegated to industry itself. The less centralized the controls the better. If self-policing works, it is preferable to external, political controls. Where self-regulation fails, however, as it often does, public intervention may well be necessary, and we should not evade the responsibility. At one point, in the United States of America, Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development, had proposed the establishment of a technology Assessment Board with the federal government. And this might be a great idea with social media becoming so power that the owners of these platforms were censoring and banned the President from using their forums. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, and by the science and technology program of the George Washington University are all aimed at defining the appropriate nature of such an agency. We may wish to debate its form; its need is beyond dispute. The society might also set certain general principles for technological advance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Where the introduction of an innovation entails undue risk, for example, it might require that funds be set aside by the responsible agency for correction of adverse effects should they materialize. We might also create a “technological insurance pool” to which innovation-diffusing agencies might pay premiums. Certain large-scale ecological interventions might be delayed or prohibited altogether—perhaps in line with the principle that is an incursion on nature is too big and sudden for its effects to be monitored and possibly corrected, it should not take place. For example, it has been suggested that Aswan Dam, far from helping Egyptian agriculture, might someday lead to salinization of land on both banks of the Nile. This could prove disastrous. However, such a process would not occur overnight. Presumably, therefore, it can be monitored and prevented. By contrast, the plan to flood the entire interior of Brazil is fraught with such instant and imponderable ecological effects that it should not be permitted at all until adequate monitoring can be done and emergency corrective measures are available. At the level of social consequences, a new technology might be submitted for clearance to panels of behavioural scientists—psychologists, sociologist, economists, political scientists—who would determine, to the best of their ability, the probable strength of its social impact at different points in time. Where an innovation appears likely to entail seriously disruptive consequences, or to generate unrestrained accelerative pressures, these facts need to be weighed in a social cost-benefit accounting procedure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
In the case of some high-impact innovations, the technology appraisal agency might be empowered to seek restraining legislation, or to obtain an injunction forcing delay until full public discussion and study is completed. In other cases, such innovations might still be released for diffusion—provided ample steps were taken in advance to offset their negative consequences. In this way, the society would not need to wait for disaster before dealing with its technology-induced problems. By considering not merely specific technologies, but their relationship to one another, the time lapse between them, the proposed speed of diffusion, and similar factors, we might eventually gain some control over the pace of change as well as its direction. Needless to say, these proposals are themselves fraught with explosive social consequences, and need careful assessment. There may be far better ways to achieve the desired ends. However, the time is late. We simply can no longer afford to hurtle blindfolded toward super-industrialism. The politics of technology control with trigger bitter conflict in the days to come. However, if the accelerative thrust is to be brought under control, conflict or no, technology must be tamed. And, if future shock is to be prevented, the accelerative thrust must be brought under control. In some cultures, people endure tattooing, stretching, cutting, and burning wit little apparent pain. How is such insensitivity achieved? Very likely the answer lies in four factors that anyone can use to reduce pain. These are anxiety, control, attention, and interpretation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The basic sensory message of pain can be separated from emotional reactions to it. Fear or high levels of anxiety almost always increase pain. (Anxiety is a feeling of apprehension or uneasiness similar to fear, but based on an unclear threat.) A dramatic reversal of this effect is the surprising lack of pain displayed by soldiers wounded in battle. Being excused from further combat apparently produces a flood of relief. This emotional state leaves many soldiers insensitive to wounds tat would agonize a civilian. In general, unpleasant emotions increase pain and pleasant emotions decrease it. If you can regulate painful stimulus, you have control over it. A moment’s reflection should convince you that the most upsetting pain is that over which you have no control. Loss of control seems to increase pain by increasing anxiety and emotional distress. People who are allowed to regulate, avoid, or control a painful stimulus suffer less. In general, the more control one feels over a painful stimulus, the less pain experienced. Distraction can also radically reduce pain. As you recall, attention refers to voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input. Pain, even though it is highly persistent, can be selectively “turned out” (at least partially), just like any other sensation. Subjects in one experiment were in intense pain experienced the greatest relief when they were distracted by the task of watching for signal lights to come on. Another example is provided by burn patients, who must undergo excruciating pain while their bandages are changed. Recently, video games and virtual reality have been used to distract them from their pain, which helps immensely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
The Fountain of Youth and the Elixir of Life were dreams of the ancient mystics, and they are still dreams of today. However, to the soul that has found the, in most cases, they are divine realities. If humans were to learn that one can prolong one’s life on this Earth in youth and health for an indefinite period in which days and years are not counted, one could pass from one joy to another. Nobody has historically succeeded in robbing Nature of her power to inflict death. However, there is another aspect of this topic which throws some light on it. When the body of Father Charles de Foucald was exhumed, one year after burial, for transfer to another site, his friend General Laperrine was astonished to find that the body was without any break and the face quite recognizable, whereas of the two Arabian guards murdered at the same time and buried near him only a little dust remained. One of the native soldiers then said, “Why are you astonished that he is thus preserved, General? It is not astonishing, since he was a great marabout (holy man).” Father Foucald was a nineteenth-century Christian hermit of the Saharan desert, who sacrificed social position and fortune for an ascetic existence devoted to prayer, meditation, and service for the poor. Hs ascetic self-mortification was extremely severe. To this case there may be added the somewhat similar cases of Swami Yogananda of Los Angeles, and Sir Aurobindo of Pondicherry. The ancient hatha yoga texts promise the successful yogi “the conquest of death.” This does not mean he will not die, but that his flesh will not decay after death. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
We have so intimate a relation to the body in practical life that none of us need be blamed for calling it “me.” However, metaphysically that indicates an adolescent attitude. We advance towards maturity when we regard it as only a part of “me.” This domain of natural living, food reform, and hygiene is infested with cranks, fanatics, extremists, and one-idea devotees, just as the domain of mysticism is. The seeker must be warned against letting oneself be deceived by their wild intemperate enthusiasms. Have you ever temporarily forgotten about a toothache or similar pain while absorbed in a movie or book? As this suggests, concentrating on pleasant, soothing images can be especially helpful. Instead of listening to the whirr of a dentist’s drill, for example, you might imagine that you are lying in the sun at a beach, listening to the roar of the surf. At home, music can be a good distractor from chronic pain. So much may depend on so little! The condition of a single organ or of a half-centimeter of gland may curse a human’s whole life more than and sorcerer can. A physical feature may be so dislike by others that one’s ambitions are thwarted or one’s desire for love defeated. Some physical attributes may be unpleasant, undignified, and unfortunate for a human. However, they are well-countered by invisible compensations. The meaning of interpretation, you give a stimulus also affects pain. For example, if you make a funny face at a child while playing, you will probably get a burst of laughter. Yet that same face given as a punishment may bring tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The effects of interpretation are illustrated by an experiment in which thinking of pain as pleasurable (denying the pain) greatly increased pain tolerance. Another study found that people who believe a painful procedure will improve their health feel less pain during the procedure. A physiognomist once told me that he considered the mouth more revealing of a human’s character than, as commonly believed, the eyes. Is this a fact? How important is it to remember that the fall of temperature in the evenings is an invitation to catch cold. Goethe complained while living in Rome of the care one had to take even in the middle of summer to prevent the realization of this possibility. The joy owning a physical body comes out most in physical activity, yet the person will feel disgusted with it under different circumstances and at a different time. The pain of owning a body comes out mostly in ill health, yet the same person may glory in it during a game or a sport. For as bats’ eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all. It must be clearly understood that the argument so far leads to no conception of “souls” or “spirits” (words I have avoided) floating about in the realm of Nature with no relation to their environment. Hence we do not deny—indeed we must welcome—certain considerations which are often regarded as proofs of Naturalism. We can admit, and even insist, that Rational Thinking can be shown to be conditioned in its exercise by a natural object (the brain). #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Rational Thinking is temporarily impaired by alcohol or a blow to the head. It wanes as the brain decays and vanishes when the brain ceases to function. In the same way the moral outlook of a community can be shown to be closely connected with its history, geographical environment, economic structure, and so forth. The moral ideas of the individual are equally related to one’s general situation: it is no accident that parents and schoolmasters so often tell us that they can stand any vice rather than lying, the lie being the only defensive weapon of most children. All this, far from presenting us with a difficulty, is exactly what we should expect. The rational and more element in each human mind is a point of force from the Supernatural working its way into Nature, exploiting at each point those conditions which Nature offers, repulsed where the conditions are hopeless and impeded when they are unfavourable. A human’s Rational thinking is just so much of one’s share in eternal Reason as the state of one’s brain allows to become operative: it represents, so to speak, the bargain struck or the frontier fixed between Reason and Nature at that particular point. A nation’s moral outlook is just so much of its share in eternal Moral Wisdom as its history, economics, et cetera, lets through. In the same way the voice of the Announcer is just so much of a human voice as the receiving set lets through. Of course it varies with the state of the receiving set, and deteriorates as the set wears out and vanished altogether if I throw a brick at it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The voice of the announcer is conditioned by the apparatus but not originated by it. If it were—if we know that there was no human being at the microphone—we should not attend to the news. The various and complex conditions under which Reason and Morality appear are the twists and turns of the frontier between Nature and Supernature. That is why, if you wish, you can always ignore Supernature and treat the phenomena purely from the Natural side; just as a human studying on a map the boundaries of Cornwall and Devonshire can always say, “What you call a bulge in Devonshire is really a dent in Cornwall.” And in a sense, you cannot refute one. What call a bulge in Devonshire always is a dent in Cornwall. What we call a rational thought in a human always involves a state of the brain, in the long run a relation of atoms. However, Devonshire is none the less something more than “where Cornwall ends,” and Reason is something more than cerebral bio-chemistry. The practical method which is here presented differs radically from the method of the Christian Scientists, although a superficial reading my give the impression of similarity. The Christian Scientist asserts one’s inner nature to be divine and a part of God, but the assertion remains a mere intellectual statement unless one has previously opened up a channel to that inner nature with the tool of intersession, prayer, or aspiration. If one has done this, then the assertion rises into the realm of reality and may produce remarkable results; if one has not succeeded in doing this, then one’s assertion remains mere words, one thought out of the multitude which pass and repass through the brain of humans. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Moreover, so long as one possess false notions of what constitutes “demonstration,” so long as one thinks that one is entitled to prosperity, good health, and other desirable Worldly things because of his spirituality, so long will one find—as so many Christian Scientists do find—that one’s successes alternate with startling failures. It would be an unpleasant task to illustrate this statement with instances of such failures, not in the rank and file, but in the foremost ranks of the Christian Scientists, and I shall not attempt it. These failures indicate that we must follow no narrow track of sect-ordained thought, but do some research on our own account. It is a dramatic fact that remedial changes may take place in the organs themselves under the influence of this healing force. The more one comes into harmony with the cosmic order, the more will one’s health and strength benefit, one’s thoughts and feelings become beneficial. However, this is not to say that one will be cured of existing maladies or be kept in perfect health. Harmony means that due regard and attention will be given to the body’s importance, hygiene, care, and correct feeding. It means that the thoughts and feelings will be constructive. If not obstructed by human’s foolish methods, nature’s healing power will do its own work upon that sick body. It is possible to direct the healing power of the white light, in imagination and with deep breathing, to any part of the body where pain is felt or to any organ which is not functioning properly. This does not instantly remove the trouble, but it does make a contribution towards the healing process. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
For moderate pain, it can make quite a difference to reduce anxiety, redirect attention, and increase control. When you can anticipate pain (during a trip to the doctor, dentist, and so on), you can lower anxiety by making sure that you are fully informed. Be sure that someone explains everything that will happen or could happen to you. Also, be sure to fully discuss any fears you have. If you are physically tense, you can use relaxation exercises to lower your level of arousal. Relaxation methods involve tensing and then releasing muscles in various parts of the body. Some dentists are now equipped to help you shift attention away from pain. Patients are actively distracted with video games and headphones playing music. In other situations, focusing on some external object may help you shift attention away from pain. Pick a tree outside a window, a design on the wall, or some other stimulus and examine it in great detail. Prior practice in meditation can be a tremendous assistant to such attention shifts. Research suggests that distraction of this type works best for mild or brief pain. For chronic or strong pain, reinterpretation is more effective. Is there any way to increase control over a painful stimulus? Practically speaking, the choices may be limited. You may be able to arrange a signal with a doctor or dentist tat will give you control over whether a painful procedure will continue. A second possibility is more unusual. Ronald Melzack’s gate control the sensory of pain suggest that sending mild pain messages to the spinal cord and brain may effectively close the neurological gates to more severe or unpredictable pain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Medical texts have been recognized this effect. Physicians have found that intense surface stimulation of the skin can control pain from other parts of the body. Likewise, a brief, mildly painful stimulates can relieve more severe pain. Such procedures, known as counterirritation, are evident in some of the oldest techniques used to control pain: applying ice packs, hot-water bottles, mustard packs, vibration, or massage to other parts of the body. These facts suggest a way to minimize pain that is based on increased control, counterirritation, and the release of endorphins. If you pinch yourself, you can easily create and endure pain equal to that produced by many medical procedures (receiving an injection, having a toot drilled, and so on). The pain does not seem too bad because you have control over it, and it is predictable. This fact can be used to mask one pain with a second painful stimulus that is under your control. For instance, if you are having tooth filled, try pinching yourself or digging a fingernail into a knuckle while the dentist is working. Focus your attention on the pain you are creating, and increase its intensity anytime the dentist’s work becomes more painful. This suggestion may not work for you, but casual observation suggests that it can be a useful technique for controlling pain in some circumstances. Generations of children have used it to take the edge off spanking. Although some people have found spiritual benefit from sickness because of the enforced retirement to bed or hospital which it demands, or because of the reflections which it brings about the limitations of bodily satisfactions and pleasures, it would be a gross misunderstanding to make this only way of gaining these insights. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Other persons have become so embittered and resentful through sickness that they have suffered spiritual loss. Still other persons who have maintained good health have thereby been able to provide the proper circumstances for spiritual search, study, and meditation. The eye is the reflector of mind, the revealer of a human’s heart and the diagnose of one’s bodily health. With health, everything is a source of pleasure; without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable. It follows that the greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness, whatever it may be—for gain, advancement, learning, or fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures. The Lord has commanded members to take care of their bodies and minds. They should obey the Word of Wisdom, eat nutritious food, exercise regularly, control their weight, and get adequate sleep. They should shun substances or practices that abuse their bodies or minds and that could lead to addiction. They should practice good sanitation and hygiene and obtain adequate medical and dental care. They should also strive to cultivate good relationships with family members and others. Maintaining the best possible physical health has been a gospel ideal throughout the ages—from the strict dietary laws of ancient America, with the example of Joseph Smith and his associates, to the Word of Wisdom in this dispensation and the counsel of today’s prophets and apostles. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
By maintaining good physical health, we become more self-reliant and are better prepared to progress personally, strengthen the family, and serve in the Church and community. Not long after the angel had disappeared the third time Joseph arose from his bed. He went about doing his daily work with his father in the field, but he soon found his strength was exhausted. His father noticed there was something wrong and sent his son home. Joseph went toward the house, but as he crossed a fence in the field his strength entirely failed him and he fell helpless to the ground. Joseph heard a voice call his nae and, looking up, he saw the same messenger, Moroni, standing over his head in a bright light. Again the angel repeated all the things he had told Joseph during the night and commanded him to tell his father of his vision. Joseph obeyed, going into the field to tell his father what had occurred. His father said he should obey the messenger from God. The young man went to find the place he had seen in his vision. Near Manchester, New York, a few miles from his farm home, Joseph found the hill had seen so clearly in his vision. On the west side of the hill, not far from the top, was a large stone which was thick and rounding in the middle of the upper side and thinner toward the edge. The middle part showed above the Earth, but the edges were covered. Joseph removed the Earth from the stone. With the assistance of a lever he raised the stone cover, and beneath it lay a stone box. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
In the box, which was made of stone set in a kind of cement, lay the golden plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate, exactly as the angel had said. The golden plates formed a book with pages of gold held together by three large rings, much like a modern loose-leaf notebook. As Joseph reached to take the things from the box, the angel forbade him. Joseph was told he should return each year on the same date, 22 September, and he would be given further instructions until it was time for him to take the plates. Joseph returned to the hill, which has been called “Hill Cumorah,” each of the following four years and was met by the same messenger. The angel taught him many things about the plans of the Lord, and how his kingdom was to be built in the last days. Four years after Moroni’s first visit to Joseph, on 22 September 1827—on Joseph’s fifth visit to the hill—Moroni gave him the golden book, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. The angel cautioned him to guard them carefully, to allow no one to see them, and to do everything in his power to protect and keep them safely until the messenger should come for them. Joseph soon understood why he had been commanded so strictly to guard them carefully. Almost as soon as he had received the precious things, it became known throughout the countryside, and everyone wanted to see them. Many tried to take them away from him; but by hiding them Joseph was able to keep them safely. The excitement continued, and the people were determined to take the golden plates from him. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Joseph soon realized that it would be impossible for him to do the work of translation at his home in New York. Joseph and his wife, Emma whom he had married in January, 1827, went to her parents’ home at Harmony, Pennsylvania. There in the home of Isaac Hale, during the early part of the year 1828, Joseph, by means of the Urim and Thummim, began the work of translation of the golden plates. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be might my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. Earth mother, star mother, you who are called by a thousand names, may all remember we are cells in your body and dance together. You are the grain and the loaf that sustains us each day, and as you are patient with our struggles to learn so shall we be patient with ourselves and each other. We are radiant light and sacred dark—the balance—you are the embrace that heartens and the freedom beyond fear. Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die—you bring us around the circle to rebirth, within us you dance forever. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for our good and for blessing, of sustenance, of bodily vigour; a life marked by reverence for Thee and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach, a life of abundance and honour, a life in which the love of the Torah and the fear of Heaven shall ever be with us, a life in which all desires of our hearts shall be fulfilled for our good. Amen. If the technology that is supposed to increase our leisure and make our lives easier, starts to control our lives, we are in danger of losing our souls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
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Cresleigh Ranch is one of the Northern California’s area’s best kept secrets. Offering a peaceful setting with a variety of activities. The two story yellow house at the very top is residence 3, I call it “The Baby Winchester.” It is approximately 2,800 square feet with 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathrooms, and a three car garage. Cresleigh has luxury home designs, with a wide range of options, allowing each buyer to tailor their home to their unique lifestyle.
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Technology Cannot be Permitted to Rampage through the Society!
When a person is asked to make a speech, the first thing one has to decide is what to say. We live in a time when good faith of people is doubted more than ever before. Expressions throwing doubt on the trustworthiness of each other are bandied back and forth. They are based on what happened in the First World War when the nations experienced dishonesty, injustice, and inhumanity from one another. How can a new trust come about? And yet, it must. We cannot continue in this paralyzing mistrust. If we want to work our way out of the desperate situation in which we find ourselves, another spirit must enter into the people. It can only come if the awareness of its necessity suffices to give us strength to believe in its coming. They only possible way out of the present chaos is for us to adopt a World-view which will bring us once more under that control of the ideals of true civilization which are contained in it. Refuse to get bitter from the broken areas of your life! Let God heal where you have been hurt. If we simply provide them with advanced information about what lies ahead, self-evident as it may seem, in most situations we can help individuals adapt better. Anticipatory information allows a dramatic change in performance. The mental processing of advance data about any subject presumably cuts down on the amount of processing and the reaction time during the actual period of adaptation. Thought is action in rehearsal. Even more important than any specific bits of advance information, however, is the habit of anticipation. This conditioned ability to look ahead plays a key role in adaptation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Indeed, one of the hidden clues to successful coping may well lie in the individual’s sense of the future. The people among us who keep up with change, who manage to adapt well, seem to have a richer, better developed sense of what lies ahead than those who cope poorly. Anticipating the future has become a habit to them. The chess player who anticipates the moves of one’s opponent, the executive who thinks in long range terms, the student who takes a quick glance at the table of contents before starting to read page one, all seem to fare better. People vary widely in the amount of thought they devote to the future, as distinct from the past and present. Some invest far more resources than others in projecting themselves forward—imagining, analyzing and evaluating future possibilities and probabilities. They also vary in how far they tend to project. Some habitually think in terms of the “deep future.” Other penetrate only into the “shallow future.” Some individuals, of course, project themselves so far into the future for such long periods that their anticipations become escapist fantasies. Far more common, however, are those individuals whose anticipations are so thin and short-range that they are continually surprised and flustered by change. The adaptive individual appears to be able to project oneself forward just the “right” distance in time, to examine and evaluate alternative course of action open to one before the need for final decision. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
If our children are to adapt more successfully to rapid change, this distortion of tie must be ended. We must sensitize them to the possibilities and probabilities of tomorrow. We must enhance their sense of the future. Society has many built-in time spanners that help to link the present generation with the past. Our sense of the past is developed by contact with the older generation, by our knowledge of history, by the accumulated heritage of art, music, literature, and science passed down to us through the years. It is enhanced by immediate contact with the objects that surround us, each of which has a point of origin in the past, each of which provides us with a trace of identification with the past. No such time spanners enhance our sense of the future. We have no objects, no friends, no relatives, no work of art, no music or literature, that originate in the future. We have, as it were, no heritage of the future. Despite this, there are ways to send the human mind forward as well as backward. We need to begin by creating a stronger future-consciousness on the part of the public, and not just by means of Buck Rogers comic strips and TV shows like Sliders, or articles about the marvels of space travel or medical research. These make a contribution, but what is needed is a concentrated focus on the social and personal implications of the future, not merely on its technological characteristics. Instead of deriding the “crystal-ball gazer,” we need to encourage people, from childhood on, to speculate freely, even fancifully, not merely about what next week holds in store for them but about what the next generation holds in store for the entire human race. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
We offer our children courses in history; why no also courses in “Future,” courses in which the possibilities and probabilities of the future are systematically explored, exactly as we now explore the social system of the Romans or the rise of the feudal manor? If we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense values as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradybury and Robert Sheckely, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults. Science fiction should be required reading for Future I. Also, to sharpen the individual’s future-focused role image, students can be asked to write their own “future autobiographies” in which they picture themselves five, ten, or twenty years in the future. By submitting these to class discussion, by comparing different assumptions in them, contradictions in the child’s own projections can be identified and examined. At a time when the self is being broken into successive selves, this technique can be used to provide continuity for the individual. If children at fifteen, for example, are given the future autobiographies they themselves wrote at age twelve, they can see how maturation has altered their own image of the future. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When an individual is able to document and review how much they have matured, they can be helped to understand how their values, talents, skills, and knowledge have shaped their own possibilities. When millions share this passion about the future, we shall have a society far better equipped to meet the impact of change. To create such curiosity and awareness is a cardinal task of education. To create an education that will create this curiosity is perhaps the central mission of the age of information revolution in the schools. The past is here to stay, and we must learn about it and the future to remain in an equilibrium. In Heaven a law was broken. Sin originated in self-seeking. Lucifer, the covering cherub, desired to be first in Heaven. He sought to gain control of Heavenly beings, to draw them away from their Creator, and to win their homage to himself. Therefore one misrepresented God, attributing to Him the desire for self-exaltation. Wit his own evil characteristics, Satan sought to invest the loving Creator. Thus he deceived angels. Thus he deceived humans. He led them to doubt the word of God, and to distrust His goodness. Because God is a God of justice and terrible majesty, Satan caused them to look upon Him as severe and unforgiving. Thus he drew humans to join him in rebellion against God, and the night of woe settled down upon the World. The Earth was dark through misapprehension of God. That the gloomy shadows might be lightened, that the World might be brought back to God, Satan’s deceptive power was to be broken. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
This could not be done by force. The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; God desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. To know God is to love Him; His character must be manifested in contrast to the character of Satan. This work only one Being in all the Universe could do. Only He who knew the height and dept of the love of God could make it known. Upon the World’s dark night the Sun of Righteousness must rise with healing in His wings. The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam. It was revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence though times eternal. It was an unfolding of the principles that form eternal ages have been the foundation of God’s throne. From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God did not ordain that sin should exist, but He foresaw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency. The psychic pollution of sin is matched by the industrial vomit that fills our skies and seas. Pesticides and herbicides filter into our foods. Twisted automobile carcasses, aluminum cans, non-returnable glass bottles and synthetic plastics form immense kitchen middens in our midst as more and more of our detritus resists decay. We do not even begin to know what to do with our radioactive waste—whether to pump them into the Earth, shoot them into outer space, or pour them into the oceans. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Our technological powers increase, but the side effect and potential hazards also escalate. We risk thermopollution of the oceans themselves, overheating them, destroying immeasurable quantities of marine life, perhaps even melting the polar icecaps. On land we concentrate such large masses of population in such small urban-technological islands, that we threaten to use up the air’s oxygen faster than it can be replaced, conjuring up the possibility of new Saharas where the cities are now. Through such disruptions of the natural ecology, we may literally, in the words of the biologist Dr. Barry commoner, be “destroying this planet as a suitable place for human habitation.” Sick societies need scapegoats. As the pressures of change impinge more heavily on the individual and the prevalence of future shock increases, this nightmarish outcome gains plausibility. It is significant that a slogan scrawled on a wall by striking students in Paris called for “death to the technocrats!” The incipient Worldwide movement for control of technology, however, must not be permitted to fall into the hands of irresponsible technophobes, nihilists and Rousseauian romantics. For the power of the technological drive is too great to be stopped by Luddite paroxysms. Worse yet, reckless attempts to halt technology will produce results quite as destructive as reckless attempts to advance it. Caught between these twin perils, we desperately need a movement for responsible technology. We need a broad political grouping rationally committed to further scientific research and technological advance—but on a selective basis only. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Instead of wasting its energies in denunciations of The Machines or in negativistic criticism of the space program, it should formulate a set of beneficial technological goals for the future. Radicals frequently accuse the “ruling class” or the “establishment” or simply “they” of controlling society in ways inimical to the welfare of the masses. Such accusations may have occasional point. Yet today we face an even more dangerous reality: many social ills are less the consequence of oppressive control than of oppressive lack of control. The horrifying truth is that, so far as much technology is concerned, no one is in charge. By the application of conscious technological policy—along with other measures—we can contour the culture of tomorrow. The automobile is widely believed to have changed the shape of our cities, shifted home ownership and retail trade patterns, altered customs involving pleasures of the flesh and loosened family ties. In the Middle East, the rapid spread of transistor radios is created with having contributed to the resurgence of Arab nationalism. The birth control pill, the computer, the Internet, the space explorations, as well as the invention and diffusion of such “soft” technologies as systems analysis, all have carried significant social changes in their wake. We can no longer afford to let such secondary social and cultural effects just “happen.” We must attempt to anticipate them in advance, estimating, to the possible, their nature, strength and timing. Where these effects are likely to be seriously damaging, we must also be prepared to block the new technology. It is as simple as that. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Technology cannot be permitted to rampage through the society. It is quite true that we can never know all the effects of any action, technological or otherwise. However, it is not true that we are helpless. Just as we may wish to create enclaves of the past where the rate of change is artificially slowed, or enclaves of the future in which individual can pre-sample future environments, we ay also wish to set aside, even subsidize, special high-novelty communities in which advance medications, power sources, vehicles, cosmetics, appliances, and other innovations are experimentally used and investigated. A corporation today will routinely field test a product to make sure it performs its primary function. The same company will market tests the product to ascertain whether it will sell. However, with rare exception, no one post-checks the consumer or the community to determine what the human side effects have been. Survival in the future may depend on our learning to do so. Here, then, is a pressing intellectual agenda for the social and physical sciences. We have taught ourselves to create and combine the most powerful of technologies. We have not taken pains to learn about their consequences. Today these consequences threaten to destroy us. We must learn, and learn fast. The challenge, however, is not solely intellectual; it is political as well. We need, in effect, a machinery for screening machines. A key political task of this decade will be to creature this machinery. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
We must stop being afraid to exert systematic social control over technology. Responsibility for doing so much be shared by public agencies and the corporations and laboratories in which technological innovations are hatched. One step in the right direction would be to create a technological ombudsman—a public agency charged with receiving, investigating, and acting on complaints having to do with the irresponsible application of technology. It may be useful to recall that the problem of stability arises because a just scheme of cooperation may not be in equilibrium, much less stable. To be sure, from the standpoint of the original position, the principles of justice are collectively rational; if all comply with these principles, everyone may expect to improve one’s situation, at least in comparison with what one’s prospects would in the absence of any agreement. General egoism represents this no-agreement point. Nevertheless, from the perspective of any one human, both first-person and free-rider egoism represents this no-agreement point. Nevertheless, from the perspective of any one human, both first-person and free-rider egoism would be still better. Of course given the conditions of the original position neither of these options is a serious candidate. Yet , if one is so in inclined in everyday life, an individual can win even greater benefits for oneself by taking advantage of the cooperative efforts of others. Sufficiently many persons may be doing their share so that when special circumstances allow one not to contribute (perhaps one’s omission will not be found out), one gets the best of both Worlds: on these occasions anyway things proceed much as if free-rider egoism had been acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Just arrangements may not be in equilibrium then because acting fairly is not in general each human’s best reply to the just conduct of one’s associates. To insure stability humans must have a sense of justice or a concern for those who would be disadvantaged by their defection, preferably both. When these sentiments are sufficiently strong to overrule the temptations to violate the rules, just schemes are stable. Meeting one’s duties and obligations is now regarded by each persons as the correct answer to the actions of others. One’s person as the correct answer to the actions of others. One’s rational plan of life regulated by one’s sense of justice leads to this conclusion. The question of stability is connected to that of the political obligation. One may think of this as a sovereign mechanism added to a system f cooperation which would be unstable without it. The general belief in the sovereign’s efficacy removes the two kinds of instability. Now it is evident how relations of friendships and mutual trust, and the public knowledge of a common and normally effective sense of justice, bring about the same result. For given these natural attitudes and the desire to do what is just, no one wishes to advance one’s interests unfairly to the disadvantage of others; this removes instability of the first kind. And since each recognizes that one must violate the rules to protect one’s legitimate interests; so instability of the second kind is likewise absent. Of course, some infractions will presumably occur, but when they do feelings of guilt arising from friendship and mutual trust and the sense of justice tend to restore the arrangement. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Moreover, a society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable: other things equal, the forces making for stability increase (up to some limit) as time passes. This inherent stability is a consequence of the reciprocal relation between the three psychological laws. The more effective operation of one law strengthens that of the other two. For example, when the second law leads to stronger attachments, the sense of justice acquired by the third law is reinforced because of the greater concern for the beneficiaries of just institutions. And going the other way, a more effective sense of justice leads to a more secure intention to do one’s share, and the recognition of this fact arouses more intense feelings of friendship and trust. Again, it seems that with a firmer assurance of one’s own worth and a livelier capacity for fellow feeling brought about by more favourable conditions for the first law, the effects governed by the other two laws should be similarly enhanced. Conversely, persons who have developed a regulative sense of justice and are confident in their self-esteem are more likely to care for their children with the manifest intention. Thus all three psychological principles conspire together to support the institutions of a well-ordered society. There seems to be no doubt then that justice as fairness is a reasonably stable more conception. However, a decision in the original position depends on a comparison: other things equal, the preferred conception of justice is the most stable one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Ideally we should compare the contract view with all its rivals in this respect, but as so often I shall only consider the principle of utility. In order to do this, it is useful to recall three elements that enter into the operation of the psychological laws: namely, an unconditional caring for our good, a clear awareness of the reasons for moral precepts and ideals (assisted by explanation and instruction, and the possibility of giving precise and convincing justifications), and the recognition that those complying with these precepts and ideals, and doing their part in social arrangements, both accept these norms and express in their life and character forms of human good which evoke our admiration and esteem. The resulting sense of justice is stronger the more these three elements are realized. The first enlivens the sense of our own worth strengthening the tendency to answer in kind, the second presents the moral conception so that it can be readily understood, and the third displays the adherence to it as attractive. The most stable conception of justice, therefore, is presumably one that is perspicuous to our reason, congruent with our good, and rooted not in abnegation but in affirmation of the self. Now several things suggest that the sense of justice corresponding to justice as fairness is stronger than the parallel sentiment inculcated by other conceptions. First of all, the unconditional concern of other persons and institutions for our good is far stronger to the contract view. The restrictions contained in the principle of justice guarantee everyone an equal liberty and assure us that our claims will not be neglected or overridden for the sake of a larger sum of benefits, even for the whole society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
We have only to keep in mind the various priority rules, and the meaning of the difference principles as rendered by its Kantian interpretation (persons are not to be treated as means at all) and its relation to the idea of fraternity. The effect of these aspects of justice as fairness is to heighten the operation of the reciprocity principle. As we have noted, a more unconditional caring for our good and a clearer refusal by others to take advantage of accident and happenstance, must strengthen our self-esteem; and this greater good must in turn lead to a closer affiliation with persons and institutions by way of an answer in kind. These effects are more intense than in the case of the utility principle, and so the resulting attachments should be stronger. We can confirm this suggestion by considering the well-ordered society paired with the principle of utility. In this case, the three psychological laws have to be altered. For example, the second law holds that persons tend to develop friendly feelings toward those who with evident intention do their part in cooperative schemes publicly known to maximize the sum of advantages, or the average well-being (which variant is used). In either case the resulting psychological law is not as plausible as before. For suppose that certain institutions are adopted on the public understanding that the greater advantages of some counterbalance the lesser losses of others. Why should the acceptance of the principle of utility (in either form) by the more fortunate inspire the less advantaged to have friendly feelings toward them? This response would seem in fact to be rather surprising, especially if those in a better situation have pressed their claims by maintaining that a greater sum (or average) of well-being would result from their satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
No reciprocity principle is at work in this case and the appeal to utility may simply arouse suspicion. The concern which is expressed for all persons by counting each as one (by weighing everyone’s utility equally) is weak compared to that conveyed by the principles of justice. Thus the attachments generated within a well-ordered society regulated by the utility criterion are likely to vary widely between one sector of society and another. If any desire to act justly (now defined by the utilitarian principle) with a corresponding loss in stability, some groups may acquire little. To be sure, in any kind of well-ordered society the strength of the sense of justice will not be the same in all social groups. Yet to insure that mutual ties bind the entire society, each and every member of it, one must adopt something like the two principles of justice. It is evident why the utilitarian stresses the capacity for sympathy. Those who do not benefit from the better situation of others must identify with the greater sum (or average) f satisfaction else they will not desire to follow the utility criterion. Now such altruistic inclinations no doubt exist. Yet they are likely to be les strong than those brought about by the three psychological laws formulated as reciprocity principles; and a marked capacity for sympathetic identification seems relatively rare. Therefore thee feelings provide less support for the basic structure in society. In addition, as we have seen, following the utilitarian conception tends to be destructive of the self-esteem of those who lose out, particularly when they are already less fortunate. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Now it is characteristic of the morality of authority wen conceived as a morality for the social order as a whole to demand self-sacrifice for the sake of a higher good and to deprecate the worth of the individual and lesser associations. The emptiness of the self is to be overcome in the service of larger ends. The emptiness of the self is to be overcome in the service of larger ends. This doctrine is likely to encourage self-hatred with its destructive consequences. Certainly utilitarianism does not go to this extreme, but there is bound to be a similar effect which further weakens the capacity for sympathy and distorts the development of affective ties. By contrast, in a social system regulated by justice as fairness, identification with the good of others, and an appreciation of what they do as an element in our own good, might be quite strong. However, this is possible only because of the mutuality already implicit in the principles of justice. With the constant assurance expressed these principles, persons will develop a secure sense of their own worth that forms the basis for the love of humankind. By appealing straightway to the capacity for sympathy as a foundation of just conduct in the absence of reciprocity, the principle of utility not only requires more than justice as fairness but depends upon weaker and less common inclinations. Two other elements affect the strength of the sense of justice: the clarity of the moral conception and the attractiveness of its ideals. The contract view is more congruent with our good than its rivals; and assuming this conclusion here, it lends further to the support to the preceding considerations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The greater clarity of principles of justice was considered earlier. In comparisons with teleological doctrines, the principles of justice define a perspicuous conception. By contrast, the idea of maximizing the aggregate of well-being, or of attaining the greatest perfection, is vague and amorphous. It is easier to ascertain when the equal liberties are infringed and to establish discrepancies from the difference principle than it is to decide whether unequal treatment increases (and the various priority rules) offers them with greater sharpness to the intellect and there by secures heir hold on the mind. The explanations and reasons given for them are more easily understood and accepted; the conduct expected of us is more clearly defined by publicly acknowledge criteria. On all three counts, then, the contract view seems to possess greater stability. It is remarkable that Mill appears to agree with this conclusion. He notes that with the advance of civilization persons come more and more to recognize that society between human beings is manifestly impossible on any other basis than that the interests of all are to be consulted. The improvement in political institutions removes the opposition of interests and the barriers and inequalities that encourage individuals and classes to disregard one another’s claims. The natural end of this development is a state of the human mind in which each person has a feeling of unity with others. Mills maintains that when this state of mind is perfected, it leads the individual to desire for oneself only those things in the benefits of which others are included. One of a person’s natural wants is that there should be harmony between one’s feelings and those of one’s fellow citizens. One desires to know that one’s aims and theirs are not in opposition, that one is not setting oneself against their good but is furthering what they really wish for. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Now the desire Mill characterizes here is the desire to act upon the difference principle (or some similar criterion), and not a desire to act on the principle of utility. Mill does not notice the discrepancy; but he seems intuitively to recognize that a perfectly just society in which human’s aims are reconciled in ways acceptable to them all would be one that follows the notion of reciprocity expressed by the principles of justice. His remarks accord with the idea that a stable conception of justice which elicits human’s natural sentiments of unity and fellow feeling is more likely to incorporate these principles than the utilitarian standard. And this conclusion is borne out by Mill’s account of the roots of the sense of justice, for he believes that this sentiment arises not only from sympathy but also from the natural instinct of self-protection and the desire for security. This double origin suggests that, in his view, justice strikes a balance between altruism and the claims of self and therefore involves a notion of reciprocity. The contract doctrine achieves the same result, but it does so not by an ad hoc weighing of two competing tendencies, but by a theoretical construction which leads to the appropriate reciprocity principles as the conclusion. In arguing for the greater stability of the principles of justice I have assumed that certain psychological laws are true, or approximately so. I shall not pursue the question of stability beyond this point. We may note however that one might ask how is it that human beings have acquired a nature described by these psychological principles. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The theory of evolution would suggest that it is the outcome of natural selection; the capacity for a sense of justice and the oral feelings is an adaption of humankind to its place in nature. As ethologists maintain, the behaviour patterns of a species, and the psychological mechanisms of their acquisition, are just as much its characteristics as are the distinctive features of its bodily structures; and these patterns of behaviour have an evolution exactly as organs and bones do. It seems clear that for members of a species which lives instable social groups, the ability to comply with fair cooperative arrangements and to develop the sentiments necessary to support them is highly advantageous, especially when individuals have a long life and are dependent on one another. These conditions guarantee innumerable occasions when mutual justice consistently adhered to its beneficial to all parties. Biologists do not always distinguish between altruism and other kinds of moral conduct. Frequently behaviour is classified as either altruistic or egoistic. We can draw a distinction between altruism and reciprocal altruism (or what I should prefer to call simply reciprocity). The latter is the biological analogue of the cooperative virtues of fairness and good faith. The crucial question here, however, is whether the principles of justice are closer to the tendency of evolution than principle of utility. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Offhand it would seem if the selection is always f individual and of their genetic lines, and if the capacity for the various forms of moral behaviour has some genetic basis, then altruism in the strict sense would generally be limited to kin and the smaller face-to-face groups. In these causes the willingness to make considerable self-sacrifice would favour one’s descendants and tend to be selected. Turning to the other extreme, a society which had a strong propensity to supererogatory conduct in its relations with other societies would jeopardize the existence of its own distinctive culture and its members would risk domination. Therefore one might conjecture that the capacity to act from the more universal forms of rational benevolence is likely to be eliminated, whereas the capacity to follow the principles of justice and natural duty in relations between groups and individuals other than kin would be favoured. We can also see how the system of the moral feelings might evolve as inclinations supporting the natural duties and as stabilizing mechanisms for just schemes. If this is correct, then once again the principles of justice are more securely based. These remarks are not intended as justifying reasons for the contract view. The main grounds for the principles of justice have already been presented. At this point we are simply checking whether the conception already adopted is a feasible one and not so unstable that some other choice might be better. We are in the second part of the argument in which we ask if the acknowledgement previously made should be reconsidered. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I do not contend then that justice as fairness is the most stable conception of justice. The understanding required to answer this question is far beyond the primitive theory I have sketched. The conception agreed to need only be stable enough. The organized political, social, and religious associations of our time are at work to induce individual humans not to arrive at one’s convictions by one’s own thinking but to take as one’s own such convictions as they keep ready-mad for one. Any human who thinks for oneself and at the same time is spiritually free is to the associations something inconvenient and even uncanny. One does not offer sufficient guarantee that one will merge oneself in their organizations in the way they wish. All corporate bodies look today for their strength not so much to the spiritual worth of ideas they represent and to do that of the people who belong to them, as to the attainment of the highest possible degree of unity and exclusiveness. It is here that they expect to find their strongest power for offense and defense. The history of our time is characterized by a lack of reason which has no parallel in the past. Future historians will one day analyze this history in detail, and test by means of it their learning and their freedom from prejudice. However, for all future times there will be, as there is for today only one explanation, that we sought to live and to carry on with a civilization which has no ethical principle behind it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Ethics are responsibility without limit towards all that lives. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. May He who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless the people of this congregation, and of all other congregations; them, their wives, their sons, their daughters and all their dear ones. May His blessings also vouchsafed unto those who dedicate the maintain Synagogues, unto those who enter therein to worship, and unto those who provide for the wayfarer, and are charitable to the poor. May He also bless those who faithfully devote themselves to the needs of the community and to the rebuilding of America. May the Holy One, blessed be He, remove from them all sickness, preserve them in health, forgive their sins, prosper the work of their hands and bestow blessings upon them and upon all America, their brethren, and let us say, Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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All Life is Valuable and We are United to All Life
We live in a dark and frightening age. One reason for this is the part played by the ideology of inhumanity in our time. The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of people either allied with us or against us and our approach: prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned by that. Now we must rediscover the fact that we—all together—are human beings, and that we must strive to concede to each other what moral capacity we have. We generally take three psychological laws for granted and they represent tendencies and are effective. First law: given that family institutions are just, and that the parents love the child and manifestly express their love by caring for one’s good, then the child, recognizing their evident love of one, comes to love them. Second law: given that a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by acquiring attachments in accordance with the first law, and given that a social arrangement is just and publicly known by all to be just, then this person develops ties of friendly feeling and trust toward others in the association as they with evident intention comply with their duties and obligations, and live up to the ideals of their situation. Third law: given that a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by one’s forming attachments in accordance with the first two laws, and given that a society’s institutions are just and are publicly known by all to be just, then this person requires the corresponding sense of justice as one recognizes that one and those for whom one cares are the beneficiaries of these arrangements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Perhaps the most striking feature of these laws (or tendencies) is that their formulation refers to an institutional setting as being just, and in the last two, as being publicly known to be such. The principles of moral psychology have a place for a conception of justice: and different formulations of these principles result when different conceptions are used. Thus some view of justice enters into the explanation of the development of the corresponding sentiment; hypotheses about this psychological process incorporate moral notions even if these are understood only as part of the psychological theory. This much seems straightforward, and assuming that ethical ideas can be stated clearly, there is no difficulty in seeing how there can be laws of this kind. The preceding outline of moral development indicates how these matters can be worked out. After all, the sense of justice is a settled disposition to adopt and to want to act from the moral point of view insofar at least as the principles of justice define it. It is hardly surprising that these principles should be involved in the formation of this regulative sentiment. Indeed, it seems likely that our understanding of moral learning cannot far exceed our grasp of the moral conceptions that are to be learned. Analogously, our understanding of how we learn our language is limited by what we know about its grammatical and semantic structure. Just as psycholinguists depends upon linguistics, so the theory of moral learning depends upon an account of the nature of morality and its various forms. Our common-sense ideas about these matters do not suffice for the aims of theory. #RadnolphHarris 2 of 23
No doubt some prefer that social theories avoid the use of moral notions. For instance, they may wish to explain the formation of affective ties by laws referring to the frequency of interaction among those engaged in some common task, or to the regularity with which some persons take the initiative or exercise authoritative guidance. Thus one law may state that among equals cooperating together, where equality is defined by the accepted rules, the more often individuals interact with one another, the more likely it is that friendly feelings develop between them. Another law may asset that the more someone in a position of authority uses one’s powers and leads those subject to one, the more they come to respect one. However, since these laws (or tendencies) do not mention the justice (or fairness) of the arrangements in question, they are bound to be very limited in scope. Those who subject to another exercising authority will surely regard one differently depending upon whether the whole arrangement is just and well designed to advance what they take to be their legitimate interests. And the same is true of cooperation among equals. Institutions are patterns of human conduct defined by public systems of rules, and the very holding of the offices and positions which they define normally indicates certain intentions and aims. The justice or injustice of society’s arrangements and human’s beliefs about these questions profoundly influence the social feelings; to a large extent they determine how we regard another’s accepting or rejecting an institution, or one’s attempt to reform or defend it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
It may be objected that much social theory does well enough without using any moral ideas. The obvious example is economics. However, the situation in economic theory is peculiar in that one can often assume a fixed structure of rules and constraints that define the actions open to individuals and firms, and certain simplifying motivational assumptions are highly plausible. The theory of price (its more elementary parts anyway) is an illustration. One does not consider why buyers and sellers behave in accordance with the rules of law governing economic activity; or how preferences get formed or legal norms established. For the most part, these matters are taken as given, and at a certain level there is no objection to this. One the other hand, the so-called economic theory of democracy, the view that extents the basic ideas and methods of price theory to the political process, must for all its merits be regarded with caution. For a theory of a constitutional regime cannot take the rules as given, nor simply assume that they will be followed. And while being biblically motivated and informed may give wisdom, it does not necessarily assure political success. In this arena Christians in politics are often at a disadvantage. If one is consumed with politics, their first priority would be the morning newspapers, not the Bible. However, for many Christians, their first priority is not their political career; it is their relationship with God. However, because of that, they tend to be conscientious in their work, their first ambition is not for the continued pursuit of position. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Christians spurn political infight and place a higher premium on trust than power. The servantlike attitude is so diametrically opposed to society’s that it can easily be mistaken for weakness. In reality it gives a greater strength. The Christian in a position of power is not enslaved by that position—and thus the Christian has tremendous freedom to follow the dictates of conscience, not the fickle winds of self-interest. However, Christian are also exposed to greater struggles of conscience. They are honour bound to be the best states-people they can be, as well as the best Christians they can be. These competing allegiances means that a good Christian can be a good a good politician, but it is probably quite impossible for a good Christian to be a highly successful politician. Foremost is the issue of divided allegiances between God and the state. When there is a conflict of loyalty, the sincere Christian must obey God. Yet the politician’s oath of office is to uphold the laws of the state. The prevailing American view that faith is something private with no effect on public responsibility was first put forth by John Kennedy in a dramatic speech to the Houston Ministerial Association in the 1960 campaign. Protestants feared that Kennedy, a Catholic, would be bound by the dictates of the Roman church. So Kennedy pulled off a political masterstroke when he told the Texas ministers, mostly Baptists, that “whatever issue many come before me as president, if I’m elected…I will male my decision in accordance…with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictate. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.” #RanoldphHarris 5 of 23
President Kennedy’s message, which brought the house down, was a key to his election. However, it set a precedent that has now become part of established American political wisdom: One’s religious convictions must have no effect on one’s public decision. However, consider President Kennedy’s words: “No power…could case me to decide otherwise.” Not God? Though President Kennedy’s approach was enormously popular, it was also a renunciation of any influence his religion might have. He subsumed his church responsibility under his patriotism—or his candidacy. By contrast, Hilaire Belloc stood for election in 1906 in the British Parliament. As a Roman Catholic, he knew he would have to struggle to overcome religious prejudices, so he decided to confront the issues head-on. In his first campaign speech, he stood at the rostrum with a rosary in his hand and said, “I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. As far as possible I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.” He was elected. What else can a public official do? you may ask. The officeholder in a free society cannot impose personal views on the electorate; the democratic process must be respected in a pluralist society. That is true. Some go on to conclude, however, that the Christian officeholder is thus free, in the name of political prudence, to support or accept the majority will when it is contrary to Christian teaching (a view eloquently espoused by Governor Mario Cuomo in his 1984 Notre Dame address). #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Religious conviction is thereby reduced to a private matter; the social implications of the gospel are simply ignored. And as we have seen, the results of such privatization can be dangerous to society as a whole. Another position, often taken, is some are prepared to thrust their own theological view on an unsuspecting nation. This view, articulated by some in political debate today, argues that a Christian political should use one’s position to speak for God. However, the issue tends to be not a conflict between human rights or human life and state policy, areas where a Christian leader must take a stand. Rather, it is many times a question of biblical prophecy, whose fulfillment is the responsibility of God, not humans. Some political, if unconsciously, play God. They may be confused about the duty of government. As God’s servant, one’s sworn task is to preserve order, promote justice, and restrain evil, which sometimes means acting decisively to prevent war in a volatile international situation. Richard Neuhaus writes, “To gain public office and take an oath before God to maintain the constitutional order, and then to use that office as a tool for advancing one’s reading of Bible prophecy is an act of hubris, treachery, treason and deceit.” Both view—privatized faith and using political power to play God—are deeply flawed. This brings us full circle: Is it possible for a devout Christian to serve in public office without compromising either one’s conscience or constituency? #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is possible. However, only if the Christian officeholder understand several key truths. First, a government official must not play God; one’s duty is to facilitate government’s ordained role of preserving order and justice, not to use government to accomplish the goals of the church. Second, the Christian must respect the rights of all religious groups and insure that government protects every citizen’s freedom of conscience. There is an alternative to the imposition of religious values or the passive acceptance of majority opinion, a principle that pays both pluralism and conscience their due. Christian politicians must do all in their power to make clear, public arguments on issues of moral and political importance, to persuade rather than coerce. A recent Vatican statement put it this way: “Politicians must commit themselves through their interventions upon public opinion, to securing in society the widest possible consensus on…essential points (matters concerning human rights, human lie, or the institution of the family).” A third concern brings us back to the question we have considered in the past. What about the Christian responsibility in an age where national leaders in the nuclear age do not—perhaps, cannot—be entirely candid in public pronouncements? As Secretary of State George Shultz once defended the government’s clandestine actions by quoting Winston Churchill: “In times of war, the truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, if a Christian in office is forced to lie against one’s conscience, the Christian should resign. Clearly the political process is importantly one of enacting and revising rules and of trying to control the legislative and executive branches of government. Even if everything is done in accordance with constitutional procedures, we need to explain why these are accepted. Nothing analogous to the constraints of a competitive market holds for this case; and there are no legal sanctions in the ordinary sense for many sorts of unconstitutional actions by parliament and chief executives, and political forces they represent. The leading political actors are guided therefore in part by what they regard as morally permissible; and since no system of constitutional checks and balances succeeds in setting up an invisible hand that can be relied upon to guide the process to a just outcome, a public sense of justice is to some degree necessary. It would appear, then, that a correct theory of justice which explains how moral sentiments influence the conduct of public affairs. I touched upon this question in connection with the role of civil disobedience; it suffices to add here that one test of the contract doctrine is how well is serves this purpose. A second point about the psychological laws is that they govern changes in the affective ties which belong to our final ends. To clarify this, we may observe that to explain an intentional action is to show how, given our beliefs and the available alternatives, it accords with our plan of life, or with that subpart of it relevant in their circumstances. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Often this is done by a series of explanations saying that a first thing is done in order to achieve a second; that the second thing is done in order to achieve a third, and so on, the series being finite and ending at an aim for the sake of which the previous things are done. In accounting for our various actions, we may cite many different chains of reasons, and these normally stop at different points given the complexity of a plan of life and its plurality of ends. Moreover, a chain of reasons may have several branches, since an action may be done to advance more than ne end. How activities furthering the many ends are scheduled and balanced against each other is settled by the plan itself and the principles upon which it is based. Now among our final ends are the attachments we have for persons, the interest we take in the realization of their interests, and the sense of justice. The three laws describe how our system of desires comes to have new final ends as we acquire affective ties. These changes are to be distinguished from our forming derivative desires as a consequence of additional knowledge or further opportunities, or from our determining our existing wants in a more specific way. For example, someone wishing to travel to a certain place is informed that a certain route is the best. Upon accepting this advice, one has a desire to proceed in a particular direction. Derivative desires of this sort have a rational explanation. They are desires to do what in view of the evidence on hand will most effectively realize our present aims, and they shift along with knowledge and belief, and the available opportunities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The three psychological laws do not provide rational explanations of desires in this sense; rather they characterize transformations of our pattern of final ends that arise from our recognizing the manner in which institutions and the actions of others affect our good. Of course, whether an aim is final or derivative is not always easy to ascertain. The distinction is made on the basis of a person’s rational plan of life and the structure of this plan is not generally obvious, even to one. Yet for our purposes here, the distinction is clear enough. A third observation is that the three laws are not merely principles of association or of reinforcement. While they have a certain resemblance to these learning principles, they assert that the active sentiments of love and friendship, and even the sense of justice, arise from the manifest intention of other persons to act for our good. Because we recognize that they wish us well, we care for their well-being in return. Thus we acquire attachments to persons and institutions according to how we perceive our good to be affected by them. The basic idea is ne of reciprocity, a tendency to answer in kind. Not this tendency is a deep psychological fact. If not impossible, without it our nation would be very different and fruitful social cooperation fragile. For surely a rational person is not indifferent to things that significantly affect one’s good; and supposing that one develops some attitude toward them, one acquires either a new attachment or a new aversion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Humans can no longer life for oneself alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relation with the Universe. The only way out of today’s misery is for people to become worthy of each other’s trust. If we answered love with hate, or came to dislike those who acted fairly towards us or were averse to activities that further our good, a community would soon dissolve. Beings with a different psychology either have never existed or must soon have disappeared in the course of evolution. A capacity for a sense of justice built up by responses in kind would appear to be a condition of human sociability. The most stable conceptions of justice are presumably those for which the corresponding sense of justice is most firmly based on these tendencies. Finally, several comments about the account of moral development as a whole. The reliance upon the three principles of moral psychology is of course a simplification. A fuller account would distinguish between different kinds of learning and therefore between instrumental conditioning (reinforcement) and classical conditioning, so likely to shape our emotions and feelings. A consideration of modeling and imitation, and the learning of concepts and principles, would also be necessary. There is no reason to deny the significance of these forms of learning. For our purposes, though, the three-stages schema may suffice. Insofar as it stresses the forming of attachments as final ends, the sketch of more learning resembles the empiricist tradition with its emphasis on the importance of acquiring new motives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
There are also ties with which I have called the rationalistic view. For one thing, the acquisition of the sense of justice takes place in stages connected with the growth of knowledge and understanding. If the sentiment of justice is to be acquired, one must develop a conception of the social World and of what is just and unjust. Only when the human spirit grows powerful within us and guides us back to a civilization based on humanitarian ideal; only then will it act, through our intermediacy, upon those other peoples. All humans are endowed with the faculty of compassion, and for this reason can develop the humanitarian spirit. There is light shining in them, let them manifest an idea and it will radiate. Because I have confidence in the power of Truth and of the spirit, I believe in the future of humankind. The manifest intentions of others are recognized against a background of public institutions as interpreted by one’s view of the elf and its situation. I have not maintained, however, that the stages of development are innate or determined by psychological mechanisms. Whether various native propensities influence these stages is a matter I have left aside. Rather a theory of right and justice is used to describe what the expected course of development might be. The manner in which a well-ordered society is arranged, and the full system of principles, ideals, and precepts that govern the compete scheme, provide a way of distinguishing thee levels of morality. It seems plausible that, in a society regulated by the contract doctrine, moral learning would follow the order presented. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The stages are determined by the structure f what is to be learned, proceeding from the simpler to the more complex as the requisite capacities are realize. By founding the account of moral learning explicitly upon a particular ethical theory, it is evident in what sense the sequence of stages represents a progressive development and not simply a regular sequence. Just as persons gradually formulate rational plans of life that answer to their deeper interests, so they come to know the derivation of moral precepts and ideals from the principles that they would accept in an initial situation of equality. Ethical norms are no longer experienced merely as constraints, but are tied together into one coherent conception. The connection between these standards and human aspirations is now comprehended, and persons understand their sense of justice as an extension of their natural attachments, and as a way of caring about the collective good. The many chains of reasons with their various stopping points are no longer simply distinct but are seen as elements of a systematic view. Those who espouse a different one will favour another account of these matters. However, in any case, some conception of justice surely has a place in explaining moral learning, even if this conception belongs solely to the psychological theory and is not itself accepted as philosophically correct. When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is astounding that humans, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgments and decisions and the planner of the future, must make oneself such a quantie negligeable. The contradiction, the paradoxical evaluation of humanity by humans oneself, is in truth a matter for wonder, and one can only explain it as springing from an extraordinary uncertainty of judgment—in other words, humans are an enigma to themselves. This is understandable, seeing that they lack the means of comparison necessary for self-knowledge. One knows how to distinguish oneself from animals in point of anatomy and physiology, but as a conscious, reflecting being, gifted with speech, one lacks all criteria for self-judgment. One is on this planet a unique phenomenon which ne cannot compare with anything else. The possibility of comparison and hence of self-knowledge would arise only if one could establish relations with quasi-human mammals inhabiting other stars. Until then humans must continue to resemble a hermit who knows that in respect of comparative anatomy one has affinities with the anthropoids but, to judge by appearances, is extraordinarily different from one’s cousins in respect of one’s psyche. It is just in this most important characteristic of one’s species that one cannot know oneself and therefore remains a mystery to oneself. The differing degrees of self-knowledge within one’s own species are of little significance compared with the possibilities which would be opened out by an encounter with a creature of similar structure but different origin. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Our psyche, which is primarily responsible for all the historical changes wrought by the hand of humans on the face of this planet, remains an insoluble puzzle and an incomprehensible wonder, an object of abiding perplexity—a feature it shares with all Nature’s secrets. In regard to the latter will still have hope of making more discoveries and finding answers to the most difficult questions. However, in regard to the psyche and psychology there seems to be a curious hesitancy. Not only is it the youngest of the empirical sciences, but it has great difficulty in getting anywhere near its proper object. In the same way that our picture of the World had to be freed by Copernicus from the prejudice of egocentricity, the most strenuous efforts of a well-nigh revolutionary nature were needed to free psychology, first from the spell of mythological ideas, and then from the prejudice that the psyche is, on the one hand, a mere epiphenomenon of a biochemical process in the brain and, on the other hand, a purely personal matter. The connection with the brain does not in itself prove that the psyche is an epiphenomenon, a secondary function casually dependent on biochemical processes in the physical substrate. Nevertheless, we know only too well how much the psychic function can be disturbed by verifiable processes in the brain, and this fact is so impressive that the subsidiary nature of the psyche seems an almost unavoidable inference. The phenomena of parapsychology, however, warn us to be careful, for they point to a relativization of space and time through psychic factors which casts doubt on our naïve and overhasty explanation in terms of psychophysical parallelism. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
For the sake of this explanation people deny the finding of parapsychology outright, either for philosophical reasons or for intellectual laziness. This can hardly be considered a scientifically responsible attitude, even though it is a popular way of a quite extraordinary intellectual difficulty. To assess the psychic phenomenon, we have to take account of all the other phenomena that go with it, and accordingly we can no longer practise any psychology that ignores the existence of the unconscious or of parapsychology. The structure and physiology of the brain furnish no explanation of the psychic process. The psyche has a peculiar nature which cannot be reduced to anything else. Like physiology, it presents a relatively self-contained field of experience, to which we must attribute a quite special importance because it includes one of the two indispensable conditions for existence as such, namely, the phenomenon of consciousness. Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no World, for the World exists for us only in so far as it is consciously reflected by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position co-equal with the principle of physical beings. The carrier of this consciousness in the individual, who does not produce the psyche of one’s own volition but is, on the contrary, preformed by it and nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood. If therefore the psyche is of overriding empirical importance, so also is the individual, who is the only immediate manifestation of the psyche. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
This fact must be expressly emphasized for two reasons. Firstly, the individual psyche, just because of its individuality, is an exception to the statistical rule and is therefore robbed of one of its main characteristics when subjected to the levelling influence of statistical evaluation. Secondly, the Churches grant it validity only in so far as it acknowledges their dogmas—in other words, when it submits to a collective category. In both cases the will to individuality is regarded as egotistic obstinacy. Science devalues this as subjectivism, and the Churches condemn it morally as heresy and spiritual pride. As to the latter charge, it should not be forgotten that, unlike other religions, Christianity holds up before us a symbol whose content is the individual way of life of a man, the Son of Man, and that it even regards this individuation process as the incarnation and revelation of God Himself. Hence the development of man into a self acquires a significance whose full implications have hardly begun to be appreciated, because too much attention to externals blocks the way to immediate inner experience. Were not the autonomy of the individual the secret longing of many people it would scarcely be able to survive the collective suppression either morally or spiritual. All these obstacles make it more difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of the human psyche, but they count for very little beside one other remarkable fact that deserves mentioning. This is the common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear—on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
These fears are not found only among persons who are frightened by the picture Dr. Freud painted of the unconscious; they also troubled the originator of psychoanalysis himself, who confessed to me that it was necessary to make a dogma of his sexual theory because this was the sole bulwark of reason against a possible “eruption of the black flood of occultism.” In these words of Dr. Freud was expressing his conviction that the unconscious still harboured many things that might lend themselves to “occult” interpretation, as is in fact the case. These “archaic vestiges,” or archetypal forms grounded on the instincts and giving expression to them, have a numinous quality that sometimes arouses fear. They are ineradicable, for they represent the ultimate foundations of the psyche itself. They cannot be grasped intellectually, and when one has destroyed one manifestation of them, they reappear in altered form. It is this fear of the unconscious psyche which not only impedes self-knowledge but is the gravest obstacle to a wider understanding and knowledge of psychology. Often this fear is so great that one dares not admit it even to oneself. This is a question which every religious person should consider very seriously; one might get an illuminating answer. We behold God in Jesus. Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory of God to give. “I do nothing of Myself,” said Christ; “the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father.” “I seek not Mine own glory, but the glory of Him that sent Me.” John 8.28; 6.57; 8.50; 7.18. In these words is set forth the great principle which is the law of life for the Universe. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the Heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings; through the beloved Son, the Father’s life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all. And thus through Christ the circuit of beneficence is complete, representing the character of the great Giver, the law of the great character. Moroni said that with this golden book were two stones in silver bows called the Urim and Thummim, which were fastened to a breastplate. These were prepared by God to be used in translating the book. He explained that in ancient times, as related in the Bible, prophets possessed and used Urim and Thummim and breastplate. Those who used them were called “seers.” The angel explained that many prophecies of the Bible were about to be fulfilled. He quoted Scripture after Scripture from the Bible concerning these prophecies. Joseph Smith was cautioned that after he received the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and breastplate, he must not show them to anyone. As the angel talked, Joseph saw in a vision the place where the plates were hidden. Then the light in the room gathered around the angel Moroni and he disappeared from Joseph’s sight. As Joseph lay on his bed thinking about this wonderful experience, the room suddenly became bright again and the same Heavenly messenger stood at his bedside. He told the young man exactly the same things he had on his first visit, and showed the same vision. Then he disappeared in the same manner. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
After having been told these things twice, Joseph thought he could not forget them, but to his amazement the same messenger returned and repeated the same things as before. This time he cautioned Joseph that Satan would tempt him to obtain the plates for the purpose of getting rich. Joseph was forbidden to do this and was told that he must have no other reason for obtaining the plates than to glorify God; otherwise he could not have them. Almost immediately after the angel Moroni has ascended into Heaven following his third visits, and while Joseph lay thinking of the experiences of the night, he heard the cock crow in the barnyard. He realized then that morning had arrived and that his interviews with the Heavenly messenger had occupied the whole night. Predestination is the foreknowledge of God’s benefits. However, foreknowledge is not the things foreknown, but in the person who foreknows them. Therefore, predestination is in the one who predestines, and not in the predestined. Predestination is not anything in the predestined; but only in the person who predestines. Predestination is a part of providence. Now providence is not anything in the things provided; but is a type in the mind of the provider. However, the execution of providence which is called government, is in a passive way the thing governed, and in an active way the governor. Whence it is clear that predestination is type the ordering of some persons toward eternal salvation, existing in the divine mind. The execution, however, of this order is in a passive way in the predestined, but actively in God. The execution of predestination is the calling and magnification; accord to the Apostle (Romans 3.30): “Whom He predestined, them He also called and whom He called, them He also magnified.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Actions passing out to external matter imply of themselves passion—for example, the actions of warming and cutting; but not so actions remaining in the agent, as understanding and willing. Predestination is an action of this latter class. Wherefore, it does not put anything in the predestined. However, its execution, which passes out to external thing, has an effect in them. Destination sometimes denotes a real mission of someone to a given end; thus, destination can only be said of someone actually existing. It is takes, however, in another sense a mission which a person conceives in the mind; and in this manner we are aid to destine a thing which we firmly propose in our mind. In this latter way it is said that Eleazar “determined not to do any unlawful things for the love of life,” reports 2 Maccabees 6.20. Thus destination can be of a thing which does not exist. Predestination, however, by reason of the antecedent nature it implies, can be attributed to a thing which does not actually exist; in whatsoever ways destination is accepted. Preparation is twofold: of the patient in respect to passion and this is in the thing prepared; and f the agent to action, and this is in the agent. Such a preparation is predestination and as an agent by intellect is said to prepare itself to act, accordingly as it preconceives the idea of what is to be done. Thus, God from all eternity prepared by predestination, conceiving the idea of the order of some towards salvation. Grace does not come into the definition of predestination, as something belonging to its essence, but inasmuch as predestination implies a relation to grace, as of cause to effect, and of act to its object. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Whence it does not follow that predestination is anything temporal. We may take comfort in the fact that the Overself never at any moment abandons or obliterates the human personality, however debased it becomes. Nor could it do so, whatever foolish cults say to the contrary, for through this medium it finds an expression in time-space. When we say that the Overself is within the heart, it would be a great error to think that we mean it is limited to the heart. For the heart is also within it. This seeming paradox will yield to reflection and intuition. The mysterious relationship between the ego and the Overself has been expressed by Jesus Christ in the following words: “The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father.” Do not day that I will depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. We invoke Thy divine assistance upon this entire congregation, its men and women as well as its children. May there by a vouchsafed unto them salvation from Heaven, grace, lovingkindness, and mercy, long life, ample sustenance, health of body and enlightenment of the mind. May you be blessed with children who will not neglect the Scripture. May the Ruler of the Universe bless you, prolong your lives, increase your days, and add to your years. May you be saved and delivered from every trouble and misfortune. May the Lord of Heaven be your help at all times and reasons; and let us say, Amen. I declare every barrier to the promise of God for you is being broken in the name of Jesus! The floodgates are being opened! #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 