Somehow I cannot believe that there are any heights that cannot be scaled by a human who know the secrets of making dreams come true. Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. Christianity, a mere two thousand and twenty two years old, is one of the World’s youngest religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are millennia older and, by the time of Christ’s birth, already counted millions of Asian devotees. Each of these different faiths extols celibacy as one of the highest expressions of Earthly existence, a crucial element in the lifelong endeavour to extinguish human passions and the longing for possessions. Each views pleasures of the flesh as an element in relationships, and for certain stages of life, Hinduism prescribes and Buddhism tolerates marriage. All three religions teach, however, that longing for pleasures of the flesh implies possessiveness of another person, in itself a condition to be avoided. Above all, celibacy is an essential condition to end the suffering of continuous rebirth, and to achieve moksa or nirvana, the spiritual liberation that is the believer’s ultimate goal. In each of the three belief systems, celibacy is a crucial means to an all-important end. In Hinduism, with its spiritual-centered understanding of human physiology and spiritual development, celibacy has a crucial physical as well as spiritual dimension. Hindus regard the life force as a powerful and enriching substance that should be conserved. This precept provides men with enormous impetus to abstain from wasteful pleasures of the flesh. Instead of squander the life force by indulging in uncontrolled pleasures of the flesh, they can store it as creative energy that will add to their intellectual vigour, physical stamina, and moral worth. The life force is such a powerful elixir, it even keeps men more youthful. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Mainstream Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all share the negative and suspicious assessment of women that later characterized much of Christian thought. Women are depicted as seductive temptresses, voraciously interested in pleasure of the flesh, and morally weak. Their lustful nature makes celibacy an even greater challenge for men, who also have to overcome their own wayward impulses. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism all required their maidens to remain virginal, but as in Christianity, celibacy can sometimes empower women and not just guarantee their marriageability. This is particularly true of nuns. In this context, their voluntary commitment to celibacy allows them, too, to aspire to moksa or nirvana. At the same time, it frees them from the burdens of marriage and motherhood and may provide opportunities for learning, scholarship, and public service otherwise prohibited to woman. In the case of the Brahma Kumaris, a renegade Hindu sect, celibacy completely inverts the status of woman. Its doctrines analyzes and explains the perceived low status of women in terms of the great evil of pleasures of the flesh, and it preaches celibacy as the only way to rectify this great evil. In this sect, celibacy is paramount and women are hoisted to heights unheard of in the Hindu religion. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are ancient religious philosophies that provide metaphysical explanations of the World that in most ways differ entirely from those of Christianity and the traditions in which it is rooted. Over the centuries, Hinduism and Buddhism have embraced billions of believers, Jainism millions. Their doctrines are sophisticated and sectarian, and infinitely complex. As they move through time and place, they continue to modify and vary. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The following overview, therefore, is limited to the simplest sketch of each religion, glimpsed through the lens of celibacy. Nonetheless, it reveals just how integrally celibacy is located at the core of each of these creeds, and hence in the moral heart of so many human lives. In general, Hinduism aspires to purge human existence of its afflictions, the root of which is the perpetual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. At the core of these afflictions is the physical body, an entity at the mercy of nature and simultaneously an illusion that conceals both human immortality and latent divinity. How then to bpresent in every individual? Hinduism’s answer is to follow the asramas, the four stages of life that characterize ideal existence and in three of which celibacy is paramount. This is because individuals will experience cyclical rebirths until they achieve moksa, the spiritual liberation that is the ultimate goals of Hindu life. Rebirths are determined, in part, by karma, the goodness or badness of actions in previous lives, a kind of spiritual justice system that leads to continuous rebirth. To Hindus, these rebirths are not miracles of eternal life, as they might be to Christians, but rather the terrible price exacted for wrongful deeds committed earlier. The way to end this relentless cycle of rebirths is to obliterate Earthly longings and desires, including karma or pleasures of the flesh, and cultivate higher knowledge. Modest phrases encompassing lifetimes of travail, but the rout to liberation, though rigorous, is at least clearly defined as a series of four life stages: brahmacharya or student, grihastha or household, vanaprastha or forest dweller, and sannyasi or total renouncer or religious mendicant. Each asrama evokes “toil and suffering,” steps in the gradual process of purification from “Earthly taint.” At the last step, the pilgrim is deserving of one’s spiritual home. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Gurus typically train boys, in mind and body, for a virtuous adulthood of good habits and excellent character, formed through devotion to self-discipline, sacred knowledge, and complete chastity. This commitment to abstaining from pleasures of the flesh is so total that the very word brahmacharya has become synonymous with celibacy. It means a lifestyle of intense self-control, in which the rational mind reduces all the carnal appetites to nothingness. Only thus purified can a man attain the state of selflessness and sufficient stores of the life force necessary for the realization of truth. In the past, is a young man lapsed and indulged in pleasures of the flesh, he was subjected to severe penances. Manu, the Hindu lawgiver, decreed a humiliating year of wearing a donkey’s skin, begging food from seven houses, admitting at each how he had sinned, eating only a single meal each day but bathing three times. The chaste brahmacharin absorbs a wide range of knowledge during his apprenticeship: the sacred Vedic texts and rituals, his social and religious duties and responsibilities as a member of his caste, and proper codes for behaviour. Together, this education sets him on the path that will reveal the Supreme Being, the ultimate goal of Hinduism. His celibacy is an essential instrument of learning and, in conjunction with his other austerities, helps him achieve control over all his senses. Subduing passion for pleasures of the flesh focuses the brahmacharin’s attention on his studies and duties, and on drawing closer to the Supreme Being. However, abstaining is not enough. The urge for pleasures of the flesh must not merely be comminated but sublimated, transformed into energy and redirected into Godliness. Celibacy is as much mental as physical. It is also an essential means to Hinduism’s most important end: moksa, the ultimate liberation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Celibate energy has a tangible physical dimension: semen. In no other religion is the power of this life force as pronounced as in Hinduism and related religious traditions. Semen is a vital fluid, the essence of life. In some of the writings in the Upanishads, a set of sacred Hindu text, for instance, the loss of seed is lamented as a kind of death. Seed is the creative force, and it is calculated that to produce one mere drop, sixty drops of blood are required. By retaining their seed, ascetic men generate tapas, the inner heat or energy that Shina used to destroy Kama and the energy that imparts aspects of Godliness to celibate mortals. Given its power, a brahmacharin who discharges seed risks at best serious waste, at worst dangerous loss. Instead, the precious fluid should be retained as an internal resource. One who treasures one’s seed and channels its power upward may attain personal and spiritual power and also sustain high levels of physical and mental agility, all invaluable to a student’s success. A man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly…incapable of any great effort. A man should be controlled, friendly, and mentally composed; he should always be a giver and a nontaker, compassionate to all living beings. He should spend his time meditating on God and, say the sacred texts, “lives identified with the eternal Self and beholds nothing else.” Ultimately, that oneness will allow him, at last, to escae the cycle of rebirth. Classical Hinduism, like Christianity practiced mostly in the breach, nonetheless forms the Worldview of countless millions of men and women about the meaning and nature of divine and human existence. Celibacy’s crucial role in the metaphysical scheme of things is central to Hinduism, for two reasons: first to conserve the precious life force in the seed, then transform it into creative energy, and second, as the only way to renounce and transcend Earthly desires, to achieve moksa or liberation, the longed-for closeness or oneness with the Supreme Being. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Christian theologians in the 19^th century were troubled by the claim made famous by Immanuel Kant that theological ethics was necessarily heteronomous because the person is bound by a foreign will, the will of God. If this is the case, then moral norms are relative to the will of God and have no grounding reality; the defining feature of morality is unquestioned obedience. In order to counter this challenge, the idea of theonomy was introduced into a Christian version of morality. This concept was also to provide the means to avoid moralism and relativism. The moral law is simply the law of our essential nature. It is, then, neither something we impose on ourselves (autonomy) nor something imposed on us by a foreign will or power (heteronomy). The Christian message is that true freedom is theonomous; the moral law of God is nothing else than our true being. What does this mean? This particular set of ethics revolves around three arguments needed to counter moralism and relativism. First, the moral act aims at actualization of self; that is, at constituting the person as a centered self. For the ethical problem this means that the moral act is always a victory over disintegrating forces and that its aim is the actualization of man as a centered and therefore free person. The experience of the imperative to actualize the self is found in conscience, “the silent voice,” of our essential nature judging out actual lives. The moral law is nothing else than our essential nature formulated in terms of an imperative. To act on this law is to act out of freedom, since it is to act according to our essential being. Second, this law is not a matter of psychology or social custom, but is the will of God. That is to demonstrate the religious source of morality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The “Will of God” for us is precisely our essential being with all of its potentialities, our created nature declared as “very good” by God, as, in terms of the Creation myth, He “saw everything that he made.” For us the “Will of God” is manifest in our essential being; and only because of this can we accept the moral imperative as valid. It is not a strange law that demands our obedience, but the “silent voice” of our nature as man, and as man with an individual character. The moral law articulates what we most essentially are—centered persons in relation to God as the ground and power of being—as an imperative for how to live amid the ambiguities of actual life. The will of God is nothing else than the good of essential being. This means that morality does not depend on any concrete religion; it is religious in its very essence. The fact is, however, that our actual being is not our true being. Our lives are marked by fragmentation. The voice of man’s essential being is silenced, step by step; and his disintegrating self, his depersonalization, shows the nature of the anti-moral act and, by contrast, the nature of the moral act. Because of our estrangement from our essential being, we encounter the moral law as an imperative action. This estrangement is heard in the testimony of conscience against the self. Graceless moralism is born of the fact that fallen creatures hear the demand to actualize their essential nature in conscience as a heteronomous law demanding obedience. How then is this ethical problem—the conflict between self-integration and disintegration—to be answered beyond moralism? The answer is found in love, agape, as the ultimate principle of morality. Agape, points to the transcendent source of the content of the moral imperative and unifies our actual nature with our essential being. Agape overcomes the estrangement of fallen existence from the goodness of created, essential being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

This love, agape, also draw within itself justice, as the acknowledgement of the other person as a person, and the power to act. In this way, agape is an answer to graceless moralism, while at the same time an agapistic ethics avoids the peril of moral relativism. These ethic principals stress the demand for the actualization of life against disintegrating forces. This is conceived in terms of the reunification in agape of actual life with essential being. By acting on the moral law in obedience to our essential nature, a higher mode of being is actualized, that is, the person as a centered self. In this way, the essential connection between morality and religion is asserted so that moralism and relativism are avoided. Suicidal acts may be connected to recent events or current conditions in a person’s life. Although such factors may not be the basic motivation for the suicide, they can precipitate it. Common triggering factors include stressful event, mood and thought changes, alcohol and other drug use, mental disorders, and modeling. People may also attempt suicide in response to long-term rather than recent stress. Three long-term stressors are particularly common—serious illness, an abusive environment, and occupational stress. People whose illnesses cause them great pain or severe disability may try to commit suicide, believing that death is unavoidable and imminent. They may also believe that the suffering and problems caused by their illnesses are more than they can endure. One study found that 37 percent of subject who died by suicide had been in poor physical health; other studies tell a similar story. Illness-linked suicides have become more common, and controversial, in recent years. Medical progress is partly responsible. Although physicians can now keep seriously ill people alive much longer, they often faith to extend the quality and comfort of the patients’ lives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Victims of an abusive or repressive environment from which they have little or no hope of escape sometimes commit suicide. For example, prisoners of war, inmates of concentration camps, abused spouses, abused children, and prison inmate have tried to end their lives. Like those who have serious illnesses, these people may have felt that they could endure no more suffering and believed that there was no hope for improvement in their condition. Some jobs create feelings of tension or dissatisfaction that may precipitate suicide attempts. Research has found particularly high suicide rates among psychiatrists and psychologist, physicians, nurses, dentists, lawyers, farmers, and unskilled labourers. Such correlations do not necessarily mean that occupational pressures directly case suicidal actions. Perhaps unskilled workers are responding to financial insecurity rather than job stress when they attempt suicide. Similarly, rather than reacting to the emotional strain of their work, suicidal psychiatrists and psychologist may have long-standing emotional problems that stimulated their career interest in the first place. Clinicians once believed that married women who held jobs outside the home had higher suicide rate than other women, perhaps because of conflicts between the demands of their families and their jobs. However, recent studies call these notions into question and some even suggest that work outside the home may be linked to lower suicide rates among women, just as it is among men. One who wants power must be prepared to live flexibly between respecting rules and violating rules. Never must one break rules so flagrantly as to be flung out of their hierarchy; for the outcast will remain powerless. Since power can be gained only within the hierarchy, it is imperative that one remain in good standing with that part of the structure above one. Yet never must one observe the rules so respectfully as to miss the chance to seize unmerited advancement, to climb over, and perhaps dislodge, someone above one on the ladder. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Commitment to a social cause conveys license to an individual to reach for power with a ruthlessness forbidden to purely personal interest. And the greater one’s individual sacrifice in the service of that cause, the greater the license. The progression is the function of a constant will to power acting on an accelerating progression of technological means. The spread of Christianity does not war with this process, but serves it; for Christianity, by way of the morality it fosters, supports the solidarity of the masses and thereby the increased power of the state. State power contends with individual power. The hunger for power by the collective, with the aim of ruthless conquest, leads it to demand of the individual a morality of self-sacrifice, a willingness to die for the state, whereas the hunger for power in an individual leads one to ignore, insofar as one can do so safely, the morality required of one by the collective. The state exercises enormous power; the individual, even the very powerful individual, relatively little. It comes about, therefore, that those individuals who are gifted and able, and who in the pursuit of power are not much burdened by loyalty to shared beliefs, who indeed are skilled at the professing and representing these beliefs while at same time violating them in pursuit of personal aggrandizement…those people strive for and achieve leadership and come thereby to be in the position of controlling and directing the enormous power of the state. And just as the individual in one’s quest of personal power is likely not to announce one’s aim as such, perhaps not even to oneself, but rather to advance it euphemistically (“I want to work with people”; I am interested in research”; “I seek a career in public service”), so those who determine the actions of the state likewise disguise the nature of those acts. They speak of securing national safety, of serving national interest, of supporting democracy in third World countries, of ensuring civil rights, of preserving our democratic heritage; but under cover of these revered principles and these professed purposes the state acts to enlarge its power. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

What prevents the achievement in reality of peaceful social arrangements throughout the World is not chance, not fate, not unenlightenment, not individual error or wrongdoing, but the unlimited will to power of sovereign states. What makes for the inherent absurdity of great collective events, such as wars and revolutions, is that the will to power nations, and the actions to which it leads them, and the consequences of these actions, bear no relation to any reasonable goal of human conscience. So the individual of goodwill, with one’s ideals of peace, freedom, justice, equality—or even, more modestly, of simple common sense—is confronted with something with which one cannot come to terms, an unfathomable and unyielding absurdity. Next, what happens to the verbally bright who have no zeal for a serviceable profession and who have no particular scientific or artistic bent? For the most part they make up the tribes or salesmanship, entertainment, business management, promotion, and advertising. Here of course there is no question of utility or honour to begin with, so an ingenuous boy will not look here for a manly career. Nevertheless, though we can pass by the sufferings of these well-paid callings, much publicized by their own writers, they are important to our theme because of the model they present to the growing boy. Consider the men and women in TV advertisements, demonstrating the product and singing the jingle. They are clowns and mannequins, in grimace, speech, and action. And again, what I want to call attention to in this advertising is not the economic problem of synthetic demand, and not the cultural problem of Popular Culture, but the human problem that these are human beings working as clowns; that the writers and designers of it are human beings thinking like idiots; and the broadcasters and underwriters know and abet what goes on. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Alternately, they are liars, confidence men, smooth talkers, obsequious, insolent, et cetera, et cetera. The popular-cultural content of the advertisements is somewhat neutralized by Mad magazine, the bible of the twelve-year-old who can read. However, far more influential and hard to counteract is the fact that the workmen and the patrons of this enterprise are human beings. (Highly approved, too.) They are not good models for a boy looking for a manly job that is useful and necessary, requiring human energy and capacity, and that can be done with honour and dignity. They are a good sign that not many such jobs will be available. The popular estimation is rather different. Consider the following: As one possible assistant, I suggested to the Senate subcommittee that they alert celebrities and leaders in the field of sports, movies, theater and television to the help they can offer by getting close to these [delinquent] kids. By giving them motivating heroes that they know and can talk to, instead of the misguided image of trouble-making buddies, they could assist greatly in guiding these normal aspirations for same and status into wholesome progressive channels. Or again: when a mass cross-section of Oklahoma high school juniors and seniors was asked which living person they would like to be, the boys named Drake, Tom Brady, and President Trump; the girls chose Paris Hilton, Beyonce, and Jennifer Lopez. In the American economy, the brute facts are that to keep the economy expanding, it is necessary to give money away to increase spending, production, and profits; and that this money must not be used for useful public goods in taxes, but must be plowed back as business expenses, even though there is a shameful shortage of schools, housing, et cetera. Yet when the TV people at first tried simply to give the money away for nothing, there was a great Calvinistic outcry that this was demoralizing (we may gamble on the horses only to improve the breed). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

So they hit on the notion of a real contest with prizes. However, then, of course, they could not resist making the show itself profitable, and competitive in the (also rigged) ratings with other shows, so the experts in the entertainment-commodity manufactured phony contests. And to cap the climax of fraudulence, the hero of the phony contests proceeded to persuade himself, so he says, that his behaviour was educational! The behaviour of the networks was correspondingly typical. These business organizations claim the loyalty of their employees, but at the first breath of trouble they were ruthless and disloyal to their employees. They want to maximize profits and yet be absolutely safe from any risk. Consider their claim that they knew nothing about the fraud of the rigged Quiz shows. However, if they watched the shows that they were broadcasting, they could not possible, as professionals, not have known the facts, for there were obvious type-casting, acting, plot, et cetera. If they are not professionals, they are incompetent. However, if they do not watch what they broadcast, then they are utterly irresponsible and on what grounds do they have the franchises to the channels. We may offer them the choice: that they are liars or incompetent or irresponsible. The later direction of the investigation seems to me more important, the inquiry into the bribed disk-jockeying; for this deals directly with our crucial economic problem of synthesized demand, made taste, debauching the public and preventing the emergence and formation of natural taste. In such circumstances there cannot possibly be an American culture; we are doomed to nausea and barbarism. And then these baboons have the effrontery to declare that they give the people what the people demand and that they are not responsible for the level of the movies, the music, the plays, the books! #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Finally, in leafing through the Occupational Outlook Handbook, we notice that the armed forces employ a large number. Here our young man can become involved in a World-wide demented enterprise, with personnel and activities corresponding. Thus, on the simple criteria of unquestioned utility, employing human capacities, and honours, there are not enough worthy jobs in our economy for average boys and adolescents to grow up toward. There are of course thousands of jobs that are worthy and self-justifying, and thousands that can be made so by stubborn integrity, especially if one can work as an independent. Extraordinary intelligence or special talent, also, can often carve out a place for itself—conversely, their usual corruption and waste are all the more sickening. However, by and large our economic society is not geared for the cultivation of its young or the attainment of important goals that they can work toward. This is evident from the usual kind of vocational guidance, which consists of measuring the boy and finding some place in the economy where he can be fitted; chopping him down to make him fit; or neglecting him if they cannot find his slot. Personnel directors do not much try to scrutinize the economy in order to find some activity that is a real opportunity for the boy, and then to create an opportunity if they cannot find one. To do this would be an horrendous task: if we wanted to do it, I am not sure it could be done. However, if we mean to speak seriously about the troubles of the young men, the question is whether anything less makes sense. Surely by now, however, many readers are objecting that this entire argument is pointless because people in fact do not thin of their jobs in this way at all. Nobody asks if a job is useful or honourable (within the limits of business ethics). #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

A man gets a job that pays well, or well enough, that has prestige, and good conditions, or at least tolerable conditions. I agree with these objections as to the fact. (I hope we are wrong.) However, the question is what it means to grow up into such a fact as: “during my productive years, I will spend eight hours a day doing what is no good.” Why is this happening? Why is this new civilizational tide rushing in to collide with the old? No body even knows. Even today, 350 long years after the fact, historians cannot pin down the “cause” of the industrial revolution. As we have seen, each academic guild or philosophical school has its own preferred explanation. The technological determinists point to the steam engine, the ecologists to the destruction of Britain’s forests, the economist to fluctuating in the price of wool. Others emphasize religious or cultural changes, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and so on. In today’s World, too, we can identify many mutually casual forces. Experts point to the rising demand for exhaustible supplies of petroleum, the mushrooming growth of World population, or the escalated threat of global pollution as key forces for structural change on a planetary scale. Others point to the incredible advances in science and technology since the end of World War II and to the social and political changes railing in their wake. Still others emphasize the awakening of the non-industrial World and the ensuing political upheavals that threaten our life lines of inexpensive energy and raw materials. One can cite striking value changes—the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, the youth upheaval of the 2020, the swiftly shifting attitudes toward work. One might single out the arms race which has greatly accelerated certain types of technological change. Alternatively, one might look for the cause of Fourth Wave in cultural epistemological change of our time—perhaps as profound as those wrought by the Reformation and Enlightenment combined. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

We could, in short, find scores, even hundreds of streams of change feeding into the grand confluence all of them interrelated in mutually causal ways. We could find amazing beneficial feedback loops in the social system, vastly accelerating and amplifying certain changes, as well as negative loops that suppress other changes. We could find, in this period of turbulence, analogies to the grand “leap” described by scientists like Ilya Prigogine, by which a simpler structure, in part by chance, suddenly breaks through to a wholly new level of complexity and diversity. What we cannot find is “the” cause of the Fourth Wave in the sense of a single independent variable or link that pulls the chain. Indeed, to ask what “the” cause is may be the wrong way of phrasing the question or even the wrong question altogether. “What is the cause of the Fourth Wave?” may be a Third Wave question. To say this is not to discount causation but to recognize its complexity. Nor does it suggest historical inevitability. Third Wave civilization may be shattered and unworkable, but it does not mean that the Third Wave civilization pictured here must necessarily take form. Any number of forces could radically change the outlook. War, economic collapse, ecological catastrophe come immediately to mind. While no one can stop the latest historical wave of change, necessity and chance are both at work. This, however, does not mean we cannot influence its course. If what I have said about beneficial feedback is correct, often a little “kick” to the system can bring about large-scale changes. The decisions we take today, as individuals, groups, or governments, can deflect, divert, or channel the racing currents of change. Each people will react differently to the challenges posed by the super-struggle that pits advocates of the Third Wave against those of the Fourth. Russians will respond one way, Americans another, Japanese, Germans, French, or Norwegians in still other ways, and countries are likely to grow more different from one another rather than more alike. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Within counties the same is true. Little changes can trigger large consequences—in corporations, schools, churches, hospitals, and neighbourhoods. And this is why despite everything, people—even individual—still count. This is especially true because the changes that lie ahead are the consequences of conflict, not automatic progression. Thus in every one of the technologically advanced nations, backward regions struggle to complete their industrialization. They attempt to protect their Third Wave factories and the jobs based on them. This places them in frontal conflict with regions that are already far advanced in building the technological base for Fourth Wave operations. Such battles tear society apart, but they also open many opportunities for effective political and social actions. The super-struggle now being waged in every community between the people of the Third Wave and the people of the Fourth Wave does not mean that other struggles lose their importance. Class conflict, racial conflict, the conflict of young and the established culture against the imperialism of the middle-aged, the conflict among regions, genders, religions—all these continue. Some, indeed, will be sharpened. However, all of them are shaped by and subordinated to, the super-struggle. It is the super-struggle that most basically determines the future. Meanwhile, two things cut through everything as the Fourth Wave thunders in our ears. One is the shift toward a higher level of diversity in society—the de-massification of mass society. The second is acceleration—the faster pace at which historical change occurs. Together these place tremendous strains on individuals and institutions alike, intensifying the super-struggle as it rages about us. Accustomed to coping with low diversity and slow change, individuals and institutions suddenly find themselves trying to cope with high diversity and high-speed change. The cross-pressures threaten to overload their decisional competence. The result is future shock. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

We are left with only one options. We must be willing to reshape ourselves and our institutions to deal with the new realities. For that is the price of admission to a workable and decently humane future. To make the necessary changes, however, we must take a totally fresh and imaginative look at two blazing issues. Both are crucial to our survival, yet all but ignored in public discussion: the future of personality and the politics of the future. To which we now turn…It is questionable whether humanity has learned enough from its ordeal in the last war and the present crisis. Since its return to a more spiritual outlook is foreordained, it may have to be accomplished at the price of a Third World War. The Mind back of things had not allowed the discovery of the atom bomb to be made just at this particular time without sufficient reason for doing so. Humanity is being prepared for the next fated move in its inner life. And that is a lessening of selfish materialism, an increasing of spiritual co-operation. The instrument used is a physical one though the net result will include a psychological one. Only if the fear generated by the unprecedented danger of this discovery attains such a tremendous magnitude that it overwhelms all other base emotions, it is likely to lead to the unshakeable determination to make the fresh moral start that is needed. The method of persuasion has changed radically. Where the spiritual teachers have failed to bring home their lessons to humanity, the atomic bomb may do so. It has forced these alternatives upon us: either the nations of the World must change their moral attitude towards each other or they must annihilate each other. The atom bomb leaves no alternatives between self-reform and self-annihilation. Humanity’s situation is critical urgent and grave. For human attitudes must be changed, and changed quickly. Yet human feelings are unprepared unwilling and unready to make this change. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Where the inner attitude of goodwill is lacking, there no real success can be achieves in the estrangement of war. We were told the possession of nuclear bombs would act as a deterrent against aggression. However, it could only be a temporary one. For arms races usually end in collisions, which themselves end in war. Where are the purified characters, the ennobled minds, which have come out of the past two World wars? They exist, of course, but only as individual. In the mass, more people were brutalized, most lost their faith in ideals and ethics than kept it. A Third World War could produce only still greater and graver deterioration. This is why the cause of peace must be helped—now, while there is yet time. No nuclear war can be a righteous war. Its support can only be contrary to Christian ethics and its consequence to human welfare. It is evil, and nothing, no cause and no situation, can make it good. They must recognize the fact that the only way t stop wars is the change of heart and mind from the state which breeds them. It will be a war not merely for the triumph of one empire against another, but in reality a desperate struggle for the survival of true civilization, which would necessarily include the survival after the war. It is astonishing that the terrifying peril into which the manufacture of atomic bombs had plunged the fate of humankind, brings from most people little more response than apathy. If a nuclear war—so far unknown—should happen in our time and leave as its aftermath most of humankind dead and much of the planet devastated, nobody should complain about a result. Everybody had years of warning but its deterrent effect was too small against immense stupidity, indifference, cruelty, short-sightedness, and wishful thinking. Neither the memory of past agonies (in two World Wars) nor the imaginary picture of coming ones would then have been strong enough to teach us the dreadful lesson. If humans of goodwill try to find it, there is always a formula less costly than war. World War is not at any time a rigid preordained fatal inevitability, but only a probability. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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