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Tell Me, Pretty Maiden, are there Any More at Home Like You?
Nobody starts off stupid. You have only to watch babies and infants, and think seriously about what all of them learn and do, to see that, except for some who face natural limitations, they show a style of life, and a desire and ability to learn that in a more mature person we might call genius. Hardly an adult in a thousand, or ten thousand, could in any three years of one’s life learn as much, grow as much in one’s understanding of the World around one, as every infant learns and grows in one’s first three years. When people are expected to behave in specific ways or are told that they are stupid or bright or ugly or lovable, they often begin to act in these ways. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. These expectations may come from parents and other authority figures, but they can also come from peers. In childhood, and especially in adolescence, peer pressure and peer evaluation become very important. It would be better to take words like “stupid” and “dumb” out of the vocabulary you use with any child. In our culture, which places a premium on intelligence, a person who is called stupid often enough is very unlikely to take risks or do anything challenging. (“Why try? I am so dumb I cannot do it.”) Often students who do not speak out in class fear that what they have to say may sound uneducated, and the instructor and other students may laugh at or ridicule them. So these students sit, mute, in class after class. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Persons in the grip of neurotic hopelessness manage to “carry on” in one way or another. If their capacity to be creative has not been too greatly damaged by their neurosis, they may be able fairly consciously to resign themselves to the state of their personal lives and concentrate on a field in which they can be productive. They may submerge themselves in a social or religious movement or in the work of an organization. Their work may be useful; the fact that they lack zest can be outweighed by their having no personal ax to grind. Others, in adapting themselves to their particular frame of life, may cease to question it but yet not attach much meaning to it, trying merely to fulfill their obligations. It is, I believe, the state of a defect condition, in contrast to neurosis. I interpret it, however, as the outcome of neurotic processes. They may, on the other hand, give up all serious or promising pursuits and turn to the periphery of life, trying to snatch from it some bit of enjoyment, finding their interest in a hobby or in incidental pleasures like good eating, interior design, or gardening. Or they may drift and deteriorate, let themselves go to pieces. Unable to do any consistent work, they take to drink, gambling, whoring. The kind of alcoholism described by Charles Jackson in The Lost Week-End, where a binge drinker mostly of rye, fancies himself as a writer. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
And in his state of neurosis, he lapses into foreign phrase and quotes Shakespeare even while attempting to steal a woman’s purse, trying to pawn a typewriter for drinking money. This represents and end stage of such a condition. In this connection it might be interesting to examine whether an unconscious determination to go to pieces may not supply a powerful psychic contribution to such chronic diseases as tuberculosis and cancer. Finally, persons without hope may turn destructive, but at the same time make an attempt at restitution by living vicariously. This, in my opinion, is the meaning of sadistic trends. Because Dr. Freud regarded sadistic trends as instinctual, psychoanalytical interest has been largely focused on the so-called sadistic perversions. Sadistic patterns in everyday relationships, though not ignored, have not been strictly defined. Any kind of assertive or aggressive behaviour is conceived of as a modification or sublimation of instinctual sadistic trends. Dr. Freud, for instance, regarded a striving for power as such a sublimation. It is true that a striving for power can be sadistic; but in a person who sees life as a battle of all against all, it can merely represent a struggle for survival. Actually, it need not be neurotic at all. The result of this lack of discrimination is that we have neither a comprehensive picture of the forms sadistic attitudes may take nor any criteria as to precisely what is sadistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
It is left pretty much to individual intuition to determine what may rightly be called sadism and what may not—a situation hardly conductive to sound observation. The mere act of hurting others is in itself no indication of a sadistic tendency. A person may be engaged in a struggle of a personal or general nature in the course of which one had to hurt not only one’s adversaries but one’s associates as well. Hostility toward others may also be merely reactive. A person can feel hurt or frightened and want to hit back with a force that, while disproportionate to the objective provocation, is subjectively quite in keeping with it. It is easy, however, to deceive oneself on this score: all too often a justifiable reaction is claimed when actually a sadistic tendency was in operation. However, the difficulty in distinguishing one from the other does not mean that reactive hostility is nonexistent. Finally, there are all those offense tactics of the aggressive type who feels one is fighting for survival. I should not call any of these aggressions sadistic; others may get hurt in the process, but the hurting or damaging is an inevitable by-product rather than a prime intention. To put it simply, we could say that although the kinds of action we refer to here are aggressive or even hostile, they are not perpetrated in a mean spirit. There is no conscious or unconscious satisfaction derived from the very fact of hurting. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
It has been repeatedly argued that equality undermines liberty. Some would say that a society in which principles like my radical egalitarian principles were adopted, or even the liberal egalitarian principles of Rawls or Dworkin were adopted, would not be a free society. My arguments have been just the reverse. I have argued that it is only in an egalitarian society that full and extensive liberty is possible. Perhaps the egalitarian and the anti-egalitarian are arguing at cross purposes? What we need to recognize, it has been argued, is that we have two kinds of rights both of which are important to freedom but to rather different freedoms and which are freedoms which not infrequently conflict. We have rights to fair terms of cooperation but we also have rights to non-interference. If a right of either kind is overridden our freedom is diminished. The reason why it might be thought that the egalitarian and the anti-egalitarian may be arguing at cross purposes is that the egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to fair terms of cooperation and their associated liberties require equality while the anti-egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to fair terms of cooperation and their associated liberties require equality while the anti-egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to noninterference and their associated liberties conflict with equality. They focus on different liberties. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
What I have said above may not be crystal clear, so let me explain. People have a right to fair terms of cooperation. In political terms this comes to the equal right of all to effective participation in government and, in more broadly social terms, and for a society of economic wealth, it means people having a right to a roughly equal distribution of the benefits and burdens of the basic social arrangements that affect their lives and for them to stand in such relations to each other such that no one has the power to dominate the life of another. By contrast, rights to non-interference come to the equal right of all to be left alone by the government and more broadly to live in a society in which people have a right peacefully to pursue their interests without interference. The conflict between equality and liberty comes down to, very essentially, the conflicts we get in modern societies between rights to fair terms of cooperation and rights to noninterference. As Joseph Schumpeter saw and J.S. Mill before him, one could have a thoroughly democratic society (at least in conventional terms) in which rights to noninterference might still be extensively violated. A central anti-egalitarian claim is that we cannot have an egalitarian society in which they very precious liberties that go with the rights to non-interference would be violated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Love, power, and justice are united in God and they are united in the new creation of God in the World. Humans are estranged from the ground of their being, from themselves, and from their World. However, they are still humans. One cannot completely cut the tie with their creative ground, one is still a centred person and in this sense united with oneself. One still participates in one’s World. In other words: The reuniting love, the power of resisting non-being, and the creative justice are still active in one. Life is not unambiguously good. Then it would not be life but only the possibility of life. And life is not unambiguously evil. Then non-being would have conquered being. However, life is ambiguous in all its expressions. It is ambiguous also with respect to love, power, and justice. We have touched on this fact in many places in our previous discussions. We must now consider it in the light of the new creation within the World of estrangement, which I suggest calling the holy community. In an anticipating summary I would say: in the holy community the agape quality of love cuts into the libido, eros, and philia qualities of love and elevates them beyond the ambiguities of their self-centeredness. In the holy community the spiritual power, by surrendering compulsion, elevates power beyond the ambiguities of its dynamic realization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
In the holy community justification by grace elevates justice beyond the ambiguities of its abstract and calculating nature. This means that in the holy community love, power, and justice in their ontological structure are affirmed but that their estranged and ambiguous reality is transformed into a manifestation of their unity within the divine life. Let us first consider the ambiguities of love and the work of love as agape in the holy community. Libido is good in itself! We have defended it against Dr. Freud’s depreciation of what he described as the infinite libidinous drive with its ensuing dissatisfaction and death instinct. We have accepted this as the description in estrangement, but not of libido in its creative meaning. Without libido life would not move beyond itself. The Bible knows this as well as recent depth psychology, and we should be grateful that our new insights into the deeper levels of human nature have rediscovered the Biblical realism which was covered by several strata of idealistic and moralistic self-deception about humans. Biblical realism knows both that libido belongs to human’s created goodness and that it is distorted and ambiguous in the state of human’s estrangement. Libido has become unlimited and has fallen under the tyranny of the pleasure principle. It uses the other being not as an object of reunion but as a tool for gaining pleasure out of one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Desire for pleasures of the flesh is not evil as the breaking of conventional laws, but the desires for the pleasures of the flesh in autonomy in pleasures of the flesh are evil if they bypass the center of the other person—in other words, if they are not united with the two other qualities of love, and if they are not under the ultimate criterion of the agape quality of love. Agape seems the other one in one’s center. Agape sees one as God sees one. Agape elevates libido into the divine unity of love, power, and justice. The same is true of eros. We have, following Plato, defined eros as the driving force in all cultural creativity and in all mysticism. As such eros has the greatness of divine-human power. It participates in creation in the natural goodness of everything created. However, it also participates in the ambiguities of life. The eros quality of love can be confused with the libido quality and be drawn into its ambiguities. Witness for this is the fact that the New Testament could not use the word eros any more because of its predominantly sexual connotations. And even the mystical eros can express itself in symbols which are not only taken from the life involving pleasures of the flesh but which draw the love to God to an openly ascetic, hiddenly passionate level in pleasures of the flesh. However, more is involved when we speak of the ambiguity of the eros quality of love. It is the aesthetic detachment which can take hold of our relation to culture and makes eros ambiguous. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The aesthetic stage of humans spiritual development is not a stage but a Universal quality of love exposed to dangers. The ambiguity of cultural eros is its detachment from the realities which it expresses and consequently the disappearing of existential participation and ultimate responsibility. The wings of eros becomes wings of escape. Culture is irresponsibly enjoyed. It has not received the justice which it can demand. Agape cuts into the detached safety of a merely aesthetic eros. It does not deny the longing toward the good and the true and its divine source, but it prevents it from becoming an aesthetic enjoyment without ultimate seriousness. Agape makes the cultural eros responsible and the mystical eros personal. The ambiguities of the philia quality of love appeared already in its first description as person-to-person love between equals. However large the group of equals may be, the philia quality of love establishes preferential love. Some are preferred, the majority are excluded. This is obvious not only in intimate relations as family and friendship, but also in the innumerable forms of sympathetic person-to-person encounters. The implicit or explicit rejection of all those who are not admitted to such a preferential relation is negative compulsion and can be as cruel as any compulsion. However, such a rejection of others is tragically unavoidable. Nobody can escape the necessity to exercise it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
There are special forms of love with philia quality which are called a symbiotic relation and which make this tragic necessity rather clear. If the one partner of the philia-relation is used by the other one either for the sake of masochistic dependence or of sadistic domination or of both in interdependence, something which seemed to be friendship of highest quality is in reality compulsion without justice. Again, agape does not deny the preferential love of the philia quality, but it purifies it from a subpersonal bondage, and it elevates the preferential love into universal love. The preferences of friendship are not negated, but they do not exclude, in a kind of aristocratic self-separation, all the others. Not everybody is a friend, but everybody is affirmed as a person. Agape cuts through the separation of equals and unequals, of sympathy and antipathy, of friendship and indifference, of desire and disgust. It needs no sympathy in order to love; it loves what it has to reject in terms of philia. Agape loves in everybody and through everybody love itself. What agape does to the ambiguities of love, Spiritual power does to the ambiguities of natural power. The ambiguities of power are rooted in the dynamic character and the compulsory implications of power. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Spiritual power is not the conquest of these ambiguities by resignation of power, because this would mean resignation of being. I would be the attempt to annihilate oneself in order to escape guilt. Spiritual power is not the denial of power dynamics. In many stories about the working of the Spiritual power bodily effects are mentioned, like elevation, removal from one place to the other, shock, and horror. There are always psychological effects visible. Spirit is power, grasping and moving out of the dimension of the ultimate. It is not identical with the realm of ideas or meanings. It is dynamic power, overcoming resistance. Hen what is its difference from the other forms of power? The Spiritual power works neither through bodily nor through psychological compulsion. It works through a human’s total personality, and this means, through one as finite freedom. It does not remove one’s freedom, but it makes one’s freedom free from the compulsory elements which limit it. The Spiritual power gives a center to the whole personality, a center which transcends the whole personality and, consequently, is independent of any elements. And this is ultimately the only way of uniting the personality with itself. If this happens human’s natural or social power of being becomes irrelevant. One may keep them, one may resign some of them or even all of them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The Spiritual power works through them or it works through the surrender of them. One may exercise Spiritual power through words or thought, through what one is and what one does, or through the surrender of them or through the sacrifice of oneself. In all these forms one can change reality by attaining levels of being which are ordinarily hidden. This is the power which elevates the holy community above the ambiguities of power. I do not need to say much about the relation of grace and justice. The act of forgiving has been mentioned in connexion with the encounter of person and person. If based on reuniting love, in justification by grace, mutual forgiveness is justice. Only God can forgive, because in Him along love and justice are completely united. The ethics of forgiveness are rooted in the message of divine forgiveness. Otherwise they are delivered to the ambiguities of justice, oscillating between legalism and sentimentality. In the holy community this ambiguity is conquered. Agape conquers the ambiguities of love, Spiritual power conquers the ambiguities of power, grace conquers the ambiguities of justice. This is true not only of the encounters of humans with humans, but also in the encounter of humans with oneself. Humans can love oneself in terms of self-acceptance only if one is certain that one is accepted. Otherwise one’s self-acceptance is self-complacency and arbitrariness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Only in the light and in the power of the “love from above” can one love oneself. This implies the answer to the question of human’s justice toward oneself. One can be just towards oneself only in so far as ultimate justice is done to one, namely the condemning, forgiving, and giving judgement of “justification.” The condemning element in justification makes self-complacency impossible, the forgiving element saves from self-condemnation and despair, the giving element provides for a Spiritual center which unites the elements of our personal self and makes power over oneself possible. Justice, power, and love towards oneself is rooted in the justice, power, and love which we receive from that which transcends us and affirms us. The relation to ourselves is a function of our relation to God. We have a question about the reunion of humankind in terms of love, power, and justice. It is not easy to find an answer that can be given on the level of political organization. Is there an answer out of the relation to the ultimate? It is the merit of pacifism that, in spite of its theological shortcomings, it has kept this question alive in modern Christianity. Without it the Churches probably would have forgotten the torturing seriousness of any religious affirmation of war. On the other hand, pacifism has usually restricted a much larger problem of human existence to the question of war. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
However, there are other questions of equal seriousness in the same sphere. One of them is the question of armed conflicts within a power group, always going on potentially in the use of police and armed forces for the preservation of order, sometimes coming into the open in revolutionary wars. If successful, they are later on called “glorious revolutions.” Does the union of humankind mean that not only national but also revolutionary wars are excluded? And if so, has the dynamics of life come to an end: and des this mean that life itself has come to an end? One can ask the same question with respect to the dynamics of the economic life. Even in a static society such as that of the Middle Ages, the economic dynamics were important and had tremendous historical consequences. One should remain aware of the fact that often more destruction and suffering is produced by economic than by military battles. Should the economic dynamics be stopped and a static World system of production and consumption be introduced? If this were so the whole technical process would also have to be stopped, life in most realms would have to be organized in ever repeated processes. Every disturbance would have to be avoided. Again the dynamics of life and with life itself would have come to an end. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Let us assume for a moment that this were possible. Under an unchangeable central authority all encounters of power with power are regulated. Nothing is risked, everything decided. Life has ceased to transcend itself. Creativity has come to an end. The history of humans would be finished, post-history would have started. Humankind would be a flock of blessed animals without dissatisfaction, without drive into the future. The horrors and sufferings of the historical period would be remembered as the dark ages of humankind. And then it might happen that one or the other of these blessed humans would feel a longing for these past ages, their misery and their greatness, and would force a new beginning of history upon the rest. This image will show that a World without the dynamics of power and the tragedy of life and history is not the Kingdom of God, is not the fulfilment of humans in their World. Fulfilment is bound to eternity and no imagination can reach the eternal. However, fragmentary anticipations are possible. The Church itself is such a fragmentary anticipation. And there are groups and movements, which although they do not belong to the manifest Church, represents something we may call a “latent Church.” However, neither the manifest nor the latent Church is the Kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Many problems connected with the all-embracing subject of this essay have not been mentioned at all. Others have been touched on only briefly, and others have been treated rather inadequately. However, I hope that I have proved one thing: that the problems of love, power, and justice categorically demand an ontological foundation and a theological view in order to be saved from the vague talk, idealism, and cynicism with which they are usually treated. If they do not see them in the light of their own being and of being-itself, humans cannot solve any of their great problems. Many Christians have never thought through the meaning and importance of worship. It is not an overstatement to say that our pleasure-centered culture has produced many who work at their play and play at their worship. Why this confusion and tragic failure regarding worship? The answer lies in another question: Why do we worship—is it for God or for humans? The unspoken but increasingly common assumption of today’s Christendom is that worship is primarily of us—to meet our needs. Such worship services are entertainment-focused, and the worshipers are uncommitted spectators who are silently grading the performance. From this perspective preaching becomes a homiletics of consensus—preaching to felt needs—human’s conscious agenda instead of God’s. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Such preaching is always topical and never textual. Biblical information is minimized, and the sermons are short and full of stories. Anything and everything is judged by how it affects humans. This terribly corrupts one’s theology. The telltale sign of this kind of thinking is the common post-worship question, What did you think of the service today? The real questions ought to be, What did God think of it and of those who worshipped? and What did I give to God? It is so easy to forget that in going to worship our main concern should be to “worship in spirit and in truth,” as reported in John 4.24—not to receive a lift for ourselves. Therefore, it is important that we understand, in distinction to the popular view that worship is for us, that worship begins not with humans as its focus, but God. Worship must be orchestrated and conducted with the vision before us of an august, awesome, holy, transcendent God who is to be pleased and, above all, glorified by our worship. Everything in our corporate worship should flow from this understanding. What about our needs then? When we worship and adore God in our singing and prayer and listening to the Word, His shalom will well in our souls so that we will leave with a glad sense of personal blessings—a great lift. However, this is a byproduct, not a goal, a further evidence of the generous grace of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The fact that there have been higher beings who have gone beyond the mass in goodness and insight, in serenity and radiant self-mastery, can be taken as a hint of re-embodiment’s purpose. One speaks or writes as one who is perfectly at home in these higher levels of consciousness. If an illuminated teacher or an illuminating book cannot lead anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven and keep one there, they can at least give everyone a clue which, if followed up, may lead there. “And now I, Nephi, cannot write all the things which were taught among my people; neither am I mighty in writing, like unto speaking; for when a human speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of humans. However, behold, there are many that harden their hearts against the Holy Spirit, that it hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught. However I, Nephi, have written what I have written, and I esteem it as of great worth, and especially unto my people. For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that he will hear my cry. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“And I know that the Lord God will consecrate my prayers for the gain of my people. And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them; for it persuadeth them to do good; it maketh known unto them of their fathers; and it speaketh of Jesus, and persuadeth them to believe in him, and to endure to the end, which is life eternal. And it speaketh harshly against sin, according to the plainness of the truth; wherefore, no human will be angry at the words which I have written save he shall be of the spirit of the devil. I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell. I have charity for my people, and great faith in Christ that I shall meet many souls spotless at his judgment-sent. I have charity for the Jew—I say Jew, because I mean them from whence I came. I also have charity for the Gentiles. However, behold, for none of these can I hope expect they shall be reconciled unto Christ, and enter into the narrow gate, and walk in the strait path which leads to life, and continue in the path until the end of the day of probation. And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the Earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all people that they should do good. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of hm to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness. And I pray the Father in the name of Christ that many of us, if not all, may be saved in his kingdom at that great and last day. And now, my beloved brethren, all those who are of the house of Israel, and all ye ends of the Earth, I speak unto you as the voice of one crying from the dust: Farewell until that great day shall come. And you hat will not partake of the goodness of God, and respect the words of the Jews, and also my words, and the words which shall proceed forth out of the mouth of the Lamb God, behold, I bid you an everlasting farewell, for these words shall condemn you at the last day. For what I seal on earth, shall be brought against you at the judgment bar; for thus hath the Lord commanded me, and I must obey. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 33.1-15. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy mercy to sanctify these gifts, and having received the offering of the spiritual sacrifice, to make us a perpetual oblation unto Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please look mercifully, O Lord, on these present offerings, that they may avail both for our devotion and our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
My God, I bless Thee that Thou hast given me the eye of faith, to see Thee as Father, to know Thee as a covenant God, to experience Thy love planted in me; for faith is the grace of union by which I spell out my entitlement to Thee: Faith casts my anchor upwards where I trust in Thee and engage Thee to by my Lord. Be pleased to live and move within me, breathing in my prayers, inhabiting my praises, speaking in my words, moving in my actions, living in my life, causing me to grow in grace. Thy bounteous goodness has helped me believe, but my faith is weak and wavering, its light dim, its steps tottering, its increase slow, its backsliding frequent; it should scale the Heavens, but lies groveling in the dust. Lord, fan this divine spark into glowing flame. When faith sleeps, my heart becomes an unclean thing, the fount of every loathsome desire, the cage of unclean lusts all fluttering to escape, the noxious tree of deadly fruit, the open wayside of Earthly tares. Lord, awake faith to put forth its strength until all Heaven fills my soul and all impurity is cast out. Remember, O Lord, Thy servants and handmaids here present, whose faith and devotion are discerned and known by Thee. Please let me enjoy the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Please have mercy, O Lord, upon Thy children for whom I offer this sacrifice of praise to Thy Majesty; that they may be able to lead a good life in this World, and happily to attain eternal blessedness.
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The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit Which is Not too Sure that it is Right and Seeks to Understand Minds
The great want which humankind labours under at this present moment is sleep. The World should recline its vast head on the first convenient pillow and take an age-long nap. Which is a more effective learning strategy: reward or punishment? This question is still undecided. At present, evidence for each side is about equal. The following guidelines, however, can be applied in teaching situations, especially those involving young children. In general, rewarding desired behaviours is more effective than punishing undesired behaviours—you can still catch more files with honey than with vinegar. If punishment is necessary, it is most effective if used immediately after the undesired response. For instance, if a child must be punished, it is best done right after the child has acted incorrectly. If one parents says to the child, “Just wait until your father (or mother) gets home—then, you will get it,” the child learns to fear the arrival of the punisher and, in the process, often forgets the offense for which he or she is being punished. If punishment must be used, the reason for the punishment should be explained. “I am only doing this for your own good,” or “This hurts me more than it does you,” is less likely to teach a child a specific behaviour than saying, “I am not letting you go to the movies because you socked your little brother. This hurts him and makes him cry, and I do not want you to do it again.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
If it is possible, combine reward and punishment. If necessary, punish the undesired behaviour, but also be sure to reward the desired behaviour. For example, do not just spank a child for playing in the street; also praise and reward the child for playing in the yard instead. Punish the undesired behaviour, not the behaver. For instance, communicate to a child that you feel his or her behaviour is “bad”—not that you think the child is bad. Most punishment do not work on very young children. Under about one year of age, children do not understand that some behaviours are acceptable and some are not and why this is so. They may think they are being punished just for being there, and more often than not they begin to associate the punisher with punishment. When you feel emotionally charged, especially if you are filled with rage, never, never, never punish a child. Adults often forget their own strength. Children are fragile and easily hurt. The only thing a child learns through abuse is hatred and fear. There is a great distinction between negative reinforcement and abusive punishment. In many cases, punishment only suppresses or limits the undesired behaviour; it does not really extinguish it. The self-actualized open to all qualified and eager seekers the mysteries and treasures of one’s own inner experience, that they may profit by one’s past struggles and present success. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The self-actualized brings revelations to meet our gropings, inspirations to meet our doubts. One becomes, for those docile enough to receive them, a bearer of grace and a vessel of truth, a bestower of comfort and a dispenser of confidence. Prophets and the self-actualized, teachers and saints receive the urge to share their knowledge and experience with others. Whence does this urge derive? Both lower and higher, personal and nonpersonal sources are possible. However, if from the highest, then we may say that God sends His messages to humankind through these channels. The self-actualized who starts a movement or puts one’s thoughts out, acts as a lighthouse which guides many a fumblings but aspiring soul. If one does not accept disciples individually it is because one serve humans otherwise. Those who try to get such acceptance and find themselves rebuffed may consider one selfish, cold, remote. However, they will be greatly mistaken. One can serve humankind—not each person separately but in groups or masses—and one may do this by lecturing, by writing or simply by directing one’s prayer in the appropriate way. For a writer’s books spread not only one’s ideas but also something of oneself. One can put thought on a high level but the way in which one does this depends upon one’s circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The self-actualized can put thought on a high level personally as a private teacher, impersonally as a public lecturer or writer, or anonymously as a proficient contemplative. All these people who have attained Reality inevitably leave a record for others or for posterity, but not necessarily with their name attached. Has anyone of the self-actualized ever vanished without leaving behind a trace of Power, knowledge, goodness, and inspiration? Even if not in words or deeds, something is left in the unseen atmosphere. They are not usually members of any sect, but circumstances or necessity may sometimes render it desirable that they be such. The self-actualized may or may not descend into the arena of action but if not one will still find ways and means to inspire, guide, or ennoble the actions of other people. One does this by teaching them and travelling among the, or by sitting still and meditating alone, or by disseminating writings among them. Even when one is unheard publicly one can help by the concentrated mind’s great power. One does what one can to introduce here and there into the consciousness of others, through whatever means one possesses, the seeds of higher ideas. These seeds may not grow and certainly may not fructify for many years, but that is not one’s affair. One knows that the vitality in these seeds and depth of mental ground in which they have been sown will inevitably lead to some result. It is enough. One has sown seed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
One does not have to wait for roots to form, stems to grow, fruits to appear. One’s work is done. In this momentous period the true self-actualized has special work to do in trying to protect the human race from its own folly. One way is intercessory prayer which may help to mitigate the effects of the World crisis. This requires solitude. It is an impersonal contemplation and must not be disturbed by those who break into it, either to unload their personal problems or to offer personal service which in the end has the same result. Yes, some of us are genuinely aware of the soul’s existence and intimately know its freedom and blessedness. Modesty has hitherto imposed silence upon us about the fact, although compassion induced us to break it on occasions. However, we mystics must now stand on our own dignity. It is time that the World, brough to its inevitable and by us expected materialistic dead-end, should realize at last that we are not talking out of our hats but out of a real and impeccable experience. It would be an unpardonable treachery to our duty in the final and terrible World-crisis of this materialistic age if, out of false modesty or fear of intimidation by a cynical society, we who daily feel and commune with the divine presence, who realize its tremendous importance for humanity’s present condition and future life, fail to testify to its existence and reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
If today we venture to speak more freely and frequently, our ideas may drop into a few hospitable minds and sublimely penetrate their consciousness. It is not the self-actualizer’s function to tackle the Worldly problems which governments usually deal with: the social, political, economic, and technical ones. One’s particular work is concerned with, first, one’s ordinary duty of professional service through whatever skill one possesses to earn one’s livelihood, and second, making truth available. The mere existence of one who succeeds in identifying oneself with God benefits every sensitive person who meets one, even for a minute or two. Further, it inspires spiritual seekers who never get the chance to meet one but who hear favourably about one and respectfully receive what they hear. Finally, posterity benefits from the records left about one. Each teacher—if one is divinely commissioned—leaves a deposit of truth after he or she dies. The Master who leaves a record of one’s own climb, or a testimony to the goal’s existence, or a path pioneered for those who would follow, or an instructed disciple here and there, leaves something of oneself. Even where help may not directly and outwardly be given when difficult circumstances press on a human, it may yet be indirectly and inwardly given to one’s mind, which has to deal with, or endure, them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
One can awaken some persons to this divine presence within themselves, but not all. One may do this mysteriously by some unknown process, or one may do it deliberately and with the display of one’s technique. The abstract does not appeal to the masses, because it gives them nothing. However, an embodied human can be seen, heard, and touched, to that extent can be understood, to that extent one gives them something; one can be followed, admired, feared, reverenced, or worshipped. Secure as one is in one’s own peace of mind, it is inevitable that the more sensitive among those who meet one feel it too. However, those who come with hostility, personal or intellectual, will be avoided if possible or find their time cut to the shortest if not. Such a person has a catalytic action on the minds and even on the lives of those who come into sympathetic contact with one. Just by being oneself one makes the philosophic virtues real to others. One does not need to be conscious of a clearly defined mission before one sets about doing something for the enlightenment of others. There is always some means open to one, some little thing one can do to make this knowledge available or to set an example of right living. It is one’s duty to communicate what one feels there, what one finds there, to those who are excluded from it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
If at times, and with sympathetic auditors, one’s duty becomes one’s joy, at other times and with insensitive auditors it becomes one’s cross. Jesus exemplified this in His own history. The illuminate practices a wiser philanthropy than those who are presented as models of this virtue. One has no wish to take charge of anyone’s life or undertake the management of anyone’s affairs. One is not allowed by the code of ethics corresponding to one’s knowledge to make other people’s decisions for them. Hence one can say neither yes nor no to such highly personal questions. However, one can point out the consequences which are likely to follow in each case. Basically, people are just like children. They need attention. Sometimes people are really nervous when meeting people or dealing with new situations. And some of the troublemakers really just want your attention. The people-as-child analogy can be extended to cover sibling rivalry: You cannot play cards with just one person because the other people will get jealous. Think of unruly people just as you would think of a child and that will widen tolerance of them. If their needs are like those of a child, those needs are supposed to come first. The worker’s right to anger is correspondingly reduced; as an adult one must work to inhibit and suppress anger at children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Should the analogy to children fail to induce the necessary deep acting, surface-acting strategies for handling “irate” can be brought into play. People are urged to “work” the customers name in, as in “Yes, Mr. Camdenski,” it is true construction of your new home is talking a little longer than expected.” This reminds the individual that he is not anonymous, that there is at least some pretension to a personal relation and that some emotion management is owed. Again, workers are told to use terms of empathy. Whatever happens, you are supposed to say, I know just how you feel. Lost your light fixture? I know just how you feel? Late for a walk though? I know just how you feel. Did not get that lot you were counting on? I know just how you feel. Employees reports that such expressions of empathy are useful in convincing people that they have misplaced the blame and misaimed their anger. Remember, to treat people like they are guests in your living room, and guests are to be made comfortable and their emotional outburst are expected to be met by support. Never get super angry with a customer, they are the source of revenue. Supervisors never speak officially of an obnoxious or outrageous customer, only of an uncontrolled customer. The term suggests that a fact has somehow attached itself to this customer—not that the customer has lost control or even had any control to lose. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Again, the common phrase “mishandled customer” suggests a bungle somewhere up the line, by someone destined to remain lost in the web of workers that stretched from curbside to architecture. By linguistically avoiding any attribution of blame, the idea of a right to be angry at the customer is smuggled out of discourse. Linguistically speaking, the customer never does anything wrong, so he or she cannot be blamed or made the object of anger. One time, a man was waiting for a special ordered light fixture, and one of the other home buyers sagged it and had it installed in her house. The builder responded by saying politely, “I notice this man’s light fixture was installed in your house.” The dirty deed was done, but, the implication was, by no one in particular. Such implicit reframing dulls a sense of cause of effect. It separates object from verb and verb from subject. The home buyer does not feel accused, and the builder does not feel as if he or she is accusing. Emotion work has been accomplished, but it has hidden its tracks with words. Company language is aimed not only at diffusing anger, but at minimizing fear. As in the case when a refrigerator was specially ordered and delivered to the wrong address. This was labeled an incident. The term incident calms the nerves. How could we be terrified at an incident? #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Thus, the words that workers use and do not use help them avoid emotions inappropriate to a living room full of guest. Dealing with difficult people is part of the job. It makes us angry sometimes. And anger is part of stress. So that is why I would like to talk to you about being angry. I am not saying you should do this [work on your anger] for your corporation. I am not saying you should do it for the home buyers. I am saying do it for yourselves. The only question to be seriously discussed is “How do you rid yourself of anger?” From my experience in supervisory work I know that the problem of hopelessness is often not clearly envisaged by the analyst and hence not properly dealt with. Some of my colleagues have been so overwhelmed by the individual’s hopelessness—which they recognized but did not see as a problem—that they became hopeless themselves. This attitude is of course fatal to an analysis, for no matter how good the technique or how brave the effort, the individual senses that the analyst has really given him or her up. The same holds true outside the analytical situation. Nobody can be a constructively helpful friends or mate who does not believe in the possibility of the companion’s fulfilling one’s own potentialities. Sometimes colleagues have made the opposite mistake of not taking the individual’s hopelessness seriously enough. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
They felt the individual needed encouragement and gave it—which is commendable, but quite insufficient. When this happens, the individual, even if one appreciates the analyst’s good intentions, is quite justified in being annoyed with one, since deep down one knows that one’s hopelessness is not just a mood that can be dissipated by well-meant encouragement. In order to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem directly, it is necessary first to recognize from indirect indications like the ones cited above that the individual feels hopeless and the extent to which one feels so. Then it must be understood that one’s hopelessness is fully warranted by one’s entanglements. The analyst must realize and explicitly convey to the individual that one’s situation is hopeless only so long as the status quo persists and is regarded as unchangeable. In simplified form, the whole problem is illustrated by a scene from Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. The family, faced with bankruptcy, are in despair at the thought of leaving their estate with its beloved cherry orchard. A man of affairs offers the sound suggestion that they build modest homes for rent on a part of the estate. With their hidebound views, they cannot countenance such a project, and since there is no other solution they remain without hope. They ask helplessly, as if they had not heard the suggestion, whether nobody can advise or help them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
If their mentor were a good analyst he would say: “Of course the situation is difficult. However, what makes it hopes is your own attitude toward it. If you would consider changing your claims on life there would be no need to feel hopeless.” The belief that the individual can really change, which means essentially that one can really resolve one’s conflicts, is the factor that determines whether or not the therapist dare to tackle the problem and whether one can do it with a reasonable chance of success. It is here that my differences with Dr. Freud come into clear relief. Dr. Freud’s psychology and the philosophy underlying it are essentially pessimistic. This is patent in his outlook on the future of humankind as well as in his attitude toward therapy. And on the basis of his theoretical premises, he cannot be anything but pessimistic. Humans are driven by instincts which at best are only to be modified by “sublimation.” His instinctual drives for satisfaction are inevitably frustrated by society. His “ego” is helplessly tossed about between instinctual drives and the “superego,” which itself can only be modified. The superego is primarily forbidding and destructive. True ideals do not exist. The wish for personal fulfillment is narcissistic. Humans are by nature destructive and a death instinct compels them either to destroy others or to suffer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
All these theories leave little room for an optimistic attitude toward change and limit the value of the potentially splendid therapy Dr. Freud originated. In contrast, I believe that compulsive trends in neuroses are not instinctual but spring from disturbed human relationships; that they can be changed when these improve and that conflicts of such origin can really be resolved. This does not mean that therapy based on the principles I advocate has no limitations. Much work remains to be done before we can clearly determine these limitations. However, it does mean that we have well-founded reasons for believing in the possibility of radical change. Why, then, is it so important to recognize and tackle an individual’s hopelessness? In the first place, this approach is of value in dealing with special problems like depression and suicidal tendencies. We can, it is true, lift an individual depression by merely uncovering the particular conflicts in which the person is caught at the time, without touching upon one’s general hopelessness. However, if we want to prevent recurring depressions it has to be tackled because it is the deeper source from which the depressions emanate. Nor can insidious chronic depression be coped with unless one goes to this original source. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The same hold true for suicidal conditions. We know that such factors as acute despair, defiance, and vindictiveness lead to suicidal impulses; but it is often too late to prevent suicide after the impulse has become manifest. By paying minute attention to the less dramatic signs of hopelessness and by taking up the problem with the patient at the proper time, it is probable that many suicides could be averted. It is not that collective talk determines the mood of the workers. Rather, the reverse is true: the needed mood determines the nature of the worker’s talk. To keep the collective mood stripped of any painful feelings, serious talk of death, divorce, politics, religion, and news is usually avoided. People want to forget about COVID-19 and feel safe in the modest castles, which they imagine to be in a storybook fairytale. On the other hand, when there is time for it, mutual morale raising is common. As one said: “When one sales agent is depressed, thinking, ‘I am ugly, what am I doing as a sales representative?’ other sales representatives, even without quite knowing what they are doing, try to cheer her up. They straighten her collar for her, to get her up and smiling again. I have done it too, and needed it done.” Once established, team solidarity can have two effect. It can improve morale and thus improve service. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
However, team solidarity can also become the basis for sharing grudges against the homebuyers or the corporation. Perhaps it is the second possibility that manager meant to avoid wen in Recurrent Training they offered examples of “bad” social emotion management. One teacher cautioned her students: “When you are angry with a homebuyer, do not head for the galley to blow off steam with another sales representative.” In the galley, the second sales representative, instead of calming the angry worker down, may further rile him or her up; one may become an accomplice to the aggrieved worker. Then, as the instructor put it, “There will be two of you hot to trot.” The message is, when you angry, go to a trusted therapist who will calm you down. Consider calling him or her for a phone appoint so not to drive while angry. Even if you are not suicidal, but cannot afford a therapist, a suicide hotline may be worth trying out. Support for anger or a sense of grievance—regardless of what inspires it—is bad for service and bad for the corporation. Thus, the informal ways in which workers check on the legitimacy of a grievance or look for support in blowing off steam become points of entry for company suggestions. Corporations sometimes have Ghost-Buyers who occasionally Ghost-Buy a house, and there may be senior representative on the crew, the base supervisor, and the plainclothes company supervisors who occasionally monitor employee behaviour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
One homebuyer was asked to fill out a company-elicited passenger opinion poll and fill out a questionnaire, and the results were presented by letter to the workers. As one male sales representative, seven years with the corporation describes it: We get told how we are doing twice a year when we are sent homebuyer evaluations. They show how the builder is competing. Oh, the homebuyers are asked to rank sales representatives: “genuinely concerned, made me feel welcome. Spoke to me more than required. Wide awake, energetic, eager to help. Seemed sincere when talking to the potential homebuyers and confirmed homebuyers. Helped established a relaxed community atmosphere. Enjoying their jobs. Treated homebuyers as individuals.” We see how this builder is doing in the competition. We are supposed to really get into it. Supervision is thus more indirect than direct. It relies on the sales representative’s sense of what homebuyers will communicate to management, who will, in turn, communicate to workers. Supervisors do more than oversee workers. Even when people are paid to be nice at all times, and when their efforts succeed, it is a remarkable accomplishment. This is possible because of emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
A profit motive is slipped in under acts of emotion management, under the rules that govern them, under the gift exchange. Who benefits now, and who pays? The lesson in deep acting—acting “as if the office is your home” and “as if this unruly homebuyer has a traumatic past”—are themselves a new development in deskilling. The mind of the emotion worker, the source of the ideas about what mental moves are needed to settle down an irate, has moved upstairs in the hierarchy so that the worker is restricted to implementing standard procedures. Of more general significance is the fact that the individual’s hopelessness constitutes a hindrance to the cure of any severe neurosis. We have to deal with a counterplay of meticulous and forward-moving forces, with resistance and incentive. Resistance is a collective term for all the forces within the individual that operate to maintain the status quo. One’s incentive, on the other hand, is produced by the constructive energy that urges one on toward inner freedom. This is the motive power with which we work and without which we could do nothing. It is the force that helps that individual overcome resistance. It makes one’s associations productive, there by giving the analyst a chance for better understanding. It gives one the inner strength to endure the inevitable pain of maturing. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
It makes one willing to take the risk of abandoning attitudes that have given one a feeling of safety and to make the leap into the unknown of new attitudes toward oneself and others. The analyst cannot drag the individual through this process; the individual oneself must want to go. It is this invaluable force that is paralyzed by a condition of hopelessness. And in failing to recognize and tackle it the analyst deprives oneself of one’s best ally in the battle against the individual’s neurosis. The individual’s hopelessness is not a problem that can be solved by any single interpretation. There is already a substantial gain if, instead of being engulfed by a feeling of doom that one regards as unalterable, the individual begins to recognize it as a problem that may eventually be solved. This step liberates one sufficiently to go ahead. There will, of course, be ups and downs. One may feel optimistic, even overoptimistic, if one acquires some helpful insight, only to succumb to one’s hopelessness again as soon as one approaches a more upsetting one. Each time the matter must be tackled anew. However, the hold it has on the individual will relax as one realizes that one can really change. One’s incentive will grow accordingly. It may be limited, at the beginning of the analysis, to a mere wish to get rid of one’s most disturbing symptoms. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
However, the incentive gains strength as the individual becomes increasingly aware of one’s shackles, and as one gets a taste of how it feels to be free. When we shall apprehend the meaning of life, we may discover that it provides its pre-self-actualized in such prodigies. The highest service one can render is in silent contemplation, which inspires so many aspiring souls to a higher life. This is the truth. If one is sensitive, reflective, and penetrative, the mere fact that these prophets, these light-bringers and way-showers have exited at all is enough to change a human’s life. Even if one does no more than open the human mind to its higher possibilities, one does enough. Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost—humans must pray and gain knowledge for themselves from the Holy Ghost. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, behold, my beloved brethren, I suppose that ye ponder somewhat in your hearts concerning that which ye should do after ye have entered in by the way. However, behold, why do ye ponder these things in your hearts? Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of Angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of Angels save it were by the Holy Ghost? Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the word of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark. For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do. Behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and there will be no more doctrine given until after he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh. And when he shall manifest himself unto you in the flesh, the things which he shall say unto you shall ye observe to do. And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of humans; for they will not search knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be. And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a human to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a human to pray, but teacheth one that one must not pray. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“However, behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform anything unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul,” reports 2 Nephi 32.1-9. Please send forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Holy Spirit, to make these present offerings Thy Sacrament unto us, and purify our hearts for its reception. Privileges—O Lord God, please teach e to know that grace precedes, accompanies, and follows my salvation, that it sustains the redeemed soul, that not one link of its chain can ever break. From Calvary’s cross wave upon wave of grace reaches me, deals with my sin, washes me clean, renews my heart, strengthens my will, draws out my affection, kindles a flame in my soul, rules throughout my inner human, consecrates my every thought, word, work, teaches me Thy immeasurable love. How great are my privileges in Christ Jesus! Without him I stand far off, a stranger, an outcast; in him I draw near and touch his kingly sceptre. Without him I dare not lift up my guilt eyes; in him I gaze upon my Father-God and friend. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Without him I hide my lips in trembling shame; in him I open my mouth in petition and praise. Without him all is wrath and consuming fire; in him is all love, and the repose of my soul. Without him is gaping hell below me, and eternal anguish; in him its gates are barred to me by his precious blood. Without him darkness spreads its horrors in front; in him an eternity of glory is my boundless horizon. Without him all within me is terror and dismay, in him every accusation is charmed into joy and peace. Without him all things external call for my condemnation; in him they minister to my comfort, and are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Praise be to thee for grace, and for the unspeakable gift of Jesus. Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God “what He is,” and thus are united to Him as to one unknown; still we know Him more fully according as many and more excellent of His effects are demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him some things known by divine revelation, to which natural reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Thee and One. For the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in humans; and thus through revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Even Hell is a Creation of the Divine Love—Let Us be Happy and Live within Our Means!
Games prevent honest, intimate, and open relationships between the players. Yet people play them because they fill up their time, provoke attention, reinforce early opinions about self and others, and fulfill a sense of destiny. Perhaps the problem is simply that people in different places do things differently, and that my “different” behaviour might be acceptable in another culture or land. This is the cultural relativity position, which assumes that there are no absolute rules. Even today, when the laws forbid I, it is “normal” for a widow in some parts of the Old World to want to throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. So there is something to be said for relativity. There are cultural patterns in each society and social class that appear strange to people outside that group. However, this does not tell us if there are any cross cultural, or universal, patterns of “normal” or “abnormal” behaviour. Many people are content to allow authority figures to call the shots. If someone with an impressive array of credentials or degrees or a well-known name speaks out on a matter, or if a social institution or a book makes a statement, the matter is “settled.” However, authority figures are subject to error, just as any of us are. If I do not keep my mind open to this possibility, then I may ignore my own feelings on a subject. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Laws, religious teachings, and tradition are all powerful authority forces for defining normal or acceptable behaviour. Tradition itself, whether part of the legal, moral, or religious life of a group of people, is still effective as a force for making people’s behaviour conform. Today’s society is relaxing somewhat in attitudes about tradition. However, it still dictates to many. An aristocratic woman attending an offbeat hipster wedding where none of the usual traditions were observed, described it to her neighbour as “the craziest thing I have ever seen. I doubt that they are even married!” And indeed, it probably did seem “crazy” to her to ignore the traditional procedures for getting “properly” married. The principles of radical egalitarian justice I have articulated are meant to apply globally and not just to particular societies. However, if applied globally, it is certainly fair to say that not a few would worry that such principles of radical egalitarian would force the people in wealthier sections of the World to a kind of financial hara-kiri. There are millions of desperately impoverished people. Indeed millions are starving or malnourished and things are not getting any better. People in the affluent societies cannot worry about whether they face a bottomless pit. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Many believe that meeting, even in the most minimal way, the needs of the impoverished is going to put an incredible burden on people—people of all classes—on the affluent societies. Indeed it will, if acted on non-evasively, bring about their impoverishment, and that is just too much to ask. Radical egalitarianism is forgetting Rawl’s admonitions about “the strains of commitment”—the recognition that in any rational account of what is required of us, we must at least give a minimal healthy self-interest its due. We must construct our moral philosophy for human beings and not for saints. Human nature is less fixed than conservatives are wont to assume, but it is not so elastic that we can reasonably expect people to impoverish themselves to make the massive transfers between North and South—the industrialized and the developing World—required to begin to approach a situation where even Rawls’ principles would be in place on a global level, to say nothing of my radical egalitarian principles of justice. The first thing to say in response to this is that my radical egalitarian principles are meant actually to guide practice, to directly determine what we are to do, only in a World of extensive abundance where, as Marx put it, the springs of social wealth flow freely. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
If such a World where social wealth flows freely cannot be attained within a hybrid capitalist society, then such radical egalitarian principles can only remain as heuristic ideals against which to measure the distance of our travel in the direction of what would be a perfectly just society. We do not want the impoverishment of people in affluent societies, but desire to achieve a global fairness. There is no need for there to be massive transfers of wealth, but there should be a way to make sure that people who are involved in the factors of production can earn a wage that they could afford healthy care, housing that is up to building codes and safe, and live in nations that have law and order. There need be no undermining of the quality of the lives of the affluent. The capitalist elites are not to be impoverished nor reduced to some kind of bleak life, nor should they find their life styles altered. Already, many of them like philanthropy and charity so there seems to be a way to increase wages for factory workers and find a way for employees to afford homes in their towns that would be beneficial to everyone and reduce the burden on taxpayers. Everyone deserves a life that can be lived with verve and zest. I know that these ideals currently lack the blueprint to make them realistic, but maybe one day they will be achievable. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Afterall, it was only about 50-70 years ago where corporations were the factor in developing communities. Developers would build suburban communities to house the people at corporations like Texas Instruments, and a clerk at a grocery store could afford a nice home on his or her salary. True justice is applied to God equally in an ultimate and therefore symbolic sense. God is symbolized as the righteous judge who judges according to the law He has given. This is the material taken out of our experience. It also must be thrown into the mystery of the divine life and in it both preserved and transformed. It has become a true symbol of the relation of the ground of being to that which is grounded in it, especially to humans. The divine law is beyond the alternative of natural and positive law. It is the structure of reality and of everything in it, including the structure of the human mind. In so far as it is this, it is natural law, the law of continuous creation, the justice be being in everything. At the same time it is positive law, posited by God in His freedom which is not dependent on any given structure outside Him. In so far as it is natural law, we can understand the law in nature and humankind and formulate it deductively. In so far as it is positive law we have to accept what is given to us empirically and we have to observe it inductively. Both sides are rooted in God’s relation to the justice in things. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
To see love, power, and justice as true symbols of the divine life, means to see their ultimate unity. Unity is not identity. An element of separation is presupposed when we speak of unity. There are present, in the symbolic application of our three concepts to God, also some symbols of tension. The first is the tension between love and power. The exclamation has been and will be repeated innumerably: How can an all-powerful God who is, at the same time the God of love, allow such misery? Either He has not sufficient love or He has not sufficient power. As an emotional outburst this question is very understandable. As a theoretical formulation it is rather poor. If God had produced a World in which physical and moral evil were impossible, the creatures would not have had the independence of God which is presupposed in the experience of reuniting love. The World would have become a paradise of dreaming innocence, an infant’s paradise, but neither love, nor power nor justice would have become real. Actualization of one’s potentialities includes, unavoidably, estrangement; estrangement from one’s essential being, so that we may find it again in maturity. Only a God who is like a foolish mother, who is so afraid about the well-being of her child that she keeps him in a state of enforced innocence and enforced participation in her own life, could have kept the creatures in the prison of a dreaming paradise. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
And, as in the case of the mother, this would have been hidden hostility and not love to keep the creates in a prison that reflected a paradise. And it would not have been power either. The power of God is that He overcomes estrangement, not that He prevents it; that He takes it, symbolically speaking, upon Himself, not that He remains in a dead identity with Himself. This is the meaning of the age-old symbol of the God participating in creaturely suffering, a symbol which in Christianity was applied to the interpretation of the Cross of Him who was said to be the Christ. This is the unity of love and power in the depth of reality itself, power not only in its creative element but also in its compulsory element and the destruction and suffering connected with it. These considerations give theology a key to the eternal problem of theodicy, the problem of the relation of the divine love and the divine power to non-being, namely to death, guilt, and meaninglessness. The ontological unity of love and power is this key which certainly does not open up the mystery of being but which can replace some rusty keys to misleading doors. While the tension between love and power refers basically to creation, the tension between love and justice refers basically to salvation. The analysis of transforming justice as an expression of creative love makes it unnecessary for me to reject the ordinary contrast between proportional justice and super-added love. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
In this sense, there can be no conflict between justice and love in God. However, in another sense there could be, in a sense which is very similar to that in which love and power have been contrasted. Love destroys, as its strange work, what is against love. It does so according to the justice without which it would be chaotic surrender of the power of being. Love, at the same time, as its own work, saves through forgiveness that which is against love. It does so according to the justifying paradox without which it would be a legal mechanism. How can these two works of love be one? They are one because love does not enforce salvation. If it did it would commit a double injustice. It would disregard the claim of every person to be treated not as a thing but as a centred, deciding, free, and responsible self. Since God is love and His love is one with His power, He has not the power to force somebody into His salvation. He would contradict Himself. And this God cannot do. At the same time such an act would disregard the strange work of love, namely the destruction of what destroys love. It would violate the unconditioned character of love and with it the divine majesty. Love must destroy what is against love, but not one who is the bearer of that which is against love. For as a creature, one remains a power of being or a creation of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, the unity of one’s will is destroyed, one is thrown into a conflict with oneself, the name of which is despair, mythologically speaking, hell. Dante was right when he called even Hell a creation of the divine love. The hell of despair is the strange work that loves does within us in order to open us up for its own work, justification of one who is unjust. However, even despair does not make us into a mechanism. It is a test of our freedom and personal dignity, even in relation to God. The Cross of Christ is the symbol of the divine love, participating in the destruction into which it throws one who acts against love: This is the meaning of atonement. Love, power, and justice are one in God. However, we must ask: What do love, power, and justice do within an estranged World? According to a relatively common view in the wider Christian culture, Heaven and Hell are essentially deserved compensations for the kind of Earthly lives we live. Good people go to heaven as a deserved reward for a virtuous live, and bad people go to Hell as a just punishment for an immoral life; in that way, the scales of justice are sometimes thought to balance. While the sources of hopelessness are always unconscious, the feeling itself can be fairly conscious. A person may have a pervasive sense of doom. Or one may express it in philosophical terms, saying in effect that life is essentially tragic and only fools deceive themselves about human’s unalterable fate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Already in the preliminary interview one may get an impression of the patient’s hopelessness. One will be unwilling to make the smallest sacrifice, to undergo even a minor inconvenience, to take the slightest risk. One may give the appearance then of being too self-indulgent. However, the fact is that one sees no compelling reason to make sacrifices when one expects to gain nothing from them. Similar attitudes can be seen outside analysis. People remain in thoroughly unsatisfactory situations which with a bit of effort and initiative could be bettered. However, a person may be so completely paralyzed by one’s hopelessness that moderate difficulties seem to one insurmountable obstacles. Sometimes a chance remark will bring this condition to the surface. A patient may respond to the analyst’s simply saying that a certain problem is not yet solved and requires more work with the question: “You do not think it is hopeless?” And when one become aware of one’s despair one usually cannot account for it. One will be likely to ascribe it to various external factors, ranging from one’s job or one’s marriage to the political situation. However, it is not due to any concrete or temporary circumstance. One feels hopeless about ever making anything of one’s life, ever being happy or free. One feels forever excluded from all that could make one’s life meaningful. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
All despair is fundamentally a despair of being ourselves. Philosophers of all times have stressed the pivotal significance of being ourselves and the despair attendant on feeling barred from its approximation. What other significance can our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely? Hopelessness is an ultimate product of unresolved conflicts, with its deepest root in the despair of ever being wholehearted and undivided. A mounting scale of neurotic difficulties leads to this condition. Basic is the sense of being caught in conflicts like a bird in a net, with no apparent possibility of ever extricating oneself. On top of this come all the attempts at solution which not only fail but increasingly alienate the person from oneself. Repetitive experience serves to intensify the hopelessness—talents that never lead to achievement, whether because again and again energies are scattered in too many directions or because the difficulties arising in any creative process are enough to deter the person from further pursuit. This may apply as well to love affairs, marriages, friendships, which are shipwrecked one after another. Such repeated failures are as disheartening as is the experience of laboratory animals when, conditioned to jump into certain opening for food, they jump again and again only to find it barred. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
There is, furthermore, the factually hopeless enterprise of trying to measure up to the idealized image. It is hard to say whether this may not be the most potent of the factors producing hopelessness. There is no question, however, that in analysis hopelessness comes into full relief when the patient becomes aware that one is far from being the uniquely perfect person one sees in one’s imagination. One feels hopeless at such a time not only because one despairs of ever attaining those fantastic heights but even more because one responds to this realization with profound self-contempt, detrimental to the expectation of ever attaining anything, whether in love or in work. Final among the contributing factors are all the processes that cause a person’s centre of gravity to shift from within oneself and that make one cease to be the active propellant in one’s life. The outcome of it all is that one loses faith in oneself and in one’s development as a human being; one tends to give up—an attitude which, although it may pass unnoticed, is in its consequences grave enough to be called a psychic death. However, despite the fact [of one’s despair] one may nevertheless be perfectly well able to live on, to be a human, as it seems, to occupy oneself with temporal things, get married, beget children, win honour and esteem—and perhaps no one notices that in a deeper sense one lacks a self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
About such a thing as that not much fuss is made in the World; for a self is a thing the World is least apt to inquire about, and the thing of all things the most dangerous for a human to let people notice that one has it. The greatest danger, that of losing one’s self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, give dollars, a wife, excreta, is sure to be noticed. We have talked about some of the areas in which we practice legalism with each other and with ourselves: fences, differing opinions, spiritual disciplines, and fear of what others think. There are others. Expected attendance at all church meetings, or at the activities of our various para-church organizations, is another fertile area for legalism. Another old bogey is “Worldliness,” which in the minds of some people can be seen in the amount of skin a woman shows or how many tattoos a man has. Aggravating all of these areas is a class of people who have come to be known as “controllers.” These are people who are not willing to let you live your life before God as you believe He is leading you. They have all the issues buttoned down and have cast-iron opinions about all of them. These people only know black and white. There are no gray areas to them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
They insist you live your Christian life according to their rules and their opinions. If you insist on being free to live as God wants you to live, they will try to intimidate you and manipulate you on way or another. Their primary weapons are “guilt trips,” rejection, or sleezy gossip. These people must be resisted. We must not allow them to subvert the freedom we have in Christ. Paul treated the legalism in the Galatian church as heresy, and he called down a curse on its perpetrators. I am not prepared to go that far with our present-day legalists/controllers, but I want to tell you their actions are no incidental matter. Their presence in our evangelical ranks is much more than a minor irritant, such as a reporter buzzing around our heads. There are spiritual casualties all over our nation today because of the effects of legalistic controllers in their lives. Controllers have been around a long time. Over three hundred years ago—in 1645—the Puritan Samuel Bolton wrote these very instructive words on the issues of Christian freedom: Let us never surrender our judgments or our consciences to be at the disposal and opinions of others, and to be subjected to the sentences and determinations of humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is my exhortation therefore to all Christians to maintain their Christian freedom by constant watchfulness. You must not be tempted or threatened out of it; you must not be bribed or frightened from it; you must not let either force or fraud rob you of it. We must not give up ourselves to the opinion of other people, though they be never so learned, never so holy, merely because it is their opinion. The apostle directs us to try all things and to hold fast that which is good. “Test everything. Hold onto the good. Avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you though and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it,” reports 1 Thessalonians 5.21-24. It often happens that a high esteem of others in respect of their learning and piety makes humans take up all upon trust from such, and to submit their judgments to their opinions, and their consciousness to their precepts. This should not be so. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. That is just as true in the spiritual as in the political realm. Freedom and grace are two sides of the same coin. We cannot enjoy one without the other. If we are to truly live by grace, we must stand firm in the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all that we understand about God, and signify in word. “And now I Nephi, make an end of my prophesying unto you, my beloved brethren. And I cannot write but a few things, which I know must surely come to pass; neither can I write but a few of the words of my brother Jacob. Wherefore, the things which I have written sufficeth me, save it be a few words which I must speak concerning the doctrine of Christ; wherefore, I shall speak unto you plainly, according to the plainness of my prophesying. For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of humans. For the Lord God giveth light unto their understanding. Wherefore, I would that ye should remember that I have spoken unto you concerning that prophet which the Lord showed unto me, that should baptize the Lamb of God, which should take away the sins of the World. And now, if the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have need to be baptized by water, to fulfil all righteousness, O then, how much more need have we, being unholy, to be baptized, yea, even by water! And now, I would ask of you, my beloved, wherein the Lamb of God did fulfil all righteousness in being baptized by water? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“Know ye not that he was holy? However, notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of humans that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnesseth unto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments. Wherefore, after he was baptized with water the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove. And again, it showeth unto the children of humans the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter, he having set the example before them. And he said unto the children of humans: Follow thou me. Wherefore, my bellowed brethren, can we follow Jesus save we shall be willing to keep the commandments of the Father? And the Father said: Repent ye, repent ye, and be baptized in the name of my Beloved Son. And also, the voice of the Son came unto me; wherefore, follow me, and do the things which ye have seen me do. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are wiling to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism—yea, by following your Lord and your Saviour down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of Angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, behold, my beloved brethren, thus came the voice of the Son unto me, saying: After ye have repented of your sins, and witnessed unto the Father that ye are willing to keep my commandments, by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost, and can speak with a new tongue, yes, even with the tongue of Angels, and after this should deny me, it would have been better for you that ye had not known me. And I heard a voice from the Father, saying: Yea, the words of my Beloved are true and faithful. He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved. And now, my beloved brethren, I know by this that unless a human shall endure to the end, in following the examples of the Son of the living God, he cannot be saved. Wherefore, do the things which I have told you I have seen that your Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh remission of yours sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost. And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life; yes, ye have entered in by the gate; ye have done according to the commandments of the Father of the Son; and ye have received the Holy Ghost, which witnesses of the Father and the Son, unto the fulfilling of the promises which he hath made, that if ye entered in by the way ye should receive. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who mighty to save. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all humans. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father; Ye shall have eternal life. And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under Heaven whereby humans can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 31.1-21. We give thanks to Thee, O Lord God, Father Almighty, together with Thy Son our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and we offer unto Thee, O Lord, from the rising of the Sun unto the going down thereof, from the north and from the south;–for great is Thy Name in all nations, and in every place incense and sacrifice and oblation are offered unto Thy holy Name. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
God All-Sufficient—O Lord of Grace, the World is before me this day, and I am weak and fearful, but I look to thee for strength; if I venture forth alone I stumble and fall, but on the beloved’s arms I am firm as the eternal hills; if I left to the treachery of my heart I shall shame thy name, but if enlightened, guided, upheld by Thy Spirit, I shall bring Thee glory. Be thou my arm to support, my strength to stand, my light to see, my feet to run, my shield to protect, my sword to repel, my Sun to warm. To enrich me will not diminish Thy fullness; all Thy lovingkindness is in Thy Son, I bring Him to Thee in the arms of faith, I urge His saving name as the one who died for me. I plead His blood to pay my debts of wrong. Accept His worthiness for my unworthiness, His sinlessness for my transgressions, His purity for my uncleanness, His sincerity for my guile, His truth for my deceits, His meekness for my pride, His constancy for my backslidings, His love for my enmity, His fullness for my emptiness, His faithfulness for my treachery, His obedience for my lawlessness, His glory for my shame, His devotedness for my waywardness, His holy life for my unchaste ways, His righteousness for my dead works, His death for my life. “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this World is coming. He has no hold on me, but the World must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my father has commanded me,” John 14.30. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Half the Failures in Life Arise from Pulling in One’s Horse as He or She is Leaping!

It is not clear that we must take into account what the environment does to an organism not only before but after it responds. Behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences. If we ourselves are clear as to exactly what is meant by taking responsibility for oneself, we will understand that it is hard, if not impossible, for any neurotic to assume it. It means in the first place to acknowledge in a matter-of-fact way—to oneself and others—that such-and-such were one’s intentions, one’s words or one’s actions, and to be willing to take the consequences. This would be the opposite of lying or of putting the blame on others. To take responsibility for oneself in this sense would be hard for the neurotic because as a rule one does not know what one is doing or why one is doing it and has a keen subjective interest in not knowing. That is why one often tries to wriggle out by denying, forgetting, belittling, inadvertently supplying other motivations, feeling misunderstood, or getting confused. And since one tends to exclude or absolve oneself, one readily assumes that one’s wife, one’s business partner, one’s analyst are responsible for any difficulty that arises. Another factor that frequently contributes to one’s inability to take the consequences of one’s actions or even to see them is a hidden feeling of omnipotence, on the basis of which one expects to do whatever one pleases and get away with it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
To recognize the inescapable consequences of one’s actions would shatter this feeling of being a god. A final factor that is relevant here looks at first glance like an intellectual incapacity to think in terms of cause and effect. The neurotic commonly gives the impression of being inherently able to think only in terms of punishment. Almost every patient feels that the analyst is blaming one, whereas actually the analyst is only confronting one with one’s difficulties and their consequences. Outside the analytical situation one may feel like a culprit always under suspicion and attack and therefore constantly on the defensive. In reality this is an externalization of intrapsychic processes. As we have seen, the source from which these suspicions and attacks stem is one’s own idealized image. It is this inner process of fault finding and defense, plus its externalization, that makes it almost impossible for one to conceive of a cause-and-effect relation where one oneself is concerned. However, where difficulties of one’s own are not involved one can be just as matter-of-fact as anyone else. If the streets get wet because it is raining one does not ask whose fault it is but accepts the causal connection. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
When we speak of assuming responsibility for the self we mean, in addition, the capacity to stand up for what we believe is right and a willingness to take the consequences if our action or decision should prove to be wrong. This, too, is difficult when a person is divided by conflicts. For which of the conflict trends within oneself should one or could one stand up? None of them represents what one really wants or believes in. One really could stand up only for one’s idealized image. This, however, does not permit of the possibility of being wrong. Hence if one’s decision or action leads to trouble, one must falsify matters and ascribe the adverse consequences to someone else. A comparatively simple example will illustrate this problem. A person at the head of an organization craves unlimited power and prestige. Nothing may be done or decided without one; one cannot bring oneself to delegate functions to others who by virtue of their particular training might be better equipped to handle certain affairs. There is, in one’s own mind, nothing one does not know best. Besides, one does not want anyone else to feel or to become important. If only because of limitations of time and energy, one’s expectations of oneself would be impossible to measure up to. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
However, this particular individual wants not only to dominate; one is also complaint and needs to be superhumanly good. As a result of one’s unresolved conflicts one has all the earmarks we have described—inertia and need for sleep, indecision and procrastination, and hence cannot organize one’s time. And since one feels the keeping of appointments as intolerable coercion, one secretly enjoys making people wait. In addition, one does many unimportant tings merely because they flatter one’s vanity. Finally, one’s urge to be a devoted family person consumes much of one’s time and thought. Naturally, then, things do not function very well in the organization; but seeing no flaw in oneself, one puts the blame on others or on untoward circumstances. Again let us ask, for which part of one’s personality could one take responsibility? For one’s tendency to dominate, or for one’s tendency to comply, appease, and ingratiate oneself? To begin with, one is unaware of either. However, even if one were aware of them one could not uphold one and discard the other, because both are compulsory. Furthermore, one’s idealized image does not allow one to see anything in oneself but ideal virtues and unlimited capacities. Hence one cannot take responsibility for the consequences that inevitably follow from the operation of one’s conflicts. To do so would bring into clear relief all that one is so anxious to conceal from oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Generally speaking, the neurotic is especially averse—unconsciously—to assuming responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions. One shuts one’s eye to even the very obvious ones. Unable to do away with one’s conflicts, one insists—again unconsciously—that one, all powerful as one is, should be able to cope with them. Consequences, one believes, may catch up with other, but for one they do not exist. One must therefore keep on dodging any recognition of the laws of cause and effect. If one would only open one’s mind to them, they could teach one a powerful lesson. They demonstrate in a foolproof way that one’s system of living does not work, that for all one’s unconscious cunning and trickery one cannot budge the laws that operate in our psychic life with the same inexorability as in the physical sphere, but there is an astonishing lack of understand of these psychic laws in the New World. As a matter of act, the whole subject of responsibility has little appeal for one. One sees—or dimly senses—only its negative aspects. What one does not see, and learn to appreciate only gradually, is that by turning one’s back on it one defeats one’s ardent strivings for independence. One hopes to attain independence by defiantly excluding all commitments, whereas in reality the assuming of responsibility for oneself and to oneself is an indispensable condition of real inner freedom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In order not to recognize that one’s problems and one’s suffering stem from one’s inner difficulties, the neurotic resorts to any of three devices—and often to all of them. Externalization may be applied to the hilt at this point, in which case everything from food, climate, or constitution to parents, wife, or fate is blamed for the particular calamity. Or one may take the attitude that since nothing is one’s fault it is unfair that any misfortune should befall one. It is unfair that one should tall ill, get old, or die, that one should be unhappily married, have a problem child, or think one’s work remain unrecognized. This kind of thinking, which may be conscious or unconscious, is doubly wrong, for it eliminates not only one’s own share in one’s difficulties but also all the factors independent of oneself that have a bearing on one’s life. Nevertheless, it has a logic of its own. It is the typical thinking of an isolated being who is centered exclusively upon oneself and whose egocentricity makes it impossible for one to see oneself as only a small link in a greater chain. One simply takes it for granted that one should derive all the good of living at a particular time in a particular social system, but resents being linked with others for good or ill. Therefore one cannot see why one should suffer from anything in which one has not been personally implicated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
The third device is connected with one’s refusal to recognize cause-and-effect relationships. Consequences appear in one’s mind as isolated occurrences, unrelated to oneself or one’s difficulties. A depression or a phobia, for instance, may seem to descend upon one from the blue. This, of course, might be due to psychological ignorance or lack of observation. However, in analysis we can see that the patient offers a most tenacious resistance to taking cognizance of any impalpable connections. One may remain incredulous or forget them; or one may feel that the analyst, instead of speedily removing the troublesome disturbances—which was what one came for—puts the “blame” on one and cleverly saves one’s own face. Thus a patient may have become familiar with factors relevant to one’s inertia but close one’s mind to the obvious fact that one’s inertia slows up not only one’s analysis but everything else one does. Or another may have become aware of one’s aggressive-derogatory behaviour toward people but cannot understand why one often has quarrels and is disliked. That these difficulties exist within one is one thing, but one’s actual day-to-day problems are something else again. This separation of one’s inner troubles from their effect on one’s life is one of the mainsprings of the whole tendency to compartmentalize. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Resistance toward recognizing the consequences of neurotic attitudes and drives is for the most part deeply concealed and may be easily overlooked by the analyst for the very reason that to one the connection is so obvious. This is unfortunate, because unless the patient is made aware that one blinds oneself to consequences and the reasons for which one does so, one cannot possibly realize to what an extent one interferers with one’s own life. Awareness of consequences is the most powerful curative factor in analysis in that it impresses on the patient’s mind that only by changing certain things within oneself can one ever attain freedom. If, then, the neurotic cannot be held accountable for one’s pretenses, one’s arrogance, one’s egocentricity, one’s shirking of responsibility, can we speak in terms of morals at all? The argument will be raised that, as physicians, we need only be concerned with the patient’s illness and cure, and that one’s morals are not our province. It will be pointed out that one of Dr. Freud’s great merits was to have overthrown the “moralistic” attitude I seem to advocate! Such arguments are deemed scientific; but are they tenable? Can we really exclude in matters of human behaviour judgment as to right and wrong? #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
If analysts decide what needs analytical examination and what does not, do they not really proceed on the basis of the very judgments they consciously reject? There is a danger, however, in such implicit judgments: they are likely to be made on either too subjective or too traditional a ground. Thus an analyst may feel that a man’s philandering need not be analyzed, while a woman’s deserves scrutiny. Or if one believes in an unbridled living out of drives in dealing with pleasures of the flesh, one may decide that faithfulness, whether in a man or a woman, needs analysis. Actually, judgments should be made on the basis of the particular patient’s neurosis. The question to be decided is whether an attitude the patient has assumed has consequences injurious to one’s development and to one’s relations with people. If it has, it is wrong and needs to be tackled. The reasons for the analyst’s conclusion should be explicitly stated to the patient in order to enable one to make up one’s own mind in the matter. And finally, do not the above arguments contain the same fallacy as exists in the patient’s thinking—namely, that morals are only a question of judgment and not primarily one of fact couple with consequences? Let us take neurotic arrogance as an example. It exists as a fact no matter whether the patient is responsible for it or not. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
The analyst believes that arrogance is a problem for the patient to recognize and eventually overcome. Does one assume this critical attitude because one has learned in Sunday school that arrogance is sinful and humility a virtue? Or is one’s judgment determined by the fact that arrogance is unrealistic and has adverse consequences, the burden of which is inevitably that patient’s—again regardless of one’s responsibility. The consequences, though, in the case of arrogance bar the patient from knowing oneself, and so thwart one’s development. Also, the arrogant patient is apt to be unfair to others, and this again has its repercussions—not merely in subjecting one to occasional clashes with others but in alienating one from people generally. This, however, only drives one deeper into one’s neurosis. Because the patient’s morals in part result from one’s neurosis and in part contribute to its maintenance, the analyst has no choice but to be interested in them. Interestingly enough, those who share a particular stigma can often rely upon mutual aid in passing, again illustrating that those who can be most threatening are often those who can render most assistance. For example, when one homosexual accosts another, the action may be carried out in such a way that normal are unaware that anything out of the ordinary is occurring. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If we watch very carefully, and know what to watch for in a “gay” bar, we begin to observe that some individuals are apparently communicating with each other without exchanging words, but simply by exchanging glances—but not the kind of quick glance which ordinarily occurs between people of the same gender. The same kind of cooperativeness is to be found among the circles of stigmatized persons who know one another personally. For example, former mental patients who knew each other in the institution may maintain tactful control of this fact on the outside. In some cases, as when one of the individuals is with normal, the individual may give and be given the “go by,” the passing by of each other as though they were unacquainted. Where a greeting does occur, it may be handled discreetly; the context of the initial acquaintanceship is not made explicit, and the individual whose situation is the more delicate is accorded the right to pace the acknowledgment and the sociable exchange that follows from it. Former mental patients are not alone here of course: The professional women of the evening has a code regulating her relations with the client. For example, it is customary for a woman of the evening never to show any signs of recognizing a client when she meets one in public, unless he greets her first. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Where this kind of discretion is not afforded, one can sometimes expect the discredited individual to take active disciplinary action, as Reiss, in his paper on juvenile entrepreneurs, illustrates by quoting an informant. “I was walkin’ down the street with my steady girl when this gay drives by that I had been with once before and he whistles at me and calls, ‘Hi, Sweetie.’ And, was I mad…so I went down to where the boys was and we laid for him and beat on him ‘til he like to a never come to…ain’t gonna take nothin’ like that off’n a queer.” It is expected to be that voluntary maintenance of various types of distance will be employed strategically by those who pass, the discreditable here using much the same devices as do the discredited, but for slightly different reasons. By declining or avoiding overtures of intimacy the individual can avoid the consequent obligation to divulge information. By keeping relationships distant one ensures that time will not have to be spent with the other, for, as already stated, the more time that is spent with another the more chance of unanticipated events that disclose secrets. Examples may be cited from the stigma management work done by wives of mental patients. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
“But I have cut off all our other friends [after citing five who “knew”]. I did not tell them that I was giving up the apartment and I had the phone disconnected without telling anyone so they do not know how to get in touch with me. I have not gotten too friendly with anyone at the office because I do not want people to know where my husband is. I figure that if I got too friendly with them, then they would start asking questions, and I might start talking, and I just think it is better if as few people as possible know about Joe.” By maintaining physical distance, the individual can also restrict the tendency of others to build up a personal identification of one. By residing in a region with a mobile population, one can limit the amount of continuous experience others have of one. By residing in a region cut off from one one ordinarily frequents one can introduce a disconnectedness in one’s biography: whether intentionally, as in the case of an unmarried young lady with an unborn child going out of state to have her baby, or of small-town homosexuals going to New York, Los Angeles, or Paris for relatively anonymous activity; or unintentionally, as in the case of the mental patient who gratefully finds that one’s place of commitment is far out of town and hence somewhat cut off from one’s ordinary contacts. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
By staying indoors and not answering the phone or door, the discreditable individual can remove oneself from most of those contacts in which one’s disgrace might be established as part of the biography others have of one. A final possibility must now be considered, one that allows the individual to forego all the others. One can voluntarily disclose oneself, thereby radically transforming one’s situation from that of an individual with information to manage to that of an individual with uneasy social situations to manage, from that of a discreditable person to that of a discredited one. Once a secretly stigmatized person has given information about oneself it becomes possible, of course, for one to engage in any of the adaptive actions previously cited as being available to the known-to-be stigmatized, this accounting in part for one’s policy of self-disclosure. One method of disclosure is for the individual voluntarily to wear a stigma symbol, a highly visible sign that advertises one’s failing wherever one goes. There are, for example, hard of hearing persons who wear hearing devices that are nearly invisible; the partly blind who affect a collapsible white cane; Jewesses who wear a Star of David as a necklace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It should be noted that some of these stigma symbols, such as a Knights of Columbus lapel button indicating that the wearer is Catholic, are not frankly presented as disclosures of stigma, but purportedly attest rather to membership in organizations claimed to have no such significance in themselves. It should be noted also that militant programs of all kinds can be served by this device, for the self-symbolizing individual ensures one’s being cut off from the society of normal. The manner in which a sect of New York Jews present themselves provides an example: “Obgehitene Yiden, ‘Guardian Jews,’ include those so-called ultra-Orthodox Jews who not only observe the Shulhan Aruch in the most minute detail but are most meticulous and zealous in their observance. They perform all the prescribed commandments and precepts with greatest care. These people are overtly identifiable as Jews. They wear beards and/or special traditional clothing for the exclusive purpose of being externally identified as Jewish: beards so that the ‘image of God should be upon their faces,’ traditional garments so that they ‘may refrain from any possible sin.’” Stigma symbols have the character of being continuously available for perception. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Some less rigid means of disclosure are also used. Fleeting offerings of evidence may be made—purposeful slips, as it were—as when a person has not disclosed their preference for same sex relationships and voluntarily commits the clumsy act of showing someone pictures one of which is private picture of himself as a way of informing new comers of his sigma. There is also disclosure etiquette, a formula whereby the individual admits one’s own failing in a matter of fact way, supporting the assumption that those present are above such concerns while preventing them from trapping themselves into showing that they are not. Thus the “good” Jew or mental patient waits for “an appropriate time” in a conversation with strangers and calmly says: “Well, being Jewish has made me feel that…” or “Having had first-hand experience as a mental patient I can…” Earlier it was suggested that learning to pass constitutes one phase in the socialization of the stigmatized person and a turning point in one’s moral career. I want to suggest now that if an individual can come to accept oneself and respect oneself, that the stigmatized individual can come to feel that one should be above passing, and will feel no need to conceal one’s failing. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
After laboriously learning to conceal, then, the individual may go on to unlearn this concealment. It is here that voluntary disclosure fits into the moral career, a sign of one of its phases. It should be added that in the published autobiographies of stigmatized individuals, this phase in the moral career is typically described as the final, mature, well-adjusted one—a state of grace I will attempt to consider later. Many false churches will be built up in the last days—they will teach false, vain, and foolish doctrines—apostasy will abound because of false teachers—the devil will rage in the hearts of humans—he will teach all manner of false doctrines. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And now, behold, my brethren, I have spoken unto you, according as the Spirit hath constrained me; wherefore, I know that they must surely come to pass. And the things which shall be written out of the book shall be of great worth unto the children of humans, and especially unto our seed, which is a remnant of the house of Israel. For it shall come to pass in that day that the churches which are built up, and not unto the Lord, when the one shall say unto the other: Behold, I, I am the Lord’s; and the others shall say: I, I am the Lord’s; and thus shall every one say that hath built up churches, and not unto the Lord– #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And they shall contend one with another; and their priests shall contend one with another, and they shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance. And they deny the power of God, the Holy One of Israel; and they say unto the people: Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto humans; behold, hearken ye unto my precept; if they shall say there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not; for this day he is not a God of miracles; he hath done his work. Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us. And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea lie a little, take advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbour; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Yea, and there shall be many which shall teach after this manner, false and vain and foolish doctrines, and shall be puffed up in their hearts, and shall seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord; and their works shall be in the dark. And the blood of the saints shall cry from the ground against them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Yea, they have all gone out of the way; they have become corrupted. Because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrine, their churches have become corrupted, and their churches are lifted up; because of pride they are puffed up. They rob the poor because of their fine sanctuaries; they rob the poor because of their fine clothing; and the persecute the meek and the poor in heart, because in their pride they are puffed up. They wear stiff necks and high heads; yea, and because of pride, and wickedness, and abominations, and whoredoms, they have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of humans. O the wise, and the learned, and the rich, that are puffed up in the pride of their hearts, and all those who preach false doctrines, and all those who commit whoredoms, and pervert the right way of the Lord, wo, wo, wo be unto them, saith the Lord God Almighty, for they shall be thrust down to hell! Wo unto them that turn aside the just for a thing of naught and revile against that which is good, and say that it is of no worthy! For the day shall come that the Lord God will speedily visit the inhabitants of the Earth; and in that day that they are fully ripe in iniquity they shall perish. However, behold, if the inhabitants of the Earth shall repent of their wickedness and abominations they shall not be destroyed, saith the Lord of Hosts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“However, behold, that great and abominable church, the whore of all the Earth, must tumble to the Earth, and great must be the fall thereof. For the kingdom of the devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance, or the devil will grasp them with his everlasting chains, and they be stirred up to anger, and perish; for behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of humans, and stir them up to anger against that which is good. And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell. And behold, other he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whsipereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance. Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment. Therefore, wo be unto ne that is at ease in Zion! Wo be unto one that crieth: All is well! #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Yea, wo be unto one that hearkeneth unto the precepts of humans, and denieth the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost! Yea, wo be unto one that saith: We have received, and we need no more! And in fine, wo unto all those who tremble, and are angry because of the truth of God! For behold, one that is built upon the rock receiveth it with gladness; and one that is built upon a sandy foundation trembleth lest one shall fall. And in fine, wo unto all those who tremble, and are angry because of the truth of God! For behold, one that is built upon the rock receiveth it with gladness; and one that is built upon a sandy foundation trembleth lest one shall fall. Wo be unto one that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough! For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of humans line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto one that receiveth I will give more; and for them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have. Cursed is one that putteth one’s trust in humans, or maketh flesh one’s arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of humans, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“Wo be unto the Gentiles, saith the Lord God of Hosts! For notwithstanding I shall lengthen out mine arm unto them from day to day, they will deny me; nevertheless, I will be merciful unto them, saith the Lord God, if they will repent and come unto me; for mine arm is lengthened out all the day long, saith the Lord God of Host,” reports 2 Nephi 28.1-32. O Lord our God, Who hast called us Christians after the Name of Thine Only-begotten Son, and hast given us Baptism in the Font for the remission of sins; make us, we beseech Thee, worthy now to receive this Communion for the remission of our sins, and to glorify Thee with thanksgiving. O God, may I never be a blot or a blank in life, cause the way of truth to be evil spoken of, or make my liberty an occasion to the flesh. May I by love serve others, and please my neighbour for one’s good edification. May I attend to what is ornamental as well as essential in religion, pursuing things that are lovely and of good report. May I render my profession of the gospel not only impressive, but amiable and inviting. May I hold forth the way of Jesus with my life as well as my lips. May I say to all I meet, I am journeying towards the Lord’s given place, some with me for your good. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
May I be prepared for all the allotments of this short, changing, uncertain life with a useful residence in it, a comfortable journey through it, a safe passage out of it. May I ne in character and conduct like the dew of Heaven, the salt of the Earth, the light of the World, the fullness of the fountain. May I never be ashamed of Jesus or His words, never be deterred from fulfilling a known duty through fear, never be discouraged from attempting it through weakness. May I see all things in a divine light so that they may inform my judgment and sanctify my heart. And by all the disciplines of Thy providence, and all the ordinances of religion, may I be increasingly prepared for life’s remaining duties, the solemnities of a dying hour, and the joys and services that lie beyond the grave. Have mercy, O Lord, upon Thy servants for whom I offer this sacrifice of praise to Thy Majesty; that they may be able to lead a good life in this World, and happily to attain eternal blessedness. Remember, O Lord, Thy servants and handmaids here present, whose faith and devotion are discerned and known by Thee. Look mercifully, O Lord, on these present offerings, that they may avail both for our devotion and our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Send forth, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Holy Spirit, to make these present offerings Thy Sacrament unto us, and purify our hearts for its reception. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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But I Will Wear My Heart Upon My Sleeve for Daws to Peck at!
The way to love other people is to express what we feel—anger and love—without aiming to hurt feelings. Open but reverent communication is how to make love in our lives. I have talked of equality as a right ad of equality as a goal. And I have taken, as the principal thing, to be able to state what goal we are seeking when we say equality is a goal. When we are in a position actually to achieve that goal, then that same equality becomes a right. The goal we are seeking is an equality of basic condition for everyone. Let me say a bit what this is: everyone, as far as possible, should have equal life prospects, short of genetic engineering and the like and the rooting out of any form of family and the undermining of our basic freedoms. There should, where this is possible, eb an equality of access to equal resources over each person’s life as a whole, though this should be qualified by people’s varying needs. Where psychiatrists are in short supply only people who are in need of psychiatric help should have equal access to such help. This equal access to resources should be such that it stands as a barrier to there being the sort of differences between people that allow some to be in a position to control and to exploit others; such equal access to resources should also stand as a barrier to one person having power over other adult person that does not rest on the revocable consent on the part of the persons over whom one comes to have power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Where, because of some remaining scarcity in a society of considerable productive abundance, we cannot reasonably distribute resources equally, we should first, where considerations of desert are not at issue, distribute according to stringency of need, second according to the strength of unmanipulated preferences and third, and finally, by lottery. We should, in trying to attain equality of condition, aim at a condition of autonomy (the fuller and the more rational the better) for everyone and at a condition where everyone alike, to the fullest extent possible, has his or her needs and wants satisfied. The limitations on the satisfaction of people’s wants should be only were the satisfaction is incompatible with everyone getting the same treatment. Where we have conflicting wants, such as where two persons want to marry the same person, the fair thing to do will vary with the circumstances. In the marriage case, freedom of choice is obviously the fair thing. However, generally, what should be aimed at is having everyone have their own wants satisfied as far as possible. To achieve equality of condition would be, as well, to achieve a condition where the necessary burdens of the society are equally shared, where to do so is reasonable, and where each person has an equal voice in deciding what these burdens shall be. Moreover, everyone, as much as possible, should be in a position—and should be equally in that position—to control one’s own life. The goals of egalitarianism are to achieve such equalities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
If we are egalitarians, then minimally, classlessness is something we should aim at. It is necessary for the stable achievement of equalities of the type discussed. Beyond that, we should also aim at a statusless society, though not at an undifferentiated society or a society which does not recognize merit. It is only in such a classless, statusless society that the ideals of equality (the conception of equality as a very general goal to be achieved) can be realized. In aiming for a society, we are aiming for a society which, while remining a society of material abundance, is a society in which there are to be no extensive differences in life prospects between people because some have far greater income, power, authority or prestige than others. This is the via negativa of the egalitarian way. The via positivia is to produce social conditions where there is generally material abundance, where well-being and satisfactions are not only maximized (the utilitarian thing) but, as well, a society where this condition, as far as it is achievable, is sought equally for all (the egalitarian thing). This is the underlying conception of the egalitarian commitment to equality of condition. In our description of the encounter of power of being with power of being we have limited our task to the encounter of individuals with individuals. We must also extend our description to the encounter of social groups with social groups. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
If we do so find the same marks of power encounters, the pushing ahead and withdrawing, the absorbing and throwing out, the amalgamation and separation. This is unavoidable. For every power group experiences growth and disintegration. It tries to transcend itself and to preserve itself at the same time. Nothing is determined a priori. It is a matter of trial and risk, and decision. And this trial has elements of intrinsic power untied with compulsion whether the group or their representatives want it or not. These encounters are the basic material of history. In them human’s political destiny is decided. What is their character? The basis of all power of a social group is the space it must provide for itself. Being means having space or, more exactly, providing space for oneself. This is the reason for the tremendous importance of geographical space and the fight for its possession by all power groups. Our time gives a striking example for this fact. In the necessity of having space the Zionist fight is rooted. Israel lost its independent power of being and often its power of being altogether, when it lost its space. Now it has its space and has shown a rather strong power of being. However, perhaps something is lost: the intimate relation to time which made Israel the elected nation and which belongs to the problem of the resignation of power. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The struggle about space is not simply the attempt to remove another group from a given space. The real purpose is to draw this space into a larger power field, to deprive it of a center of its own. If this happens, it is not the individual power of being which has changed, but the way in which the individual participates in the center, in which one influences the law and the spiritual substance of the new, larger power organization. It is, however not only geographical space which gives power and being to a social organism. It is also the radiation of power into the larger space of humankind. One of these radiations which enlarge one’s own space without reducing that of others is economic expansion. Another one is technical expansion or the spread of science and civilization. In none of these cases is a preceding calculation possible. Every factor is changing, the number of the population, the productive power, new discoveries, movements, emigration, competition, the rise of new countries, the disintegration of old ones. History, so to speak, tries what will be its next constellation. And in these trials nations and empires are scarified, and others are called into existence. The power of being of each political power group is measured by its encounter with the power of being of other power groups. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
However, now we must remember that power is never only physical force, but it is also the power of symbols and ideas in which the life of a social group expresses itself. The consciousness of such a social group expresses itself. The consciousness of such a spiritual substance can become, and in the most important cases of history does become, the feeling of a special vocation. If we look at European history we find a series of expression of such a vocational consciousness, and we find tremendous historical consequences following from it. In an indistinguishable unity of power drive and vocational consciousness the Romans subjected the Mediterranean World to the Roman law and the order of the Roman empire, based on this law. In the same way Alexander brought Greek culture to nations which were subjected in terms of bot arms and language. Considering the fact these two imperial drives in their amalgamation created the oikoumene, the condition and frame of the spread of Christianity, we cannot say that their vocational consciousness was wrong. The same must be said about the medieval German Empire, which, on the basis of the power drives of the Germanic kings, created the structure for the united Christian body with all the glory of medieval religion and culture. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
After the end of the Middle Ages the European nations combined power drives with vocational consciousness of different character. Spain’s World-conquering imperialism was united with the fanatical belief in being the divine tool of the Counter-Reformation. England’s vocational consciousness was rooted partly in the Calvinistic idea of World politics for the preservation of pure Christianity, partly in a Christian-humanistic feeling of responsibility for the colonial countries and for a solid balance of power between the civilized nations. This was inseparably united with an economic and political power drive and produced the largest Empire of all times and almost eighty years of European peace. The vocational consciousness of France was based on its cultural superiority in the seventeenth an and eighteenth centuries. Modern Germany was under the impact of the so-called Real-Politik, without a vocational consciousness. Her ideology was the struggle for Lebensraum, party in competition with the colonial nations and therefore in conflict with them. Adolph Hitler’s use of an obviously absurd vocational idea, that of Nordic blood, was artificially imposed an only reluctantly accepted, because there was no genuine vocational symbol. Today two great imperialistic systems fight with each other in terms of both force and vocational consciousness: Russian and America. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The Russian vocational consciousness was based on its religious feeling that it had a mission towards the West, namely, to save the disintegrating Western civilization through Eastern mystical Christianity. This was the claim of the Slavophile movement in the nineteenth century. President-day Russian has a similar missionary consciousness towards the West civilization and at the same time towards the Far East. Her power drive, which in the official counter-propaganda appears as the desire for World domination, is not understandable without her fanatical vocational consciousness, which must be compared with that of all other imperialistic movements. America’s vocational consciousness has been called “The American dream,” namely to establish the Earthly form of the kingdom of God by a new beginning. The old forms of oppressive power were left behind and a new start was made. In the Constitution and the living democracy (both are quasi-religious concepts in the United States of America) the will is embodied to actualize what is felt as the American vocation. This was originally meant for America alone. Now it is meant explicitly for one-half of the World and implicitly for the whole World. The actual power drive working together with this vocational feeling is still rather limited. However, the historical situation increases it more and more. And it is already justified to speak of half-conscious American imperialism. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Vocational consciousness expresses itself in laws. In these laws both justice and love are actual. The justice of the empires not only subject, they also unite. And in so far as they are able to do this, they are not without love. Therefore those who has subjected acknowledge silently that they have become participants of a superior power of being and meaning. If this acknowledgement vanishes because the uniting power of the empire, its strength, and its vocational idea vanishes, the empire comes to an end. Its power of being disintegrates and external attacks only execute what is already decided. The present decrease in national sovereignty, the rise of embracing power groups, and the split of the World into two all-embracing power groups, and the split of the World into two all-embracing systems of political power rises naturally the problem of a united humankind. What can be derived from our analysis of power, justice, and love for this question? There are three answers to this question. The first one does not recognize the inescapable character of the recent developments towards large organisms of power and expects a return to a number of relatively independent power centers, perhaps not national but continental. The second answer seeks for the solution in a World state, created by a kind of federal union of the present main powers and by their subjection to a central authority in which all groups participate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The third answer expects that one of the great powers will develop into a World center, ruling the other nations through liberal methods and in democratic forms! The first answer is a matter of foresight. It belongs to the movement of social organisms that the centralizing tendency is always balanced by a decentralizing one. The question is: Which tendency determines the present situation? The technical union of the World favours centralization, but there are other, above all psychological factors which may prevail. The second answer, the expectation of the World state, contradicts the analysis of power as we have given it. A power center which unites strength with vocational consciousness cannot subject itself to an artificial authority without both of them. The presupposition for a political World unity is the presence of a spiritual unity expressed in symbols and myths. Nothing like this exists today. And before it does exist a World state has no power to create silent acknowledgment. The most probable answer seems to be the third one. It may well be that after the period of World history which is characterized by the rise of one power structure to universal power, with a minimum of suppression, the law and the justice and the uniting love which are embodied in this power will become the universal power of humankind. However, even then the kingdom of God has not come upon us. For even then disintegration and revolution are not excluded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
New centers of power may appear, first underground, then openly, driving towards separation from or towards radical transformation of the whole. They may develop a vocational consciousness of their own. Then the power struggle starts again and the period of the fulfilled World empire will be as limited as the Augustan period of was. Can uniting love never unite humankind? Can humankind never become as a whole a structure of power and a source of universal justice? With this question we have left the realm of history and approach the question of love, power, and justice in their relation to that which is ultimate. Thus Revelation makes sense because it is the answer to the finitude and ambiguities of actual reason; the terms God, as a symbol of the Unconditioned, is meaningful insofar as it resolves the contradictions of finite being; Christology itself answers the dilemma of existence and fulfills humankind’s quest for Christ. Being, existence, life thus anticipate, in human’s conscious and unconscious experience, the revelation of the Unconditioned as God, as Christ and as Spirit. The notion of the Kingdom of God will resolve the ambiguities of history. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The basic purpose of theology is neither to establish facts, nor to build a speculative synthesis; it is to investigate meanings. Leaving the former task to positive theologians and their recurrent flirtation with historicism, and the latter to speculative theologians and the permanent danger of over intellectualism, we open another way, a search for the meanings of religious attitudes through a critical phenomenology, uniting an intuitive-descriptive element with an existential-critical element. However, by doing so, we boldly head for a third pitfall, which we may call a philosophical distortion of faith. If the only ultimately valid content of their faith is merely the intuition of a philosophical principle, there is not much point in the tremendous spiritual effort of all the religions of humankind. Yet the meaning of faith, as drawn out of belief-ful experience is simply that in the depth of my own being, I participate in both abyss and ground, in nothingness and in being-itself. The difference between the philosopher and the faith-ful would be that the former is relatively detached whereas the latter is involved. If this is the meaning of faith and religion, we have obviously been let down by priests and prophets, and what is more, we have been led astray. For neither priest nor prophet has taught that this was faith. To be sure, a certain amount of demythologizing is necessary—be it Primordial Humans in India or Gilgamesch in Mesopotamia, myth have to be interpreted. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The contrast between the religious myths of faith and their reduction to one common philosophical denominator confirms what I have said elsewhere: a philosophical description of being and concern is altogether distinct from a theology of faith and grace. Speaking in specifically Christian terms, it is a fallacy to approach the faith of Christianity from a preconceived phenomenological notion of faith at large. In the first place, this does not do justice to the fact that the Christian faith, in its Catholic form and also in its Protestant form before Schleiermacher, has always described itself, not as one faith among other, but as the only saving faith. Secondly, it introduced a distinction between the conveying message of faith (called, here, its myth or symbol) and its ultimate meaning. The Christian message, however, is essentially historical. Arising out of a historical event, the preaching of the man Jesus, it was confirmed by his Resurrection from the dead in Judea under the governor Pontius Pilate. This historical structure of the Christian faith stands in judgment over our analyses for it implies that the form of the Christian Revelation is inseparable from its content. If it only expressed unconditional concern as philosophical intuition of being and non-being, its historical structure would be altogether irrelevant to its meaning. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Actually it would be difficult to discover a systematic theology that appeals less to the historical sources of Christian doctrine than ours. What this implies for Christology proper will detain us later. It is enough now to note that the notion of faith, the notion of original sin, the notion of revelation, have been stripped of their specifically Christian elements and made into universal philosophical concepts. One could heed Calvin’s warning: “Should some mind, abandoning the wisdom contained in the Word of God, bring us a different doctrine, he must rightly be suspected of vanity and falsehood.” For a theologian to straitjacket the Christian faith in a scheme which is supposedly valid for all and sundry faiths is highly suspect. At this stage, however, we should suspend judgment. In the development of our Christology, we are bringing in the necessary corrections. “But, behold, in the last days, or in the days of the Gentiles—yea, behold all the nations of the Gentiles and also the Jews, both those who shall come upon this land and those who shall be upon other lands, yea, even upon all the lands of the Earth, behold, they will be drunken with iniquity and all manner of abominations—and when that day shall come they shall be visited of the Lord or Hosts, with thunder and with Earthquake, and with a great noise, and with storm, and with tempest, and with the flame of the devouring fire. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
“And all the nations that fight against Zion, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision; yea, it shall be unto them, even as unto a hungry man which dreameth, and behold he eateth but he awaketh and his soul is empty; or like unto a thirsty human which dreameth, and behold one drinketh but one awaketh and behold one is faint, and one’s soul hath appetite; yea, even so shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion. For behold, all ye that doeth iniquity, stay yourselves and wonder, for ye shall cry out, and cry; yea, ye shall be drunken but not with wine, ye shall stagger but not with strong drink. For behold, the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep. For behold, ye have closed your eyes, and ye have rejected the prophets; and your rulers, and the seers hath one covered because of your iniquity. And it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall bring forth unto you the words of a book, and they shall be the words of them which have slumbered. And behold the book shall be sealed; and in the book shall be a revelation from God, from the beginning of the World to the ending thereof. Wherefore, because of the things which are sealed up, the things which are sealed shall not be delivered in the day of the wickedness and abominations of the people. Wherefore the book shall be kept from them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
“However, the book shall be delivered unto a human, and one shall deliver the words of the book, which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust, and one shall deliver these words unto another; however, the words which are sealed one shall not deliver, neither shall one deliver the book. For the book shall be sealed by the power of God, and the revelation which was sealed shall be kept in the book until the own due time of the Lord, that they may come forth; for behold, they reveal all things from the foundation of the World unto the end thereof. And the day cometh that the words of the book which were sealed shall be read upon the house tops; and they shall be read by the power of Christ; and all things shall be revealed unto the children of humans which ever have been among the children of humans, and which ever will be even unto the end of the Earth. Wherefore, at that day when the book shall be delivered unto the human of whom I have spoken, the book shall be hid from the eyes of the World, that the eyes of none shall behold it save it be that three witnesses shall behold it, by the power of God, besides him to whom the book shall be delivered; and they shall testify to the truth of the book and the things therein. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“And there is none other which shall view it, save it be a few according to the will of God, to bear testimony of his word unto the children of humans; for the Lord God hath said that the words of the faithful should speak as if it were from the dead. Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to bring forth the words of the book; and in the mouth of as many witnesses as seemeth him good will he establish his word; and wo be unto him that rejecteth the word of God! However, behold, it shall come to pass that the Lord God shall say unto him to whom he shall deliver the book: Take these words which are not sealed and deliver them to another, that he may show them unto the learned, saying: Read this, I pray thee. And the learned shall say: Bring hither the book, and I will read them. And now, because of the glory of the World and to get gain will they say this, and not for the glory of God. And the human shall say: I cannot bring the book, for it is sealed. Then shall the learned say: I cannot read it. Wherefore I shall come to pass, that the Lord God will deliver again the book and the words thereof to one that is not learned; and the human that is not learned shall say: I am not learned. Then shall the Lord God say unto him: The learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them, and I am able to do mine own work; wherefore thou shalt read the words which I shall give unto thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“Touch not the things which are sealed, for I will bring them forth in mine own due time; for I will show unto the children of humans that I am able to do mine own work. Wherefore, when thou hast read the words which I have commanded thee, and obtained the witnesses which I have promised unto thee, then shalt thou seal up the book again, and hide it up unto me, that I may preserve the words which thou hast not read, until I shall see fit in mine own wisdom to reveal all things unto the children of humans. For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the World that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I am work not among children of humans save it be according to their faith. And again it shall come to pass that the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him: forasmuch as this people draw near unto me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their hearts far from me, and their fear towards me is taught by the precepts of humans—therefore, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, yea, a marvelous work and a wonder, for the wisdom of their wise and learned shall perish, and the understanding of the prudent shall be hid. And wo unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord! And their works are in the dark; and they say: Who seeth us, and who knoweth us? #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And they also say: Surely, your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay. However, behold, I will show unto them, saith the Lord of Hosts, that I know all their works. For shall the work say of him that made it, he made me not? Or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, he had no understanding? However, behold, saith the Lord of Host: I will show unto the children of humans that it is yet a very little while and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field; and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest. And in that say shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. And the meek also shall increase, and their joy shall be in the Lord, and the poor among humans shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For assuredly as the Lord liveth they shall see that the terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off; and they that make a human an offender for a word and lay a snare for one that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of naught. Therefore, thus saith the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale. However, when he seeth his children, the work of my hands, in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name, and sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall fear the God of Israel. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and the that murmured shall learn doctrine,” reports 2 Nephi 27.1-35. O LORD our God, the Bread of Heaven, the Life of the World, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am not worthy to partake of Thine immaculate Mysteries;–but in Thy Divine tenderness do Thou vouchsafe my by Thy grace to partake of Thy holy Body and precious Blood, without condemnation, unto remission of sins and eternal life. O God of my delight, Thy throne of grace is the pleasure ground of my soul. Here I obtain mercy in time of need, here see the smile of Thy reconciled face, here joy pleads the name of Jesus, here I sharpen the sword of the Spirit, anoint the shield of faith, put on the helmet of salvation, gather manna from Thy word, am strengthened for each conflict, nerved for the upward race, empowered to conquer race, empowered to conquer every foe; please hep me to come to Christ as the fountain head of descending blessings, as a wide open flood-gate of mercy. I marvel at my insensate folly, that which such enriching favours within my reach I am slow to extend the hand to take them. Have mercy upon my deadness for Thy name’s sake. Ouicken me, stir me, fill me with holy zeal. Strengthen me that I may cling to Thee and not let Thee go. May Thy spirit within me draw all blessings from Thy hand. When I advance not, I backslide. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Please let me walk humbly because of good omitted and evil done. Impress on my mind the shortness of tie, the work to be engaged in the account to be rendered, the nearness of eternity, the fearful sin of despising Thy Spirit. May I never forget that Thy eye always sees, Thy ear always hears, Thy recording hand always writes. May I never give Thee rest until Christ is the pulse of my heart; the spokes-person of my lips, the lamp of my feet. O LORD our God, Who hast called us Christians after the Name of Thine Only-begotten Son, as hast given us Baptism in the Font for the remission of sins; please make us, we beseech Thee, worthy now to receive this Communion for the remission of our sins, and to glorify Thee with thanksgiving. O LORD my God, grant me so to receive the Body and Blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, that by means thereof I may receive forgiveness of all my sins, and be filled with Thy Holy Spirit, O our God, Who livest and reignest World without end. Cleanse us, O Lord, from our secret faults, and mercifully absolve us from our presumptuous sins, that we may receive Thy holy things with a pure mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O Lord, that our bodies may be sanctified by Thy holy Body, and that they may avail for the pardon of our offences and remission of our sins. Glory be to Thee forever, O Lord God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Counting sheep will be a thing of the past when you live #MillsStation. 💭🐑😴
God Bless the Inventor of Sleep, the Cloak that Covers All People’s thoughts, the Food that Cures All Hunger!
The rewards of educating comes from a teachers’ innate belief that every day they have the opportunity to enrich the lives of their students by igniting the human spirit, dignifying the human experience, and inspiring human excellence. You know the old saying, “If you plan ahead God goes with you.” Commerce is everything, but everybody goes about consulting astrologers, talking about magic, and trying to drive out evil spirits. People have families, eat, drink, and try to achieve success in every way possible, yet carry on all the time about luck. Now Americans do not talk about demons, no, but they rattle on about “negative thinking,” and “self-destructive ideas” and “bad self-image.” It is a lot the same, Babylon and America. The law has become perverted! The law—and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation—the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law has become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens. We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life—physical, intellectual, and more life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
However, life cannot support itself. One who has bestowed it, has entrusted us with the care of supporting it, of developing it, and of perfecting it. To that end, He has provided us with a collection of wonderful faculties; He has plunged us into the midst of a variety of elements. It is by the application of our faculties to these elements that the phenomena of assimilation and of appropriation, by which life pursues the circle that has been assigned to it are realized. Existence, faculties, assimilation—in other words, personality, liberty, property—this is human. It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation. It is not because humans have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist before hand, that humans make laws. What, then, is law? Law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend one’s person, one’s liberty, and one’s property, since these are three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? And what is property, but an extension of our faculties? #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
If every person has the right of defending, even by force, one’s person, one’s liberty, and one’s property, a number of humans have the right to combine together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for this defense. Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individual classes. For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of isolated forces? It is not for one to work for humanity by only helping particular persons and by alleviating isolated distresses. One’s form of service must be stretch over wider areas, must affect a multitude of persons. However, this is possible only if one works in deeper ground and through secret unobtrusive ways. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
The World being what it is, human nature what it has long been, and human affairs all-too-repetitious, one will not waste time and energy attempting to re-arrange the by surface efforts. One may do nothing more than put one’s mite of cheering truth and softening goodness into the grim World around one, but this will be enough. One cannot contribute more than one has. The ultimate result of this contribution may be little, but one has tried to do God’s will on Earth. Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all. Just the fact that one is here, on this planet and at this time, makes its own contribution to humanity’s welfare. This is still true even though one may not try to manage other people’s lives on the plea of serving them. One’s service may not be immediately, or locally, apparent; it may need time to come up from the subconscious levels that are the deeper layers of mind and spirit, but it will be nevertheless real. Although it is not one’s direct purpose, one’s existence will lessen humanity’s suffering, and increase its hope and goodwill through obeying and enforcing law and order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
And if people established upon this basis were to exist, it seems to me that order would prevail among them in their acts as well as in their ideas. It seems to me that such people would have the most simple, the most economical, the least oppressive, the least to be felt, the most restrained, the most just, and, consequently, the most stable Government that could be imagined, whatever its political form might be. For under such an administration, everyone would feel that one possessed all the fullness, as well as all the responsibility of one’s existence. So long as personal safety was ensured, so long as labour was free, and the fruits of labour secured against all unjust attacks, no one would have any difficulties to content with in the State. When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our success; but when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with our disasters than our less affluents think of attributing to it the arrival of hail or of frost. We should know it only by the inestimable blessing of Safety. Those who cross this path may feel like it is only a once in a lifetime experience, and they will receive instruction, even though they are not outwardly being taught. America is under God’s divine blessing and God’s grace has bestowed us with Manifest Destiny, which has influenced kings and rulers and leaders of humans and culture. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Manifest Destiny has guaranteed America with the birth rite to expand its boarders from sea to shining sea. The poem of the Statue of Liberty is a prophecy that one day, America will be One World, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I mean, really, who would not like to move around the World and be protected by the laws, rights, and justice that Americans are granted on their beautiful island? Americans have emerged into public view in order to quicken the pace of evolution by active external work, but some do not have their spiritual identity and as a result their efforts where not always successful because they had to deal with frail stubborn human nature. Knowing this convinces us better than printed arguments of the eternal Spiritual truths. It may further be affirmed, that, thanks to the non-intervention of the State in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in their natural order. We should not see less affluent families seeking for literary instruction before they were supplied with bread. We should not see those great displacements of capital, of labour, and population, that legislative measures occasion; displacements that render so uncertain and precarious the very sources of existence, and thus enlarge to such an extent the responsibility of Governments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Unhappily, law is by no means confirmed to its own sphere. Nor is it merely in some ambiguous and debatable views that it has left it proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which it was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it. How has this perversion of law been accomplished? And what has resulted from it? The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes—naked greed and misconceived philanthropy. Let us speak of the former. Self-preservation and development is the common aspiration of all human, in such a way that if every one enjoyed the free exercise of one’s faculties and the free disposition of their fruits, social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted, inevitable. However, there is also another disposition which is common to them. This is to live and to develop, when they can, at the expense of another. This is no rash imputation, emanating from a gloomy, uncharitable spirit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
History bears witness to the truth of it, by the incessant wars, the migrations of races, sectarian oppressions, the universality of slavery, the frauds in trade, and the monopolies with which it annals universal, and invincible sentiment that urges it towards its well-being, and makes it seek to escape pain. Humans can only derive life and enjoy from a perpetual search and appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of one’s faculties to objects, or from labour. This is the origin of property. However, also one may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of one’s fellow humans. This is the origin of plunder. Now, labour being in itself a pain, and humans being naturally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that whatever plunder is less burdensome than labour, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing. When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labour. It is very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the fatal tendency to plunder with the powerful obstacle of collective force; that all its measures should be in favour of property, and against plunder. However, law is made, generally, by one human, or by one class of humans. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate. This inevitable phenomenon, combined with the fatal tendency that, we have said, exists in the heart of humans, explains the almost universal perversions of law. It is easy to conceive that, instead of being a check upon injustice, it becomes its most invincible instrument. It is easy to conceive that, according to the power of the legislator, it destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees amongst the rest of the community, personal independence by slavery, liberty by oppression, and property by plunder. It is in the nature of humans to rise against the injustice of which they are the victims. When, therefore, plunder is organized by law, for the profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into the manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder, or they may desire to take part in it. Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails amongst the masses, at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative power! #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Up to that time, lawful plunder has been exercised by the few upon the many, as is the case in the case in countries where the right of legislating is confined to a few hands. However, now it has become universal, and the equilibrium is sought in universal plunder. The injustice that society contains, instead of being rooted out of it, is generalized. As soon as the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first thought is not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organize against the other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals—as if it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should undergo a cruel retribution—some for their iniquity and some for their ignorance. It would be the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. We must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking. In the first place, it would efface from everybody’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen find oneself in the cruel alternative of either losing one’s moral sense, or of losing one’s respect for the law—two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
It is so much in the nature of law to support justice that in the minds of the masses they are one and the same. There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—“You are dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; your would shake the basis upon which society rests.” The imagination is responsible for imagery of all kinds. It is the representation of an individual thought. The imagination reproduces images made originally by the senses or held in memory and creates images either in cooperation with reason or in its own right. These functions are in turn revealed in three kinds of imagination, the first joined with belief of that which is to come; the second joined with memory of that which is past; and the third is of things present, or as if they were presented; imaginations are feigned and at pleasure; as if one should imagine such a person to be in the vestments of a Pope, or to have wings. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Examination of the three kind of imagination, the first joined with the memory of that which is to come; the second joined with memory of that which is past; and the third is of things present, as if they were present, discloses the reproductive and creative roles of imagination, and about the force of imagery qua imagery, exempli gratia, imagination intensive. What is the representation of an individual thought? At the level of understanding and reason, thought could be so abstract as to be impalpable. Imagination has the power of rendering abstract thought tangible. The tangible manifestation appeared most widely as words in speech and writing, for the words were the images of thought, the images of cogitations. Thinking can occur in the absence of imagery, but if it were to be available to sense, it has to appear as auditory and verbal imagery. Thought images serve as if they were the contents of perception, but thinking does not take place at all without some kind of an image. The mind can frame a purely mental proposition without the use of words. So from the point of view of the mind that makes them, the imagery of speech and language is the concrete analogue of abstract thought. The imagination thus gives body to thought. A thought occurred, an image followed upon it. Imagery is in this sense a re-presenting of thought. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The objectification of thought as verbal imagery is strikingly perceived when one contemplates the context within which we locate speech and writing along with the communication, or transmission, of ideas among the rational or intellectual arts. We distinguish four intellectual or logical activities, and these give their names to corresponding arts. Reason is the discursive movement of the understanding, and logic is a term applied to the study of its modes of discursion as they appear in discourse. There is invention—the finding and discovering of ideas; there is judging—the evaluation and criticism of the results of invention; there is memory—the retention of what is judged acceptable; and there is the transmission and communication of ideas. The first three of these activities are mental, or as more properly, psychological, processes. They were unavailable to our sense directly. To the extent that they became available as discourse, rather than through spirit (human or divine) or in other nondiscursive, immediate ways, they must appear as material and form. So we place under the transmission of ideas three other features of intellectual discursiveness; the organ of discourse, the method of discourse, and the illustration of discourse. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The organ of discourse deals with the smallest physical elements, and the smallest number of them, that can be used alone or in combination to depict thought and its process. In ordinary languages these are speech and writing, though other kinds of characters have been used, such as hieroglyphics. Abstractly considered, the organ of discourse is grammar; concretely considered, the organ of discourse is speech and writing. The organ is so designated precisely because reason in its discursiveness needs and organ. On the other hand, the understanding as such, or pure reason, does not require an organ. In brief, the sound images of voice and speech and the visual images of language written are the simplest and most pervasive products of imagination. They are somehow bound in with thought. Imagine and thought are two facets of a unitary whole. The whole may be a modulation of the spirit. As to miracle, it is the sign-event which has occasioned or provoked the ecstatic awareness of revelation. It does not require special supernatural interference in natural process. The structure of natural causality is not broken. What happens is that certain natural events, when encountered in a special turn of mind, point to the mystery of being and non-being, and induce the beholder to commit oneself unconditionally to this revelation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
The sign-events in which the mystery be being gives itself consist in special constellations of elements of reality in correlation with special constellations of elements of the mind. Miracle occasions ecstasy; yet the event in question has become a miracle only through ecstasy. The subjective and the objective condition one another. Taking these revelatory elements together, one can say that ecstasy is the miracle of the mind and that miracle is the ecstasy of reality. By definition, religion originates in a correlation of miracle and ecstasy. The basic problem of all religions, however, is that literally anything may be a medium of revelation. Any event may be a miracle. Nature, history, groups, individuals and the word may be, and have been, mediums of revelation. The multiplicity of revelatory situations is at the origin of many different symbols of ultimate concern which have been developed by religions. Faith is unique. However, its symbols are manifold. Could there be only one symbol, there would be only one concrete content of faith, and therefore one religion. This naturally raises the problem of a final revelation: is there one revelatory event that transcends and underlies all others? The problem of Christianity and of its universal claim is thus posited. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
No discussion of Christianity is meaningful if we leave out the sight of conception of a revelatory experience: a final revelation, if there is one, is first of all a constellation of revelatory character. The discipline of petitionary prayer: The practice of prayer—the list, the quiet, the place, the time, the posture, preparation, and the length—all suggest one thing—discipline. Work—candidly, prayer is work, not a sport. It is not something that you do if you like it, or devote your spare time to, or do only if you are good at it. Prayer is the proper work of the soul which loves Christ (Ephesians 6.18): And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayer and requests. With this in mind, be alter and always keep on praying for all the saints. This is a call to work! We must never wait until we feel like praying—otherwise we may never pray, unless, perhaps, we fall headfirst into an open wall. The context of Paul’s charge in Ephesians 6 is spiritual warfare—and that is what prayer is! Christian people face the World in prayer. Work and war, war and work—these are the words we must keep before us if we are to become humans of prayer. “Now I, Nephi, do speak somewhat concerning the words which I have written, which have written, which have been spoken by the mouth of Isaiah. For Behold, Isaiah spake many things which were hard for many of my people to understand; for they know not concerning the manner of prophesying among the Jews. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
“For I, Nephi, have not taught them many things concerning the manner of the Jews; for their works were works of darkness, and their doings were doings of abominations. Wherefore, I write unto my people, unto all those that shall receive hereafter these things which I write, that they may know the judgments of God, that they come upon all nations, according to the word which he hath spoken. Wherefore, hearken, O my people, which are of the house of Israel, and give ear unto my words; for because the words of Isaiah are not plain unto you, nevertheless they are plain unto all those that are filled with the spirit of prophecy. However, I give unto you a prophecy, accord to the spirit which is in me; wherefore I shall prophesy according to the plainness which hath been with me from the time that I came out from Jerusalem with my father; for behold, my soul delighteth in plainness unto my people, that they may learn. Yea, and my soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah, for I came out from Jerusalem, and mine eyes hath beheld the things of the Jews, and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets, and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“But behold, I, Nephi, have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews; but behold, I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about; and I have made mention unto my children concerning the judgments of God, which hath come to pass among the Jews, unto my children, according to al that which Isaiah hath spoken, and I do not write them. However, behold, I proceed with mine own prophecy, according to my plainness; in the which I know that no person can err; nevertheless, in the days that the prophecies of Isaiah shall be fulfilled people shall know of a surety, at the times when they shall come to pass. Wherefore, they are of worth unto the children of humans, and one that supposeth that they are not, unto them will I speak particularly, and confine the words unto mine own people; for I know that they shall be of great worth unto them in the last days; for in that day shall they understand them; wherefore, for their good have I written them. And as one generation hath been destroyed among the Jews because of iniquity, even so have they been destroyed from generation to generation to generation according to their iniquities; and never hath any of the been destroyed save it were foretold them by the prophets of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“Wherefore, it hath been told them concerning the destruction which should come upon them, immediately after my father left Jerusalem; nevertheless, they hardened their hearts; and according to my prophecy they have been destroyed, save it be those which are carried away captive into Babylon. And now this I speak because of the spirit which is in me. And notwithstanding they have been carried away they shall have return again, and possess the land of Jerusalem; wherefore, they shall be restored again to the land of their inheritance. However, behold, they shall have wars, and rumors of wars; and when that day cometh that the Only Begotten of the Father, yea, even the Father of Heaven and of Earth, shall manifest himself unto them in the flesh, behold, they will reject him, because of their iniquities, and the hardness of their hearts, and the stiffness of their necks. Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulcher for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And behold it shall come to pass that after the Messiah hath risen from the dead, and hath manifested himself unto his people, unto as many as will believe on his name, behold, Jerusalem shall be destroyed again; for wo unto them that fight against God and the people of his church. Wherefore, the Jews shall be scattered among all nations; yea, and also Babylon shall be destroyed; wherefore, the Jews shall be scattered by other nations. And after they have been scattered, and the Lord God hath scourged them by other nations for the space of many generations, yea, even down from generation to generation until they shall be persuaded to believe in Christ, the Son of God, and the atonement, which is infinite for all humankind—and when that say shall come that they shall believe in Christ, and worship the Father in his name, with pure hearts and clean hands, and look not forward any more for another Messiah, then, at that time, the day will come that it must needs be expedient that they should believe these things. And the Lord will set his hand again the second time to restore his people from their lost and fallen state. Wherefore, one will proceed to do a marvelous work and a wonder among the children of humans. Wherefore, he shall bring forth his words unto them, which words shall judge them at the last day, for they shall be given them for the purpose of convincing them of the true Messiah, who was rejected by them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And unto the convincing of them that they need not look forward any more for a Messiah to come, for there should not any come, save it should be a false Messiah which should deceive the people; for there is save one Messiah spoken of by the prophets, and that Messiah is one who should be rejected of the Jews. For according to the words of the prophets, the Messiah cometh in six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem; and according to the words of the prophets, and also the word of the Angel of God, his name shall be Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And now, my brethren, I have spoken plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and have unto Moses power that he should heal nations after they have been bitten by the poisonous serpents, if they would cast their eyes unto the serpent which he did raise up before them, and also gave him power that he should smite the rock and the water should come forth; yea, behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under Heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby humans can be saved. Wherefore, for this cause hath the Lord God promised unto me that these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph, that his seed should never perish as long as the Earth should stand. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Wherefore, these things shall go from generation to generation as long as the Earth shall stand; and they shall go according to the will and pleasure of God; and the nations who shall possess them shall be judged of them according to the words which are written. For we labour diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. And, notwithstanding we believe in Christ, we keep the law of Moses, and look forward with the steadfastness unto Christ, until the law shall be fulfilled. For, for this end was the law given; wherefore the law hath become dead unto us, and we are made alive in Christ because of our faith; yet we keep the law because of the commandments. And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins. Wherefore, we speak concerning the law that our children may know the deadness of the law; and they, by knowing the deadness of the law, may look forward unto that life which is in Christ, and know for what end the law is given. And after the law is fulfilled in Christ, that they need not harden their hearts against him when the law ought to be done away. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now behold, my people, ye, are a stiffnecked people; wherefore, I have spoken plainly unto you, that ye cannot misunderstand. And the words which I have spoken shall stand as a testimony against you; for they are sufficient to teach any human the right way; for the right way is to believe in Christ and deny him not; for by denying him ye also deny the prophets and the law. And now behold, I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not; and Christ is the Holy One of Israel; wherefore ye must bow down before hum, and worship him with all your might, mind, and strength, and your whole soul; and if ye do this ye shall in nowsie be cast out. And, inasmuch as it shall be expedient, ye must keep the performances and ordinances of God until the law shall be fulfilled which was given uno Moses. O LORD God, Who hast taught us to pray all together, and hast promised to hear the united voices of two or three invoking Thy Name; hear now, O Lord, the prayers of Thy servants unto their salvation, and give us in this World knowledge of Thy truth, and in the World to come life everlasting. Living by prayer—O God of the open ear, please teach me to live by prayer as well as by providence, for myself, soul, body, children, family, church; please give me a heart frameable to Thy will; so might I live in prayer, and honour Thee, being kept from evil, known and unknown. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
Please help me to see the sin that accompanies all I do, and the good I can distil from everything. Let me know that the work of prayer is to bring my will to thine, and that without this it is folly to pray; when I try to bring Thy will to mine it is to command Christ, to be above him, and wiser than he: this is my sin and pride. I can only succeed when I pray according to Thy precept and promise, and to be done with as it pleases Thee, according to Thy sovereign will. When Thou commandest me to pray for pardon, peace, brokenness, it is because Thou wilt give me the thing promised, for Thy glory, as well as for my good. Help me not only to desire small things but holy boldness to desire great things for Thy people, for myself, that they and I might live to show Thy glory. Teach me that it is wisdom for me to pray for all I have, out of love, willingly, not of necessity; that I may come to Thee at any time, to lay open my need acceptably to Thee; that my great sin lies in my not keeping the savour of Thy ways; that the remembrance of this truth is one way to the sense of Thy presence; that there is no wrath like the wrath of being governed by my own lusts for my own ends. Regard, O Lord, the prayers of Thy family, and please grant Thine assistance to their humble supplications; that, by means of the assistance which they require, they may persevere in the confession of Thy Name: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Rancho Cordova, CA |
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Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable—Now is the Time for All Good People to Come to the Assist the Party!
Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to profit of the community to which your later work belongs. Through education, we have the ability to change and improve the World in which we live. By touching the lives of humanity, outstanding educators make the future bright for all of us. The notion of secondary powers, placed between the sovereign and one’s subjects, occurred naturally to the imagination of aristocratic nations, because those communities contained individuals or families raised above the common level, and apparently destined to command by their birth, their education, and their wealth. This same nation is naturally wanting in the minds of humans in democratic ages, for converse reasons; it can only be introduced artificially, it can only be kept there with difficulty; whereas they conceive, as it were, without thinking upon the subject, the notion of a sole and central power which governs the whole community by its direct influence. Moreover in politics, as well as in philosophy and in religion, the intellect of democratic nations is peculiarly open to simple and general notions. Complicated systems are repugnant to it, and its favourite conception is that of a great nation composed of citizens all resembling the same pattern, and all governed by a single power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The very next notion to that of a sole and central power, which presents itself to the minds of humans in the ages of equality, is the notion of uniformity of legislation. As every person sees that one differs but little from those about one, one cannot understand why a rule which is applicable to one person should not be equally applicable to all others. Hence the slightest privileges are repugnant to one’s reason; the faintest dissimilarities in the political institutions of the same people offend one, and uniformity of legislation appears to one to be the first condition of good government. I find, on the contrary, that this same notion of a uniform rule, equally binding on all the members of the community, was almost unknown to the human mind in aristocratic ages; it was either never entertained, or it was rejected. These contrary tendencies of opinion ultimately turn on either side to such blind instincts and such ungovernable habits, that they still direct the actions of humans, in spite of particular exceptions. Notwithstanding the immense variety of conditions in the middle ages, a certain number of persons existed at that period in precisely similar circumstances; but this did not prevent the laws then in force from assigning to each of them distinct duties and different rights. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
On the contrary, at the present time all the powers of government are exerted to impose the same customs and the same laws on populations which have as yet but a few points of resemblance. As the conditions of humans become equal among a people, individuals seem of less importance, and society of greater dimensions; or rather, every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the great and imposing image of the people at large. This naturally gives the humans of democratic periods a lofty opinion of the privileges of society, and a very humble notion of the rights of individuals; they are ready to admit that the interests of the former are everything, and those of the latter nothing. They are willing to acknowledge that the power which represents the community has far more information and wisdom than any of the members of that community; and that it is the duty, as well as the right, of that power to guide as well as govern each private citizen. If we closely scrutinize our contemporaries, and penetrate to the root of their political opinions, we shall detect some of the notions which I have just pointed out, and we shall perhaps be surprises to find so much accordance between humans who are so often at variance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The Americans hold, that in every state the supreme power ought to emanate from the people; but when once that power is constituted, they can conceive, as it were, no limits to it, and they are ready to admit that it has the right to do whatever it pleases. They have not the slightest notion of peculiar privileges granted to cities, families, or persons; their minds appear never to have foreseen that it might be possible not to apply with strict uniformity the same laws to every part, and to all the inhabitants. These same opinions are more and more diffused in Europe; they even insinuate themselves among those nations which most vehemently reject the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Such nations assign a different origin to the supreme power, but they ascribe to that power the same characteristics. Among them all, the idea of intermediate powers is weakened and obliterated: the idea of rights inherent in certain individuals is rapidly disappearing from the minds of humans; the idea of the omnipotence and sole authority of society at large rises to fill its place. These ideas take root and spread in proportions as social conditions become more equal, and humans more alike; they are engendered by equality, and in turn they hasten the progress of equality. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
In France, where the revolution of which I am speaking has gone further than in any other European country, these opinions have got complete hold of the public mind. If we listen attentively to the language of the various parties in France, we shall find that there is not one which has not adopted them. Most of these parties censure the conduct of the government, but they all hold that the government ought perpetually to act and interfere in everything that is done. Even those which are most at variance are nevertheless agreed upon this head. The unity, the ubiquity, the omnipotence of the supreme power, and the uniformity of its rules, constitute the principal characteristics of all the political systems which have been put forward in our age. They recur even in the wildest visions of political regeneration: the human minds pursues them in its dreams. If these notions spontaneously arise in the minds of the private individuals, they suggest themselves still more forcibly to the minds of princes. While the ancient fabric of European society is altered and dissolved, sovereigns acquire new conceptions of their opportunities and their duties; they learn for the first time that the central power which they represent may and ought to administer by its own agency, and on a uniform plan, all the concerns of the whole community. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The idea that the power of the government should be concerned with the welfare of the entire community was never conceived before our time by the monarch of Europe, now sink deeply into the minds of kings, and abides there amid all the agitation of more unsettled thoughts. Our contemporaries are therefore much less divided than is commonly supposed; they are constantly disputing as to the hands in which supremacy is to be vested, but they readily agree upon the duties and the rights of that supremacy. The notion they all form of government is that of a sole, simple, providential and creative power. All secondary opinions in politics are unsettled; this one remains fixed, invariable, and consistent. It is adopted by state-people and political philosophers; it is eagerly laid hold of by the multitude; those who govern and those who are governed agree to pursue it with equal ardour; it is the foremost notion of their minds, it seems connatural with their feelings. It originates therefore in no caprice of the human intellect, but it is a necessary condition of the present state of human kind. Humans become human in personal encounters. Only by meeting a “thou” does a human being realize that one is an “ego.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
No natural object within the whole Universe can do this to one. Humans can transcend themselves in all directions in knowledge and control. They can use everything for their purposes. Humans are limited only by their finitude. However, these limits can be reduced infinitely. Nobody can say where the final limits of human power lie. In one’s encounter with the Universe, humans are able to transcend any imaginable limit. However, there is a limit for a human which is definite and which one always encounters, the other human. The other one, the “thou,” is like a wall which cannot be removed or penetrated or used. One who tries to do so, destroys oneself. The “thou” demands by one’s very existence to be acknowledged as a “thou” for an “ego” and as an “ego” for oneself. This is the claim which is implied in one’s being. Humans can refuse to listen to the intrinsic claim of the other one. One can disregard one’s demand for justice. One can remove or use one. One can try to transform one into a manageable object, a thing, a tool. However, in doing so one meets the resistance of one who has the claim to be acknowledged as an ego. And this resistance forces one either to meet the other one as an ego or to give up one’s own ego-quality. Injustice against the other one is always injustice against oneself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The master who treats the slave not as an ego, but as a thing endangers one’s own quality as an ego. The slave by one’s very existence hurts the master as much as one is hurt by one. The external inequality is balanced by the destruction of the ego-quality of the master. This leads to the question whether the “Golden Rule” can be considered as the principle of justice in personal encounters. It is used even by Jesus. And it is certainly an expression of practical wisdom to do to people what one wants to have done by them! However, it is not the criterion of justice in person encounters. For it may well be that one wants to receive benefits which would contradict equally the justice towards the other one, if one received them. If we are asked for them, we should reject them. If things are demanded or given that are obviously evil, this is comparatively easy. However, if we feel obliged to fulfil what seems to be a just claim, a claim we ourselves would make, it is difficult. Nevertheless we hesitate. We are suspicious of the others as we would be of ourselves; we suspect that behind the manifest meaning of the demand something else is hidden that should be rejected, an unconscious hostility, the desire to dominate, the will to exploit, the instinct of self-destruction. In all these cases the justice in a person-to-person encounter cannot be defined in terms of the “Golden Rule.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We have discovered the absolutely valid forma principle of justice in every personal encounter, namely the acknowledgement of the other person as a person. However, we have tried in vain to derive contents for this formal principle from the “Golden Rule.” The question then is: Are there other ways to discover such contents? A seemingly incontestable answer is: The cultural process gives the contents; they are provided by human experience, embodied in laws, tradition, authorities as well as the individual conscience. One who follow those rules and decides under the guidance of one’s conscience has a solid foundation for justice in personal encounters. Humankind is never without a treasury of ethical wisdom which presents its self-destruction and which, in religious terminology, is based on universal revelation. Since justice is the form of the power of being, the being of humankind could not have lasted for one moment without structures of justice in the encounter of humans with humans. Most of the daily encounters between human beings are determined by these sources of justice. In some cases law, tradition, and authority are predominant, in others the individual conscience. This is an important difference and can lead to tragic conflicts, as classically described in Sophocles’ Antigone. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, it is not decisive for our problems. For objective riles and individual conscience are interdependent. Laws, traditions, and authorities have been established as sources of justice through decisions in which the individual conscience was involved. And on the other hand, the individual conscience has been shaped by processes in which laws, traditions, and authorities have been internalized, and have become rules of justice which make external compulsion unnecessary. In somehow paradoxical ways one could say: Law is externalized conscience; conscience is internalized law. Rules of justice are created by the interplay of law and conscience. Is it possible to transcend this situation? Is there a way, other than the interplay of law and conscience, to get contents for the justice of person-to-person encounter? The only answer left is the classical theory of natural law, the belief that it is possible to discover structures of human relations which are universally, unchangeably, and concretely valid. The Ten Commandments are considered by classical theology as statements of the natural law and so are their interpretations in the Sermon on the Mount. The Roman Church adds the ecclesiastical interpretation of both. It does not deny that they are natural laws. However, because awareness of them is ineffective and distorted, the Church must restate them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, these laws remain natural law and they are, in principle, rationally recognizable. In our analysis of equality and freedom two basic tenets of the natural law theory, we have tried to show that in the moment in which these principles are used for concrete decisions they become indefinite, changing, relative. This holds true of all contents of the natural law. They are like the principles which are supposed to control pleasures of the flesh relations—historically conditioned and often in flagrant conflict with the intrinsic justice of these relations. The natural law theory cannot answer the questions of the contents of justice. And it is possible to show that this question cannot be answered at all in terms of justice alone. The question of the content of justice drives to the principles of love and power. A further specific impairment is the development of unconscious arrogance. Again I mean this in the sense of arrogating to oneself qualities one does not have or that one has in a lesser degree than is assumed, and of unconsciously claiming the right on this ground to be demanding and derogatory toward others. All neurotic arrogance is unconscious in that the person is unaware of any false claims. This distinction here is not between conscious and unconscious arrogance but between one that is conspicuous and one that is hidden behind overmodesty and apologetic behaviour. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The difference lies in the measure of available aggression rather than in the measure of existing arrogance. In the one instance a person openly demands special prerogatives; in the other one is hurt if they are not spontaneously given to one. What lacking in either case is what might be called realistic humility, that is, a recognition—not only in words but with emotional sincerity—of the limitations and imperfections of human beings in general and one one’s own in particular. In my experience every patient is averse to thinking or hearing of any limitation that might apply to one. This is especially true of the patient with hidden arrogance. One would rather scold oneself mercilessly for having overlooked something than admit, with St. Paul, that “our knowledge is piecemeal.” One would rather recriminate oneself for having been careless or lazy than admit that nobody can be equally productive at all times. The surest indication of hidden arrogance is the apparent contradiction between self-recrimination, with its apologetic attitude, and the inner irritation at any criticism or neglect from outside. It often requires close observation to discover these hurt feelings because the overmodest type is likely to repress. However, actually one may be just as demanding as the openly arrogant person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
One’s criticisms of others, too, is no less scathing, though what appears on the surface may be only a self-effacing admiration. Secretly, however, one expects the same perfect of others as of oneself, which means that one lacks a true respect for the particular individuality of others. The crux of the problem is stated well by St. Pau in Romans 14.5: “One man considers one day more scared than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in one’s own mind.” People simply have different opinions about various issues. One person sees no problem in a certain practice; another person considers that practice to be sinful. Most often these differing opinions arise from our family, or geographical, or perhaps, church cultures. I know that a certain practice that was offensive to the church I grew up in was not even an issue in a church I attended in California, whereas the California Christians would have been scandalized by one prominent practice back in Texas. Yet neither practice is addressed in the Bible. Where do these cultural convictions come from? They develop in various ways. Some have their origin in a “fence” someone erected a long time ago and no one knows that the original problem was. Others originated in the individual experience of some Christian who began to lay one’s personal conviction on others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
There was once a missionary family who literally were forced off the mission field over peanut butter. They were sent to a location where peanut butter was not available, so they asked friends back in the States to occasionally send them some. The problem was that the other missionaries considered it a mark of spirituality not to have peanut butter. The newer missionary family considered this a matter of differing opinions, so they continued to receive and enjoy their peanut butter. However, the pressure from the other missionaries to conform became so intense, the newer family finally gave up and left the mission field. How could something like this—that probably seems petty and foolish to us—have happened? I imagine it developed something like this: A missionary family who greatly enjoyed peanut better went to this particular mission field. Upon discovering there was no peanut butter available locally, they faced a choice of doing without it or asking friend or relatives in the States to send it to them. As they considered their options before the Lord, they came to the conclusion that doing without peanut butter was a small sacrifice to make for being on the mission field. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Though, like the apostle Paul, they have a “right” to peanut butter, they chose not to use that right. “Do you not know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered at the alter? In the same way, the Lord has command that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel,” 1 Corinthians 9.13. The family did as to the Lord. “One who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. One who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for one gives thanks to God; and one who abstains, does so the Lord and gives thanks to God,” reports Romans 14.6. If my theory of this issue’s origin is correct, I personally find their thinking quite acceptable, perhaps even applaudable, in that circumstance. That is Paul’s whole point in Romans 14. If they decide to give up peanut butter as to the Lord who I am to belittle or ridicule them? Paul said the person whose faith allows on to eat peanut butter must not look down on one who does not. “Therefore let us stop passing judgement on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way,” reports Romans 14.13. So what went wrong? If the original missionary family made a sincere decision to give up peanut butter as to the Lord, how did it eventually become a divisive issue among missionaries? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Again, I a speculating. It probably because a divisive issues because one family elevated the particular leading of God for them to the level of a spiritual principle, which they then applied to everyone: “If God had ‘led’ us to give up peanut better on the mission field, surely that is His will for everyone else.” Whether I have speculated correctly on the reasons behind this story or not makes no difference. Even if they are not true in this particular instance, they have been true in scores of others. As Christians we cannot seem to accept the clear biblical teaching in Romans 14 that God allows equally Godly people to have differing opinions on certain matters. We universalize what we think is God’s particular leading in our lives and apply it to everyone else. When we think like that, we are, so to speak, “putting God in a box.” We are insisting that He must surely lead everyone as we believe He had led us. We refuse to allow God the freedom to deal with each of us as individuals. When we think like that, we are legalists. We must not seek to bind the consciences of other believers with the private convictions that arise out of our personal walk with God. Even if you believe God has led you in developing those convictions, you still must not elevate them to the level of spiritual principles for everyone else to follow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Only what God has commanded in his word should be regarded as binding; in all else there may be liberty of actions. If we are going to enjoy the freedom we have in Christ, we must be alter to convictions that fall into the category of differing opinions. We must not seek to bind the consciences of others or allow to them to bind ours. We must stand firm in the freedom we have in Christ. The destruction of Babylon is a type of the destruction at the Second Coming—it will be a day of wrath and vengeance—Babylon (the World) will fall forever—compare Isaiah 13. About 559-545 Before Christ. “The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see. Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles. I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones, for mine anger is not upon them that rejoice in my highness. The noise of the multitude in the mountains like as of a great people, a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together, the Lord of Hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of Heaven, yea, the Lord, and the weapons of one’s indignation, to destroy the whole land. Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“Therefore shall all hands be faint, every person’s heart shall be afraid; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to pay the land desolate; and one shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of Heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the Sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the Moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the World for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay down the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a human more precious than fine golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore, I will shake the Heavens, and the Earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no human taketh up; and they shall every human turn to one’s own people, and flee every one into one’s own land. Every one that is proud shall be thrust through; yea, and every one that is joined to the wicked shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver and gold, nor shall they delight in it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“Their bows shall also dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. However, the wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her day shall not be prolonged. For I will destroy her speedily; yea, for I will be merciful unto my people, but the wicked shall perish,” reports 2 Nephi 23.1-22. O God, Who hast sounded in our ears Thy divine and saving oracles, enlighten the souls of us sinners to the full understanding of what has been spoken, that we may not only appear to be hearer of spiritual words, but also doers of good works, following after faith unfeigned, blameless life, and irreproachable conduct; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Benign LORD, I praise Thee continually for permission to approach They throne of grace, and to spread my wants and desires before Thee. I am not worthy of Thy blessings and mercies for I am far gone from original righteousness; my depraved nature reveals itself in disobedience and rebellion; my early days discovered in me discontent, pride, envy, revenge. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor the multiplied transgressions of later years, my failure to improve time and talents, my abuses of mercies and means, my wasted sabbaths, my perverted seasons of grace, my long neglect of Thy great salvation, my disregard of the Friend of sinners. While I confess my guilt, help me to feel it deeply, with self-abhorrence and self-despair, yet to remember there is hope in Thee, and to see the Lamb that takes away sin. Through Him my I return to Thee, listen to Thee, trust in Thee, delight in Thy law, obey Thee, be upheld by Thee. Preserve my understanding from error, my affections from love of idols, my lips from speaking guile, my conduct from stain of vice, my character from appearance of evil, that I may be harmless, blameless, rebukeless, exemplary, useful, light-giving, prudent, zealous for Thy glory and the good of my fellow-humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Wonders are Many, and None is More Wonderful than Humanity!
Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. The social self is the image we think other people have of us, and the way we ourselves present to other people because of this view. One problem is that, in order to project this image, we may sometimes feel compelled to do or say things we do not really feel. This can turn into a sort of game that keeps us from really communicating with people. So-called satellite relationships may be formed by either partner, and this often causes great pain as well as enriching growth. Satellite relationships means a close secondary relationship outside the marriage which may or may not involve pleasure of the flesh, but which is valued for itself. It seems much preferable to such terms as “extramarital pleasures of the flesh” or “an affair” or “mistress” or “lover.” When two persons in a partnership learn to look upon each other as separate persons, with separate as well as mutual interests and needs, they are likely to discover that outside relationships are one of those needs. And when that outside relationship involves the possibility of intimacy involving pleasures of the flesh, it poses problems for the primary partners. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Larke, for example, gives her partner Radley, the freedom to date other women, and knows that the dating can lead to pleasures of the flesh. Intellectually this has her full approval, but her emotional lag behind this logical stance. She is often jealous and hurt, yet also feels confirmed by the fact that Radley always prefers her, returns to her. I often observe in encounter groups, or groups where couples are involved, the beginning development of such satellite relationships. An emotional, volatile wife who is resentful of her husband’s compulsive dedication to his research forms a new relationship with another man in the group. He is playful, which her husband is not. He is feelingful and expressive of emotions, qualities lacking in her husband. The relationship becomes very close. The woman is very open with both her husband and her new-found love about her excitement and satisfaction in the new alliance, and also the confusion and conflict it generates in her. Her husband had a great many good qualities, and she feels disloyal to him, but–. As for her researcher-husband, who has described himself in the group as being without feelings, he discovers a depth of jealousy and anger in himself that frightens him. He is suffering intensely. He and his wife talk and talk, sometimes bitterly, sometimes caringly, at times really understanding one another, at other times experiencing nothing but anger. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Because of all of this was so much in the open, the group and I were a part of the situation. We could not help but observe the sharp swings in mood between husband and wife, the alternating closeness and distancing in the satellite relationship. Different members of the group listened understandingly to all three members f the triangle, especially to the pain and anger and conflict experienced by the wife and her husband. As the group experience came to an end, I wondered whether a person-centered approach would be responsible for breaking up a marriage which, with all its flaws, had lasted for many years. It is a heavy question to ponder. Months later a member of the group told me of a letter she had received from the wife. Their marriage, she said, had never been better. They were talking with each other in ways they had never done before, sharing feelings they would previously have hidden. The marriage had more value, to each of them, than in all its previous years. The dynamics of their marriage has drastically changed. Previously the hard-working, achieving husband cared for and looked after the woman he regarded as overemotional and needing restraint. Meanwhile his wife resented his dedication to his work, felt unfulfilled, regarded herself as definitely his inferior. Now it has come much closer to being a partnership of equals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
This is a pattern I have observed on numerous occasions. There is no doubt in my mind that when partnerships are exposed to a person-centered approach satellite relationship become more likely. Individuals—both men and women—discover that it is possible to feel love for more than one person at a time. One or both may experience a second love, outside of their primary relationship. This nearly always leads to jealousy, pain, and fear and loss. Yet that crisis can be lived through with a consequent enrichment of the partnership. The core of the problem is jealousy, and the depth of its roots. Jealousy characterizes the relationship in which one seeks more power than love. Many do not believe that jealousy has any place in open marriage. The frequency of jealousy has made me wonder whether it is simply the result of cultural conditioning, in which case it might disappear in a generation or two, or whether it has some basic biological foundation, like the territoriality that we find in animals, birds, and ourselves. There is evidence in the lives of many couples to indicate that feelings of jealousy can be modified and worked through, though not without feelings of hurt. To the extent that jealousy is made up of a sense of possessiveness, any alteration in that feeling makes a profound difference in the politics of the marriage relationship. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Feelings of jealousy can also be modified and worked through to the degree that each partner becomes truly a free agent, then the relationship only has permanence if the partners are committed to each other, are in good communication with each other, accept themselves as separate persons, and live together as persons, not roles. This is a new and mature kind of relationship toward which many couples are striving. One woman, speaking out of her own personal experience in her marriage and also a counselor, expresses a point of view full of person-centered wisdom: “I think that there is one essential condition for living through the crises and enriching the relationship. It is the ability to believe that you have the right to experience what you are experiencing, and that you do not need the permission of your partner to do it. At the same time, you care enough for your partner to stay with him while he is having his feelings, and listen to them without feeling overresponsible and letting them control your behaviour. What I see frequently happening is that the partner who is involved in another relationship feels controlled, guilty, and angry when he is not received fully by his mate. That increases the feeling of threat and abandonment in the other, who becomes more clinging. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Pretty soon they are involved in a terrible vicious cycle that is very hard to break. I think the ideal situation is when one can tell the partner: “I need and I owe it to myself to experience this other relationship now. I am hearing your hurt, your jealousy, your fear, your anger; I do not like to receive them, but they are a consequence of the choice I am making, and I love you enough to want to be available to work through them with you. If I decide not to have this other experience it is because I choose to do so, and not because I let you stop me. In that way I will not feel resentful of you, and I will not punish you for my lack of courage in making my choices and being responsible for the consequences.” This is a mature kind of striving for both independence and richness. In general, the characteristics of an impairment of moral integrity are a decrease in sincerity and an increase in egocentricity. It is interesting to note that this connection that in Zen Buddhist writings sincerity is equated with wholeheartedness, pointing to the very conclusion we reach on the basis of clinical observation—namely, that nobody divided within oneself can be wholly sincere. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Sincerity, that is, not-deceiving, means putting forth one’s whole being, technically known as the whole being in action in which nothing is kept in reserve, nothing is expressed under disguise, nothing goes to waste. When a person lives like this, one is said to be a golden-haired lion; one is a symbol of virility, sincerity, wholeheartedness; one is divinely human. Egocentricity is a moral problem in so far as it entails making others subservient to one’s own needs. Instead of their being regarded and treated as human beings in their own right they come to be merely means to an end. They have to be appeased or liked for the sake of allaying one’s own anxiety; they have to be impressed for the sake of lifting one’s own self-respect; they have to be blamed because one cannot assume responsibility for oneself: they have to be defeated because of one’s own need to triumph, and so on. The particular ways in which these impairments manifest themselves vary with the individual. Most of them have already been dealt with in some other connection and need only be reviewed here in a more systematic fashion. I shall not attempt to be exhaustive. That would be difficult, if for no other reason than that we have not yet discussed sadistic trends and must postpone doing so because they are to be regarded as an end state of neurotic development. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Starting with the most obvious, whatever course a neurosis takes, unconscious pretenses are always a factor. Outstanding are the following: The pretense of love. The variety of feelings and strivings that can be covered by the term love or that are subjectively felt as such is astonishing. It may cover parasitic expectations on the part of a person who feels too weak or too empty to live one’s own life. In a more aggressive form it may cover a desire to exploit the partner, to gain through one success, prestige, and power. It may express a need to conquer someone and to triumph over one, or to merge with a partner and live through one, perhaps in a sadistic way. It may mean a need to be admired, and so secure affirmation for one’s idealized image. For the very reason that love in our civilization is so rarely a genuine affection, maltreatment and betrayal abound. We are left with the impression, then, that love turns into contempt, hate, or indifference. However, love does not swing around so easily. That fact is that the feelings and strivings prompting pseudo love eventually come to the surface. Needless to say, this pretense operates in the parent-child relationship and in friendship as well as in pleasures of the flesh. The pretense of goodness, unselfishness, sympathy, and the like is akin to the pretense of love. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The pretense of goodness is characteristic of the complaint type and is reinforced by a particular kind of idealized image as well as by the need to blot out all aggressive impulses. The pretense of interest and knowledge is most conspicuous in those who are alienated from their emotions and believe that life can be mastered by intellect alone. They have to pretend that they know everything and are interested in everything. However, it appears also in a more insidious way in persons who seem to be devoted to a particular calling, and without being aware of it use this interest as a steppingstone to success, power, or material advantage. The pretense of honesty and fairness is most frequently found in the aggressive type, especially when one has marked sadistic trends. One sees through the pretenses of love and goodness in others and believes that because one does not subscribe to the common hypocrisies of feigning generosity, patriotism, piety, or whatever, one is particularly honest. Actually one has one’s own hypocrisies of a different order. One’s lack of current prejudices may be a blind and negativistic protest against any traditional values. One’s ability to say no may be not strength but a wish to frustrate others. One’s frankness may be a wish to deride and humiliate. A desire to exploit may be behind the legitimate self-interest to which one confesses. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The pretense of suffering must be discussed in greater detail because of the confused views that circulate around it. Analysts who adhere strictly to Dr. Freud’s theories share with the layman the belief that the neurotic wants to feel abused, wants to worry, has a need for punishment. The data supporting the concept that the neurotic wants to suffer are well known. However, the term wants actually covers a variety of intellectual sins. The authors who propound the theory fail to appreciate that the neurotic suffers much more than one knows and that one usually becomes aware of one’s suffering only when one begins to recover. What is even more relevant, they do not seem to understand that suffering from unresolved conflicts is inevitable and entirely independent of one’s persona wishes. If a neurotic lets oneself go to pieces, one certainly does not bring such harm on oneself because one wants it but because inner necessities compel one to do so. If one is self-effacing and offers the other cheek, one—at least unconsciously—hates doing so and despises oneself for it; but one is in such terror of one’s own aggressiveness that one must go to the opposite extreme and let oneself be abused in some way or other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Another characteristic that has contributed to the notion of a propensity for suffering is the tendency to exaggerate or dramatize any affliction. It is true that suffering may be felt and displayed for ulterior motives. It may be a plea for attention or forgiveness; it may be unconsciously used for purposes of exploitation; it may be an expression of repressed vindictiveness and be employed then as a means to exort sanctions. However, in view of the inner constellation, these are the only ways open to the neurotic to achieve certain ends. It is true also that one often lays one’s suffering to false causes and so gives the impression of wallowing in suffering for no good reason. Thus one may be disconsolate and attribute it to one’s being “guilty,” while in reality one suffers from not being one’s idealized image. Or one may feel lost when separated from a loved one, and though one attributes one’s feeling to one’s deep love, in reality—being torn within oneself—one cannot bear living alone. Finally, one may falsify one’s affects and believe that one suffers when actually one is filled with rage. A woman, for instance, may think she is suffering when her lover has not written at the appointed time, but is really angered because she wants things to happen exactly as she expects them or because she feels humiliated at any seeming lack of attention. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Suffering, in this case, is unconsciously preferred to recognizing the rage and the neurotic drives responsible for it, and is emphasized because it serves to cover up the duplicity involved in the whole relationship. In none of these instances, however, can it be inferred that the neurotic wants to suffer. What is expressed is an unconscious pretense of suffering. However, the self-actualized has a greater power, and seeks less publicity. It is only if one knows that a mission has to be performed calling for public notice that one is likely to abrogate this rule. Yet, of course, there will be no egoism and no vanity behind the abrogation. Such a prophet is like a bell, calling its hearers to attend the true church within themselves. One’s work is being done within the inner life of hundreds of human beings. One’s altruism is active more often behind the scenes of the World-stage than before its footlights. The masters rarely emerge from their obscurity to positions of influence and prominence but their disciples may and occasionally do. One will be content to plant seed-thoughts, and wait and work patiently, knowing and believing in the inherent power of true ideas to grow in their proper time into mature, fruitful existence. The perfect concentration that reigns within one’s being can have the same effect when deliberately directed upon sensitive and sympathetic minds as the concentration of the burning lens upon dry paper. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The devotee can be inspired, exalted, and illumined. Once one has uttered the sacred Word, once one has revealed to humans what they have not been able to know for themselves, one has done one’s work. If it fails to be accepted, if one gains no converts to belief in human’s higher purpose, the blame is not one’s. One cannot give spiritual peace to the spiritually peaceless as a lasting gift, but one can show them that it does exist as a reality and is no mere figment of the imagination. And one makes this demonstration by being just what one is and acting just as one does. The self-actualized starts no cult oneself and founds no church. This is usually done by the disciples who gather together because one would not gather them around. Merely to remember with devotion that such a being is living on Earth is to know, in some mysterious telepathic way, that there is inward sustenance. The last thing one wants to do is to leave a sect behind one. Like Jesus Christ, one wants people to depend on the truth rather than on a person. The words of a person so inspired, so wise, directly act on our minds and evoke our intuition. The self-actualized will help people on one’s own terms, not theirs, and guide them in one’s own way, again not necessarily the expected way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Could we but trace some of these higher movements of history, we would have to trace their course back to the secret inspiration of some illuminates who live quietly and serve humankind without advertising the fact. That which the illuminate will give out as doctrine will depend upon the conditions and needs of one’s epoch and place. One will be neither too active nor ultramodernistic. In classical Christianity, faith implies the assumption of humans into redemption by Christ, one’s purification from the stain of original sin contracted in the First Man. Faith remains saving; it saves from estrangement by revealing that estrangement is, after all, not estranging. This estrangment is “sin,” incurred by the very fact that we are created. The correlation of faith and sin remains; the classical language may be used, but voided of its substances. There is no faith without a concrete content, corresponding to the objective knowledge of Revelation in classical theology, but the traditional terms have been given a radical reinterpretation. The formulas in which faith conveys its concrete content are only symbolic attempts to identify the Unconditioned. The real purpose of faith is to grasp the power of being, conquering non-being, to experience our ultimate concern, this purpose expresses itself in symbols and myths which point to the depth of reason and its mystery. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Objective statements of faith, whether made inside or outside the Christian tradition, are symbols and myths, pointers to the ultimate ground of being, to the absolute meaning of reality. Religion, whether pagan or Christian, is a system of symbolic statements and symbolic rites trying to express an experience of the Unconditioned. Religion is also the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. As such it is a universal phenomenon lying at the root of atheism, agnosticism, and the loftiest mysticism: faith tends to become the stuff of all life. The case is the same, in this context, with religion: In some cases the religious root is carefully covered, in others it is passionately denied; in some it is deeply hidden and in others superficially. However, it is never completely absent. For everything that is participates in being-itself, and everybody has some awareness of this participation, especially in the moments which one experiences the threat of non-being. The religious situation of our age is implicitly surfacing in science, metaphysics, art, politics, ethics, unchurched mysticism, and eschatological movements. The religious situation is there identified with an unconscious, self-evident faith which lies at a deeper level than the apparent antithesis of belief and unbelief. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Images increase the danger of inadequate ideas. They have the power to obsess and to hypnotize, as well as to escape critical scrutiny. The image one has of oneself, for example, can override everything else and cause one to act in ways contrary to all reality and good sense. Those who have been rejected or abused as children or have lived with addicted or “cold” parents, have distorted images of themselves and of “reality.” These are constantly present to their minds and force them into the disastrous “lifescape” of thought where they then must live. In groups, shared images lead to fads, group-think, and mob hysteria that, once again, has no regard to fact or reasonableness. Individuals who suffer from a poor image of themselves are caught up in self-rejection and have no defenses against group pressures. They do not see themselves as the objects of God’s love, and they have no place to make a stand. Success, popularity and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often some from the way they are part of a much larger temptation of self-rejection. We have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions to our desolate condition. We accept it as a fact that we deserve to be pushed aside and rejected. We see ourselves that way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the scared voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. However, this profound truth will have little or no effect without powerful images of ourselves as God’s beloved. Self-rejection is, ultimately, our soul’s reproach to God’s, deriving from false images of oneself and one’s World. To manipulate images—and thereby people—is the work of the propagandist and the advertiser. Unfortunately, is often done in the name of Christ to achieve some desired result. By contrast, to loosen the grip of fallen imagery and its underlying idea structure is a fundamental part of what mental healthy professionals must do to assist their patients. It is also essential to the Christian ministries of inner healing and evangelism. In the millennial day all people will praise the Lord—He will dwell among them—Compare Isaiah 12. About 559-545 Before Christ. “And in that day thou shalt say: O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation. Therefore, with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“And in that day shall ye say: Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things; this is known in all the Earth. Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion; for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee,” reports 2 Nephi 22.1-6. O Benignant King of ages and Master of all creation, relieve Thy Church approaching Thee through Christ; fulfil for each of us what is good for him; bring us all to perfection, and make us meet for the grace of Thy sanctification, uniting us together in Thy Holy Church, which Thou hast purchased with the precious Blood of Thine Only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; with Whom, and with Thine All-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, Thou art blessed and glorified forever. Lord Jesus, please grant me the favour of being led by Thee, under the directions of Thy providence and Thy word. Grant me Thy blessings with bitter things, to brighten and quicken me, not to depress and make me lifeless; please grant me, like Gideon of old, way-tokens, by removing things that discourage me; grant me succour beneath the shadow of Thy sympathy when I am tempted. Accept my unceasing thanks that I am not cast off from Thy hand as a darkened star or a rudderless vessel. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Suffer not my life to extend beyond my usefulness; cast me not under the feet of pride, injustice, riches, Worldly greatness, selfish oppression of humans; please help me to wait patiently, silently upon Thee, not to be enraged or speak unadvisedly. Let Thy mercy follow me while I life, and give me assistance to resign myself to Thy will. Take my heart and hold it in Thy hand; write upon it reverence to Thyself with an inscription that time and eternity cannot erase. To Thy grace and the care of Thy covenant I commit myself, in sickness, and in health, for Thou hast overcome the World, fulfilled the law, finished justifying righteousness, swallowed up death in victory, and taken all power everywhere. Make this covenant with thine own blood in the court of forgiving mercy; attach unto in Thy name in which I believe, for it is sealed by my unworthy mortal hand. The self-actualized announces one’s revelation to one’s contemporaries in the mode that is one’s and theirs. Ina scientific age one will present facts and reason logically. Great Adepts are content to make history rather than figure in it, although their figures have glowed brightly in history like shooting stars and then disappeared. One’s success in communicating truth will depend, on one’s audience’s side, both on the degree of understanding it possesses and feelings it envinces toward one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Business Underlies Everything in Our National Life, Including Our Spiritual Life!
Some humans are more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children. To be conscious that you are unaware of the true facts is a great step toward knowledge. What The Real Advantages Are Which American Society Derives From The Government of The Democracy: The political institutions of the Untied States of America appear to me to be one of the forms of government which a democracy may adopt: but I do not regard the American constitution as the best, or as the only one which a democratic people may establish. In showing the advantages which the Americans derive from the government of democracy, I am therefore very far from meaning, or from believing, that similar advantages can be obtained only from the same laws. General Tendency of The Laws Under The Rule of The American Democracy, And Habits of Those Who Apply Them: Defects of a democratic Government easy to be discovered.—Its Advantages only to be discerned by long Observation.—Democracy in America often inexpert, but general Tendency of the Laws advantageous.—In the American Democracy public Officers have no permanent interest distinct from those of the Majority.—Result of this State of things. The defects and the weaknesses of a democratic government may very readily be discovered; they are demonstrated by the most flagrant instances, while it is beneficial influence is less perceptibly exercised. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
A single glance suffices to detect the defects and weaknesses of a democratic government and its evil consequences, but its good qualities can only be discerned by long observation The laws of the American democracy are frequently defective or incomplete; they sometimes attack vested rights, or give a sanction to others which are dangerous to the community; but even if they were good, the frequent changes which they undergo would be an evil. How comes it, then, that the American republics prosper, and maintain their position? In the consideration of laws, a distinction must be carefully observed between the end at which they aim, and the means by which they are directed to that end; between their absolute and their relative excellence. If it be the intention of the legislator to favour the interests of the minority at the expense of the majority, and if the measure one takes are s combined as to accomplish the object one has in view with the least possible expense of time and exertion, the law may be well drawn up, although its purpose be bad; and the more efficacious it is, the greater is the mischief which it causes. Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from a majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority. It may therefore be asserted, as a general proposition, that the purpose of a democracy, in the conduct of its legislation, is useful to a greater number of citizens than that of an aristocracy. This is, however, the sum total of its advantages. Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of a self-control which protects them from the errors of a temporary excitement; and they form lasting designs which they mature with the assistance of favourable opportunities. Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; it understands how to make the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always infective or in inopportune. The means of democracy are therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently opposed to its own cause; but the object it has in view is more useful. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Let us now imagine a community so organized by nature, or by its constitution, that it can support the transitory action of bad laws, and that it can await, without destruction, the general tendency of the legislation: we shall then be able to conceive that a democratic government, notwithstanding its defects, will be most fitted to conduce to the prosperity of this community. This is precisely what has occurred in the United States of America; and I repeat, what I have before remarked, that the great Advantage of the Americans consist in their being able to commit faults which they may afterward repair. An analogous observation may be made respecting public officers. It is easy to perceive that the American democracy frequently errs in the choice of the individuals to whom it intrusts the power of the administration; but it is more difficult to say why the sate prospers under their rule. In the first place it is to be remarked, that if in a democratic state the governors have less honesty and less capacity then elsewhere, the governed on the other hand are more enlightened and more attentive to their interests. As the people in the democracies is more incessantly vigilant in its affairs, and more jealous of its right, it prevents its representative from abandoning that general line of conduct which its own interest prescribes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In the second place, it must be remembered that if the democratic magistrate is more apt to misuse one’s power, one possesses it for a shorter period of time. However, there is yet another reason which is still more general and conclusive. It is no doubt of importance to the welfare of nations that they should be governed by people of talents and virtue; but it is perhaps still more important than the interests of those humans should not differ from the interests of the community at large; for if such were the case, virtues of a high order might become useless, and talents might be turned to a bad account. I say that it is important that the interests of the persons in authority should not conflict with or oppose the interests of the community at large; but I do not insist upon their having the same interests as the whole population, because I am not aware that such a state of things ever existed in any country. No political form has hitherto been discovered, which is equally favourable to the prosperity and the development of all the classes into which society is divided. These classes continue to form, as it were, a certain number of distinct nations in the same nation; and experience has shown that it is no less dangerous to place the fate of these classes exclusively in the hands of any one of them, than it is to make one people the arbiter of the destiny of another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
When the rich alone govern, the interests of the less affluent is always endangered; and when the less affluent makes the laws, that of the rich incurs very serious risks. The advantage of democracy des not consist, therefore, as has sometimes been asserted, in favouring the prosperity of all, but simply in contributing to the well-being of the greatest possible number. The humans who are intrusted with the direction of public affairs in the Untied States of America, are frequently inferior, both in point of capacity and of morality, to those whom aristocratic institutions would rise to power. However, their interests are identified and confounded with that of the majority of their fellow-citizens. They may frequently be faithless, and frequently mistake; but they will never systematically adopt a line of conduct oppose to the will of the majority; and it is impossible that they should give a dangerous or an exclusive tendency to the government. The mal-administration of a democratic magistrate is a mere isolated fact, which only occurs during the short period for which one is elected. Corruption and incapacity do not act as common interests, which may connect humans permanently with one another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
A corrupt or an incapable magistrate will not concert one’s measures with another magistrate, simply because that individual is as corrupt and as incapable as oneself; and these two humans will never unite their endeavours to promote the corruption and inaptitude of their remote posterity. The ambition and the maneuvers of the one will serve, on the contrary, to unmask the other. The vices of a magistrate, in democratic states, are usually peculiar to one’s own person. However, under aristocratic governments public humans are swayed by the interest of their order, which, if it is sometimes confounded with the interests of the majority, is very frequently distinct from them. This interest is the common and lasting bond which unites them together; it induces them to coalesce, and to combine their efforts in order to attain an end which does not always ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and it serves not only to connect the persons in authority, but to unite them to a considerable portion of the community, as well as by the government of which one is a member. The common purpose which connects the interest of the magistrates in the aristocracies, with that of a portion of their contemporaries, identifies it with that of future generations; their influence belongs to the future as much as to the present. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The aristocratic magistrate is urged at the same time toward the same point, by the passions of the community, by one’s own, and I may almost add, by those of one’s posterity. Is it, then, wonderful that one does not resist such repeated impulses? And, indeed, aristocracies are often carried away by the spirit of their order without being corrupted by it; and they unconsciously fashion society to their own ends, and prepare it for their own descendants. The English aristocracy is perhaps the most liberal which ever existed, and no body of humans has ever, uninterruptedly, furnished so many honourable and enlightened individuals to the government of a country. It cannot, however, escape observation, that in the legislation of England the good of the poor has been sacrificed to the advantage of the rich, and the rights of the majority to the privileges of the few. The consequence is, that England, at the present day, combines the extremes of fortune in the bosom of her society; and her hands perils and calamities are almost equal to her power and her renown. In the United States of America, where the public officer have no interests to promote connected with their caste, the general and constant influence of the government is beneficial, although the individuals who conduct it are frequently unskillful and sometimes contemptible. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
There is, indeed, a secret tendency in democratic institutions to render the exertions of the citizens subservient to the prosperity of the community, notwithstanding their private vices and mistakes; while in aristocratic institutions there is a secret propensity, which, notwithstanding the talents and the virtue of those who conduct the government, leads them to contribute to the evils which oppress their fellow-creatures. In aristocratic governments public humans may frequently do injuries which they do not intend; and in democratic states they produce advantages which they never thought of. Ethical norms are given by God. Moral commandments are expressions of a divine will, which is sovereign and without criteria. It cannot be measured in terms of adequacy to human nature. It must be obeyed as it is given through revelation. However, the question then is: Why should anyone obey the commandments of this divine lawgiver? How are they distinguished from the commands given by a human tyrant? He is stronger than I am. He can destroy me. However, is not that destruction more to be feared which would follow the submission of one’s personality center to a strange will? Would not this be just the denial of the moral imperative? #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
The other way of the theological foundation of the moral imperative is the theonomous one. It avoids the destructiveness of the heteronomous way. However, just for this reason it become ontological. It assets (in agreement with the predominant trend of classical theology) that the law given by God is human’s essential nature, put against one as law. If humans were not estranged from oneself, if one’s essential nature were not distorted in one’s actual existence, no law would stand against one. The law is not strange to humans. It is natural law. It represents one’s true nature from which one is estranged. Every valid ethical commandment is an expression of human’s essential relation to oneself, to others and to the Universe. This alone makes it obligatory and its denial self-destructive. This alone accounts for the unconditional form of the moral imperative, however questionable and conditioned the contents may be. The theonomous solution leads inescapably to ontological problems. If God is not seen as a strange an arbitrary lawgiver, if His authority is not heteronomous but theonomous, ontological presuppositions are accepted. Theonomous ethics include ontology. And they also verify the ontological foundations on which they rest. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The ontological statements about the nature of love, power, and justice are verified if they are about to solve the otherwise insoluble problems of the ethics of love, power, and justice. To show that his is the case we must consider the ethical functions of love, power, and justice in the spheres of personal relations, of social institutions and of the holy. In the first sphere, justice is leading, in the second sphere, power, and in the third sphere, love. However, all three principles are effective in each sphere. And the sphere of the holy is a quality in the other spheres, and only in some respects a sphere of its own. So we shall speak first of justice, love, and power in human relations, then of power, justice, and love in social institutions, then of love, power, and justice in relation to the holy. Our treatment of the Fall is superior to many others in trying to meet the philosophers half way. It duly recognizes that philosophical intuition opens insights into sin. It happily borrows from psychology its description of a state before the Fall as dreaming innocence, distinguished from awakeness and from experience. However, the dreaming innocence is not anterior to a subsequent event which would give the acquired knowledge of good and evil. It is the psychological background of all human acts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Human actions mark a passage from the dreaming innocence of one who has not been subjected to the conditions of human existence to the wide-awake experience of humans in existence. In other words, the state before the Fall corresponds, in mythological language, to what philosopher call essence. The choice between good and evil corresponds to existence itself. This leap from essence to existence ins universal fact, but is not a fact distinct from creation. Every human being, by the very fact that one is created, is in existence. As such one is in a state of wide-awake experience; one has the experiential knowledge of good and evil as soon as one is able to act humanly. Original sin is not original in the sense that the first man sinned and that from this we derived the fact that we are born sinners. The notion of a moment in time in which humans and nature were changed from good to evil is absurd, and it has no foundation in experience or revelation. There is a danger of this identification of sin and creation; critics has voiced the justified fear that sin may become a rational necessity. The Fall of man is the transition from uncreated essence, or non-being, to created existence, or being. This happens to every human. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Every person is caught in the following tragedy: no exercise of one’s faculties is possible without the experience of estrangement from one’s essence in God, that is, without sin. Now, the trouble with this is that it certain is not the meaning of Revelation. That a theologian should argue against the Fall as a primordial catastrophe of the human race on the basis that it has no foundation in experience is disconcerting, for no supporter of this classical Christian belief has ever claimed that we have experience t. It would be as absurd to base the Fall of the First Man on present-day experience as it would be childish to deny that Fall arguing from the absence of a direct experience of it by humankind today. The original Fall has no foundation in revelation. It is significant that the account is exclusively based on Genesis and on the story of Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Yet it is recognized by exegetes that if Genesis tells a story of the first sin, it does not speak of transmission of that sin. The Old Testament had no notion of original sin as taught by Christianity. It has no notion of the sin of Adam and that of his descendants, imitating their forefathers, have also sinned, but it never suspected that there could be a causal link between Adam’s sin and man’s being born in sin. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
On the contrary, rabbinical tradition taught, and still teaches the humans are born without sin. It is not on Genesis, but on St. Paul, that the Christian view is founded. “As the fault of one has brought condemnation of all humans, so the righteousness of one brings on all a lifegiving righteousness,” reports Romans 5.18. St. Paul knows the Fall in the light of the Redemption. They are two correlative events. The historicity of Redemption stands facing the historicity of the Fall. One who would deny the latter would by implication negate the former. These words are not obscure: that several are justified through the obedience of Christ, as they have been constituted sinners through the disobedience of Adam; and accordingly, that just as Adam, enfolding us in his ruin, has caused our perdition, likewise Christ brings us back to salvation through his grace. I do not think that a longer proof is needed in such a clear light of truth. Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual’s lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning. Their relation to the instincts has been discussed elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, and the anima, the animus. The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious. The only exceptions to this rule are those rather rare cases where the absolute qualities of the personality are repressed, and the ego in consequence plays an essentially negative or unfavourable role. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involved recognizing the dark aspects of the personality are present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period. Closer examination of the morbid characteristics—that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow—reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of the individual but something that happens to one. Affects occur usually where adaption is weakest, and at the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of one’s effects but also singularly incapable of moral judgment. Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one’s own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this oneself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
One must be convinced that one throws a very long shadow before one is willing to withdraw one’s emotionally-toned projections from the objects. Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognize one’s projections. The projection-making factor then has a free hand and can realize its object—if it has one—or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from one’s environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the World into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis, one dreams a World whose reality remains forever unattainable. The resultant sentiment d’incompletude and still worse feeling of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation intensified. The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
A forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the World said to me: “But I can never admit to myself that I have wasted the best twenty-five years of my life.” We can all blame Adam for or problems or recognize that Jesus is or Redeemer. It is often tragic to see how blatantly a person bungles one’s own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in oneself, and now one continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously one is engaged in bewailing ad cursing a faithless World that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil one’s World. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop one. One might assume that projections like these, which are so very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, like being caught in Satan’s web of sins, would belong to the realm of the shadow—that is, to the negative side of the personality. This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, because the symbols that then appear no longer refer to the same but to the opposite gender, in a man’s case to a woman and vice versa. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
The source of projections is no longer the shadow—which is always of the same gender as the subject—but a contrasexual figure. Here we met the animus of a woman and the anmia of a man, two corresponding archetypes whose autonomy and unconsciousness explain the stubbornness of their projections. Though the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and animus, it represents first and foremost the personal unconscious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus, for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognized fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever realized. With a little self-criticism one can see through the shadow—so far as its nature is personal. However, when it appears as an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of possibility for humans to recognize the relative evil of their nature, but it is a rare and shattered experience for one to gaze into the face of absolute evil. The stem of Jesse (Christ) will judge in righteousness—the knowledge of God will cover the Earth in the Millennium—the Lord will raise an ensign and gather Israel—Compare Isaiah 11. About 559-545 before Christ. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall makes him quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. However, with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth and he shall smite the Earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reigns. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the Earth. The envy of Ephraim also shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim also shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. However, they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind he shall shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make humans go over dry shod. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt,” reports 2 Nephi 21.1-16. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Lord God, of might inconceivable, of glory incomprehensible, of mercy immeasurable, of benignity ineffable; do Thou, O Master, look down upon us in Thy tender love, and show forth, towards us and those who pray with us, Thy rich mercies and compassions. O God, Thou art very great, my lot is to approach Thee with Godly fear and humble confidence, for Thy condescension equals Thy grandeur, and Thy goodness is Thy glory. I am unworthy, but Thou dost welcome; guilty, but Thou art merciful; indigent, but Thy riches are unsearchable. Thou hast sown boundless compassion towards me by not sparing Thy Son, and by giving me freely all things in him; this is the foundation of my hope, the refuge of my safety, the new and living way to Thee, the means of that conviction of sin, brokenness of heart, and self-despair, which will endear to me the gospel. Happy are they who are Christ’s, in Him at peace with Thee, justified from all things, delivered from coming wrath, made heirs of future glory; give me such deadness to the World, such love to the Saviour, such attachment to his house, such devotedness to his service, as proves me a subject of his salvation. My every part of my character and conduct make a serious and amiable impression on others, and impel them to ask the way to the master. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Let to no incident of life, pleasing or painful, injure the prosperity of my soul, but rather increase it. Please send me Thy help, for thine appointments are not meant to make me independent of Thee, and the best means will be vain without super-added blessings. The self-actualized may tell of truth, as one knows it, by refraining from speech and entering the Stillness. However, if one’s interlocutors have not been preciously prepared to understand what lies behind one’s silence, they may not benefit by it. Serving humanity in one’s secret way, drawing benediction for all from this divine source, it would seem to be an unrequited activity; but one is included as recipient and beneficiary. Some come to illuminate, not to instruct. Some who have attained true wisdom make no special attempt to communicate it through speech or writing, or to express it in action. Does this mean the World never benefits from them, as it benefits by the existence and work of even the humblest primary school teacher? It does not. For their contribution, though quite noiseless, is not at all valueless. It is to let the silent influence of their presence among us touch those who can receive it, even though they do so unwittingly. Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord’s Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love one’s neighbour on an empty stomach. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
HOME SITE 78
4-5 Bedrooms – 3.5 Bathrooms – 3,501 square feet – $589,854
Gorgeous two-story home located in the growing Cresleigh Ranch community! This sleek and modern home is an entertainer’s dream! The California Room directly off the Great Room offers an indoor/outdoor living experience while the extended kitchen island is perfect for large gatherings or busy households. A contemporary kitchen with stained recessed cabinetry, quartz counters, and single basin sink!
There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multi-generational living. The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room. Upstairs you’ll find the master retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The master retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and two walk-in closets. https://youtu.be/TikCeN8MlLA

