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Ethics are Responsibility without Limit Towards All that Lives!

The concept of a united family that lives and progresses forever is at the core of Latter-day Saint doctrine. Within families led by a father and a mother, children develop virtues such as love, trust, loyalty, cooperation and service. We must rally to protect marriage, family, so we can strengthen our loved ones and protect their faith and freedom. There is a young and impressionable mind out there that is very hungry for information. Instead of fighting for freedom of the press, maybe we should be fighting for freedom from the press. I am worried about present-day journalism. The emphasis on negative happenings is much too strong. Not infrequently, news about events marking great progress is overlooked or minimized. It tends to make for a negative and discouraging atmosphere. If humans feel that very little happens to support that faith in the salvation of humanity, there is a danger that people may lose faith in the forward direction of Kingdom of God. And real progress is related to the belief that salvation and the Kingdom God will be established in our lifetime. Another hinderance to civilization today is the over-organization of our public life. While it is certain that a properly ordered environment is the condition and, at the same time, the result of civilization, it is developed at the expense of the spiritual life. Personality and ideas are often subordinated to institutions, when it is really thee which ought to influence the latter and keep them inwardly alive. Humans have lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. They will end by destroying the Earth. Simply investigating and apportioning responsibility after the fact is hardly sufficient. We must create an environmental screen to protect ourselves against dangerous intrusions as well as a system of public incentives to encourage technology that is both safe and socially desirable. This means governmental and private machinery for reviewing major technological advances before they are launched upon the public. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
So great was His love for the World, that God covenanted to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believe in Him should not peris, but have everlasting life. Lucifer has said, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. This was a voluntary sacrifice. Jesus might have retained the glory of Heaven, and the homage of the angels. However, He chose to give back the scepter into the Father’s hands, and to step down from the throne of the Universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing. Over two thousand years, a voice of mysterious import was heard in Heaven, from the throne of God, “Lo, I come.” “Sacrifice and offering Thou would not, but a body has Thou prepared Me. Lo, I come (in the volume of the Book it is written of Me,) to do Thy will, O God.” In these words is announced the fulfillment of the purpose that had been hidden from eternal ages. Christ was about to visit our World, and become incarnate. He says, “A body has Thou prepared Me.” Had He appeared with the glory that was His with the Father before the World was, we could not have endured the light of His presence. That we might behold it and not be destroyed, the manifestation of His glory was shrouded. His divinity was veiled with humanity—the invisible glory in the visible form. This great purpose had been shadowed forth in types and symbols. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The burning bush, in which Christ appeared to Moses, revealed God. The symbol chosen for the representation of the Deity was a humble shrub, that seemingly has no attractions. This enshrined the Infinite. The all-merciful God shrouded His glory in a most humble type, that Moses could look upon it and live. So in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, God communicated with America, revealing to humans His will, and imparting to them His grace. God’s glory was subdued, and His majesty veiled, that the weak vision of finite humans might behold it. So Christ was to come in the body of our humiliation in the likeness of humans. In the eyes of the World He possessed no beauty that they should desire Him; yet He was the incarnate God, the light of Heaven and Earth. His glory was veiled, His greatness and majesty were hidden, that He might draw near to sorrowful, tempted men. God commanded Moses for America, “Let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them,” and he abode in the sanctuary, in the midst of His people. Through all their weary wandering in the desert, the symbol of His presence was with them. So Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character. “The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.” Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with out trials, and sympathizes with our griefs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Every son and daughter of Adam may understand that our Creator is the friend of sinners. For in every doctrine of grace, every promise of joy, every deed of love, every divine attraction presented in the Saviour’s life on Earth, we see “God with us.” Satan represents God’s law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading humans to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us Jesus was to give an example of obedience. His life testifies that it is possible for us also to obey the law of God. By His humanity, Christ touched humanity; by His divinity, He lays hold upon the throne of God. As the Son of man, He gave us an example of obedience; as the Son of God, He gives us power to obey. “God with us” is the surety of our deliverance from sin, the assurance of our power to obey the law of Heaven. Christ revealed a character the opposite of the character of Satan. By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin. It was Satan’s purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God, like we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. “God so loved the World, that he gave His only-begotten Son. He gave Him not only to bear our sins, and to die as our sacrifice; He gave Him to the fallen race. To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, God gave His only-begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This is the pledge that God will fulfill His Word. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder.” God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest Heaven. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” who shares the throne of the Universe. It is the “Son of man” whose name shall be called, “Wonderful,” Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite Love. The exaltation of the redeemed will be an eternal testimony to God’s mercy. In the ages to come, God will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. To the intent that unto the principalities and the powers in the Heavenly places might be made known the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Through Christ’s redeeming work, the government of God stand justified. The Omnipotent One is made known as the God of love. Satan’s charges are refuted, and his character unveiled. Rebellion can never again arise. Sin can never again enter the Universe. Through eternal ages all are secure from apostasy. By love’s self-sacrifice, the inhabitants of Earth and Heaven are bound to their Creator in bonds of indissoluble union. The work of redemption will be complete. In the place where sin abounded, God’s grace much more abounds. The Earth itself, the very field that Satan claims as his, is to be not only ransomed but exalted. Our little World, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in His glorious creation, will be honoured above all other Worlds in the Universe of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Here, where the Son of God tabernacle in humanity; where the King of glory lived and suffered and died—here, when He shall make all things new, the tabernacle of God shall be with humans, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And through endless ages as the redeemed walk in the light of the Lord, they will praise Him for His unspeakable Gift—God with us. God has a word for us to release increase, multiplication, and miracles right now in our lives. Our obedience to His Word leads to restoration and authority like a rushing river. “If you love me, you will obey what I command,” reports John 14.15. If you have been asking God for a supernatural turnaround in your life, Miracles are coming! Increase is coming! Multiplication is coming! God works in seasons, cycles, patterns. Understanding His timing is key to activating His greatest blessing in your life! A season means a “set time.” When you do not discern the shift of a season, you will lack in some area of your life! It is possible to be in a season that you are not cooperating with and therefore you are experiencing scarcity! This will change with your obedience! No more missed moments in Jesus’ name! “And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God,” reports Luke 24.52-53. One hundred and twenty of them remined in prayer until the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) arrived, and then it did, they were he gathered together. “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave this command: ‘Do not leave America, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have hear me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit,’” reports Acts 1.4-5. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
What we seem to forget is that, yes, the sun will continue to rise and set and the moon will continue to move across the skies, but humankind can create a situation in which the sun and moon can look down upon the Earth that has been stripped of all life. “They joined all together in constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In those days Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, ‘Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the moth of David concerning Judas, who served as guide for those who arrested Jesus—he was one of our number and shared in this ministry,’” reports Acts 1.14-17. “When the day of the Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from Heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them,” reports Acts 2.1-4. Those who conduct an atomic war for freedom will die, or end their lives miserably. Instead of freedom, they will find destruction. Radioactive clouds resulting from a war between The Old World and the New World would imperil humanity. There would be no need to use up the remaining stock of atom and H-bombs. An atomic war is therefore the most senseless and lunatic act that could ever take place. At all costs, it must be prevented. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Corporations might be expected to set up their own “consequence analysis staffs” to study the potential effects of the innovations they sponsor. They might, in some cases, be required not merely to test new technology in pilot areas but to make a public report about its impact before being permitted to spread the innovation through the society at large. Much responsibility should be delegated to industry itself. The less centralized the controls the better. If self-policing works, it is preferable to external, political controls. Where self-regulation fails, however, as it often does, public intervention may well be necessary, and we should not evade the responsibility. At one point, in the United States of America, Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development, had proposed the establishment of a technology Assessment Board with the federal government. And this might be a great idea with social media becoming so power that the owners of these platforms were censoring and banned the President from using their forums. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress, and by the science and technology program of the George Washington University are all aimed at defining the appropriate nature of such an agency. We may wish to debate its form; its need is beyond dispute. The society might also set certain general principles for technological advance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Where the introduction of an innovation entails undue risk, for example, it might require that funds be set aside by the responsible agency for correction of adverse effects should they materialize. We might also create a “technological insurance pool” to which innovation-diffusing agencies might pay premiums. Certain large-scale ecological interventions might be delayed or prohibited altogether—perhaps in line with the principle that is an incursion on nature is too big and sudden for its effects to be monitored and possibly corrected, it should not take place. For example, it has been suggested that Aswan Dam, far from helping Egyptian agriculture, might someday lead to salinization of land on both banks of the Nile. This could prove disastrous. However, such a process would not occur overnight. Presumably, therefore, it can be monitored and prevented. By contrast, the plan to flood the entire interior of Brazil is fraught with such instant and imponderable ecological effects that it should not be permitted at all until adequate monitoring can be done and emergency corrective measures are available. At the level of social consequences, a new technology might be submitted for clearance to panels of behavioural scientists—psychologists, sociologist, economists, political scientists—who would determine, to the best of their ability, the probable strength of its social impact at different points in time. Where an innovation appears likely to entail seriously disruptive consequences, or to generate unrestrained accelerative pressures, these facts need to be weighed in a social cost-benefit accounting procedure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

In the case of some high-impact innovations, the technology appraisal agency might be empowered to seek restraining legislation, or to obtain an injunction forcing delay until full public discussion and study is completed. In other cases, such innovations might still be released for diffusion—provided ample steps were taken in advance to offset their negative consequences. In this way, the society would not need to wait for disaster before dealing with its technology-induced problems. By considering not merely specific technologies, but their relationship to one another, the time lapse between them, the proposed speed of diffusion, and similar factors, we might eventually gain some control over the pace of change as well as its direction. Needless to say, these proposals are themselves fraught with explosive social consequences, and need careful assessment. There may be far better ways to achieve the desired ends. However, the time is late. We simply can no longer afford to hurtle blindfolded toward super-industrialism. The politics of technology control with trigger bitter conflict in the days to come. However, if the accelerative thrust is to be brought under control, conflict or no, technology must be tamed. And, if future shock is to be prevented, the accelerative thrust must be brought under control. In some cultures, people endure tattooing, stretching, cutting, and burning wit little apparent pain. How is such insensitivity achieved? Very likely the answer lies in four factors that anyone can use to reduce pain. These are anxiety, control, attention, and interpretation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The basic sensory message of pain can be separated from emotional reactions to it. Fear or high levels of anxiety almost always increase pain. (Anxiety is a feeling of apprehension or uneasiness similar to fear, but based on an unclear threat.) A dramatic reversal of this effect is the surprising lack of pain displayed by soldiers wounded in battle. Being excused from further combat apparently produces a flood of relief. This emotional state leaves many soldiers insensitive to wounds tat would agonize a civilian. In general, unpleasant emotions increase pain and pleasant emotions decrease it. If you can regulate painful stimulus, you have control over it. A moment’s reflection should convince you that the most upsetting pain is that over which you have no control. Loss of control seems to increase pain by increasing anxiety and emotional distress. People who are allowed to regulate, avoid, or control a painful stimulus suffer less. In general, the more control one feels over a painful stimulus, the less pain experienced. Distraction can also radically reduce pain. As you recall, attention refers to voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input. Pain, even though it is highly persistent, can be selectively “turned out” (at least partially), just like any other sensation. Subjects in one experiment were in intense pain experienced the greatest relief when they were distracted by the task of watching for signal lights to come on. Another example is provided by burn patients, who must undergo excruciating pain while their bandages are changed. Recently, video games and virtual reality have been used to distract them from their pain, which helps immensely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
The Fountain of Youth and the Elixir of Life were dreams of the ancient mystics, and they are still dreams of today. However, to the soul that has found the, in most cases, they are divine realities. If humans were to learn that one can prolong one’s life on this Earth in youth and health for an indefinite period in which days and years are not counted, one could pass from one joy to another. Nobody has historically succeeded in robbing Nature of her power to inflict death. However, there is another aspect of this topic which throws some light on it. When the body of Father Charles de Foucald was exhumed, one year after burial, for transfer to another site, his friend General Laperrine was astonished to find that the body was without any break and the face quite recognizable, whereas of the two Arabian guards murdered at the same time and buried near him only a little dust remained. One of the native soldiers then said, “Why are you astonished that he is thus preserved, General? It is not astonishing, since he was a great marabout (holy man).” Father Foucald was a nineteenth-century Christian hermit of the Saharan desert, who sacrificed social position and fortune for an ascetic existence devoted to prayer, meditation, and service for the poor. Hs ascetic self-mortification was extremely severe. To this case there may be added the somewhat similar cases of Swami Yogananda of Los Angeles, and Sir Aurobindo of Pondicherry. The ancient hatha yoga texts promise the successful yogi “the conquest of death.” This does not mean he will not die, but that his flesh will not decay after death. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

We have so intimate a relation to the body in practical life that none of us need be blamed for calling it “me.” However, metaphysically that indicates an adolescent attitude. We advance towards maturity when we regard it as only a part of “me.” This domain of natural living, food reform, and hygiene is infested with cranks, fanatics, extremists, and one-idea devotees, just as the domain of mysticism is. The seeker must be warned against letting oneself be deceived by their wild intemperate enthusiasms. Have you ever temporarily forgotten about a toothache or similar pain while absorbed in a movie or book? As this suggests, concentrating on pleasant, soothing images can be especially helpful. Instead of listening to the whirr of a dentist’s drill, for example, you might imagine that you are lying in the sun at a beach, listening to the roar of the surf. At home, music can be a good distractor from chronic pain. So much may depend on so little! The condition of a single organ or of a half-centimeter of gland may curse a human’s whole life more than and sorcerer can. A physical feature may be so dislike by others that one’s ambitions are thwarted or one’s desire for love defeated. Some physical attributes may be unpleasant, undignified, and unfortunate for a human. However, they are well-countered by invisible compensations. The meaning of interpretation, you give a stimulus also affects pain. For example, if you make a funny face at a child while playing, you will probably get a burst of laughter. Yet that same face given as a punishment may bring tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The effects of interpretation are illustrated by an experiment in which thinking of pain as pleasurable (denying the pain) greatly increased pain tolerance. Another study found that people who believe a painful procedure will improve their health feel less pain during the procedure. A physiognomist once told me that he considered the mouth more revealing of a human’s character than, as commonly believed, the eyes. Is this a fact? How important is it to remember that the fall of temperature in the evenings is an invitation to catch cold. Goethe complained while living in Rome of the care one had to take even in the middle of summer to prevent the realization of this possibility. The joy owning a physical body comes out most in physical activity, yet the person will feel disgusted with it under different circumstances and at a different time. The pain of owning a body comes out mostly in ill health, yet the same person may glory in it during a game or a sport. For as bats’ eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all. It must be clearly understood that the argument so far leads to no conception of “souls” or “spirits” (words I have avoided) floating about in the realm of Nature with no relation to their environment. Hence we do not deny—indeed we must welcome—certain considerations which are often regarded as proofs of Naturalism. We can admit, and even insist, that Rational Thinking can be shown to be conditioned in its exercise by a natural object (the brain). #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Rational Thinking is temporarily impaired by alcohol or a blow to the head. It wanes as the brain decays and vanishes when the brain ceases to function. In the same way the moral outlook of a community can be shown to be closely connected with its history, geographical environment, economic structure, and so forth. The moral ideas of the individual are equally related to one’s general situation: it is no accident that parents and schoolmasters so often tell us that they can stand any vice rather than lying, the lie being the only defensive weapon of most children. All this, far from presenting us with a difficulty, is exactly what we should expect. The rational and more element in each human mind is a point of force from the Supernatural working its way into Nature, exploiting at each point those conditions which Nature offers, repulsed where the conditions are hopeless and impeded when they are unfavourable. A human’s Rational thinking is just so much of one’s share in eternal Reason as the state of one’s brain allows to become operative: it represents, so to speak, the bargain struck or the frontier fixed between Reason and Nature at that particular point. A nation’s moral outlook is just so much of its share in eternal Moral Wisdom as its history, economics, et cetera, lets through. In the same way the voice of the Announcer is just so much of a human voice as the receiving set lets through. Of course it varies with the state of the receiving set, and deteriorates as the set wears out and vanished altogether if I throw a brick at it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

The voice of the announcer is conditioned by the apparatus but not originated by it. If it were—if we know that there was no human being at the microphone—we should not attend to the news. The various and complex conditions under which Reason and Morality appear are the twists and turns of the frontier between Nature and Supernature. That is why, if you wish, you can always ignore Supernature and treat the phenomena purely from the Natural side; just as a human studying on a map the boundaries of Cornwall and Devonshire can always say, “What you call a bulge in Devonshire is really a dent in Cornwall.” And in a sense, you cannot refute one. What call a bulge in Devonshire always is a dent in Cornwall. What we call a rational thought in a human always involves a state of the brain, in the long run a relation of atoms. However, Devonshire is none the less something more than “where Cornwall ends,” and Reason is something more than cerebral bio-chemistry. The practical method which is here presented differs radically from the method of the Christian Scientists, although a superficial reading my give the impression of similarity. The Christian Scientist asserts one’s inner nature to be divine and a part of God, but the assertion remains a mere intellectual statement unless one has previously opened up a channel to that inner nature with the tool of intersession, prayer, or aspiration. If one has done this, then the assertion rises into the realm of reality and may produce remarkable results; if one has not succeeded in doing this, then one’s assertion remains mere words, one thought out of the multitude which pass and repass through the brain of humans. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Moreover, so long as one possess false notions of what constitutes “demonstration,” so long as one thinks that one is entitled to prosperity, good health, and other desirable Worldly things because of his spirituality, so long will one find—as so many Christian Scientists do find—that one’s successes alternate with startling failures. It would be an unpleasant task to illustrate this statement with instances of such failures, not in the rank and file, but in the foremost ranks of the Christian Scientists, and I shall not attempt it. These failures indicate that we must follow no narrow track of sect-ordained thought, but do some research on our own account. It is a dramatic fact that remedial changes may take place in the organs themselves under the influence of this healing force. The more one comes into harmony with the cosmic order, the more will one’s health and strength benefit, one’s thoughts and feelings become beneficial. However, this is not to say that one will be cured of existing maladies or be kept in perfect health. Harmony means that due regard and attention will be given to the body’s importance, hygiene, care, and correct feeding. It means that the thoughts and feelings will be constructive. If not obstructed by human’s foolish methods, nature’s healing power will do its own work upon that sick body. It is possible to direct the healing power of the white light, in imagination and with deep breathing, to any part of the body where pain is felt or to any organ which is not functioning properly. This does not instantly remove the trouble, but it does make a contribution towards the healing process. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
For moderate pain, it can make quite a difference to reduce anxiety, redirect attention, and increase control. When you can anticipate pain (during a trip to the doctor, dentist, and so on), you can lower anxiety by making sure that you are fully informed. Be sure that someone explains everything that will happen or could happen to you. Also, be sure to fully discuss any fears you have. If you are physically tense, you can use relaxation exercises to lower your level of arousal. Relaxation methods involve tensing and then releasing muscles in various parts of the body. Some dentists are now equipped to help you shift attention away from pain. Patients are actively distracted with video games and headphones playing music. In other situations, focusing on some external object may help you shift attention away from pain. Pick a tree outside a window, a design on the wall, or some other stimulus and examine it in great detail. Prior practice in meditation can be a tremendous assistant to such attention shifts. Research suggests that distraction of this type works best for mild or brief pain. For chronic or strong pain, reinterpretation is more effective. Is there any way to increase control over a painful stimulus? Practically speaking, the choices may be limited. You may be able to arrange a signal with a doctor or dentist tat will give you control over whether a painful procedure will continue. A second possibility is more unusual. Ronald Melzack’s gate control the sensory of pain suggest that sending mild pain messages to the spinal cord and brain may effectively close the neurological gates to more severe or unpredictable pain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Medical texts have been recognized this effect. Physicians have found that intense surface stimulation of the skin can control pain from other parts of the body. Likewise, a brief, mildly painful stimulates can relieve more severe pain. Such procedures, known as counterirritation, are evident in some of the oldest techniques used to control pain: applying ice packs, hot-water bottles, mustard packs, vibration, or massage to other parts of the body. These facts suggest a way to minimize pain that is based on increased control, counterirritation, and the release of endorphins. If you pinch yourself, you can easily create and endure pain equal to that produced by many medical procedures (receiving an injection, having a toot drilled, and so on). The pain does not seem too bad because you have control over it, and it is predictable. This fact can be used to mask one pain with a second painful stimulus that is under your control. For instance, if you are having tooth filled, try pinching yourself or digging a fingernail into a knuckle while the dentist is working. Focus your attention on the pain you are creating, and increase its intensity anytime the dentist’s work becomes more painful. This suggestion may not work for you, but casual observation suggests that it can be a useful technique for controlling pain in some circumstances. Generations of children have used it to take the edge off spanking. Although some people have found spiritual benefit from sickness because of the enforced retirement to bed or hospital which it demands, or because of the reflections which it brings about the limitations of bodily satisfactions and pleasures, it would be a gross misunderstanding to make this only way of gaining these insights. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Other persons have become so embittered and resentful through sickness that they have suffered spiritual loss. Still other persons who have maintained good health have thereby been able to provide the proper circumstances for spiritual search, study, and meditation. The eye is the reflector of mind, the revealer of a human’s heart and the diagnose of one’s bodily health. With health, everything is a source of pleasure; without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable. It follows that the greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness, whatever it may be—for gain, advancement, learning, or fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures. The Lord has commanded members to take care of their bodies and minds. They should obey the Word of Wisdom, eat nutritious food, exercise regularly, control their weight, and get adequate sleep. They should shun substances or practices that abuse their bodies or minds and that could lead to addiction. They should practice good sanitation and hygiene and obtain adequate medical and dental care. They should also strive to cultivate good relationships with family members and others. Maintaining the best possible physical health has been a gospel ideal throughout the ages—from the strict dietary laws of ancient America, with the example of Joseph Smith and his associates, to the Word of Wisdom in this dispensation and the counsel of today’s prophets and apostles. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

By maintaining good physical health, we become more self-reliant and are better prepared to progress personally, strengthen the family, and serve in the Church and community. Not long after the angel had disappeared the third time Joseph arose from his bed. He went about doing his daily work with his father in the field, but he soon found his strength was exhausted. His father noticed there was something wrong and sent his son home. Joseph went toward the house, but as he crossed a fence in the field his strength entirely failed him and he fell helpless to the ground. Joseph heard a voice call his nae and, looking up, he saw the same messenger, Moroni, standing over his head in a bright light. Again the angel repeated all the things he had told Joseph during the night and commanded him to tell his father of his vision. Joseph obeyed, going into the field to tell his father what had occurred. His father said he should obey the messenger from God. The young man went to find the place he had seen in his vision. Near Manchester, New York, a few miles from his farm home, Joseph found the hill had seen so clearly in his vision. On the west side of the hill, not far from the top, was a large stone which was thick and rounding in the middle of the upper side and thinner toward the edge. The middle part showed above the Earth, but the edges were covered. Joseph removed the Earth from the stone. With the assistance of a lever he raised the stone cover, and beneath it lay a stone box. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

In the box, which was made of stone set in a kind of cement, lay the golden plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate, exactly as the angel had said. The golden plates formed a book with pages of gold held together by three large rings, much like a modern loose-leaf notebook. As Joseph reached to take the things from the box, the angel forbade him. Joseph was told he should return each year on the same date, 22 September, and he would be given further instructions until it was time for him to take the plates. Joseph returned to the hill, which has been called “Hill Cumorah,” each of the following four years and was met by the same messenger. The angel taught him many things about the plans of the Lord, and how his kingdom was to be built in the last days. Four years after Moroni’s first visit to Joseph, on 22 September 1827—on Joseph’s fifth visit to the hill—Moroni gave him the golden book, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. The angel cautioned him to guard them carefully, to allow no one to see them, and to do everything in his power to protect and keep them safely until the messenger should come for them. Joseph soon understood why he had been commanded so strictly to guard them carefully. Almost as soon as he had received the precious things, it became known throughout the countryside, and everyone wanted to see them. Many tried to take them away from him; but by hiding them Joseph was able to keep them safely. The excitement continued, and the people were determined to take the golden plates from him. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Joseph soon realized that it would be impossible for him to do the work of translation at his home in New York. Joseph and his wife, Emma whom he had married in January, 1827, went to her parents’ home at Harmony, Pennsylvania. There in the home of Isaac Hale, during the early part of the year 1828, Joseph, by means of the Urim and Thummim, began the work of translation of the golden plates. In the mystery of these vestures of the Holy Ones, I gird up my power in the girdles of righteousness and truth in the power of the Most High: Ancor: Amacor: Amides: Theodonias: Anitor: let be might my power: let it endure for ever: in the power of Adonai, to whom the praise and the glory shall be; whose end cannot be. Earth mother, star mother, you who are called by a thousand names, may all remember we are cells in your body and dance together. You are the grain and the loaf that sustains us each day, and as you are patient with our struggles to learn so shall we be patient with ourselves and each other. We are radiant light and sacred dark—the balance—you are the embrace that heartens and the freedom beyond fear. Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die—you bring us around the circle to rebirth, within us you dance forever. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for our good and for blessing, of sustenance, of bodily vigour; a life marked by reverence for Thee and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach, a life of abundance and honour, a life in which the love of the Torah and the fear of Heaven shall ever be with us, a life in which all desires of our hearts shall be fulfilled for our good. Amen. If the technology that is supposed to increase our leisure and make our lives easier, starts to control our lives, we are in danger of losing our souls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Begin to Obtain Wisdom Under a Wide Starry Sky!

Time in love and time in life are unrelated: forever exists more than once. The second stage of moral development is that of the morality of association. This stage covers a wide range of cases depending on the association in question and it may even include the national community as a whole. Whereas the child’s morality of authority consists largely of a collection of precepts, the content of the morality of association is given by the moral standards appropriate to the individual’s role in the various associations to which one belongs. These standards include the common sense rules of morality along with the adjustments required to fit them to a person’s particular position; and they are impressed upon one by the approval and disapproval of those in authority, or by the other members of the group. Thus at this stage the family itself is viewed as a small association, normally characterizes by a definite hierarchy, in which each member has certain rights and duties. As the child becomes older one is taught that standards of good conduct suitable for one in one’s situation. The virtues of a good son or a good daughter are explained, or at least conveyed by parental expectations as shown in their approvals and disapprovals. Similarly there is the association of the school and the neighbourhood, and also such short-term forms of cooperation, though not less important for this, as games play with peers. Corresponding to these arrangements one learn the virtues of a good student and classmate, and the ideals of a good sport and companion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This type of moral view extends to the ideals adopted in later life, and so to one’s various adult statuses and occupations, one’s family, and so to one’s various adult statuses and occupations, one’s family position, and even to one’s place as a member of society. The content of these ideals is given by the various conceptions of a good wife and husband, a good friend and citizen, and so on. Thus the morality of association includes a large number of ideals each defined in ways suitable for the respective status or role. Our moral understanding increases as we move in the course of life through a sequence of positions. The corresponding sequence of ideals requires increasingly greater intellectual judgment and finer moral discriminations. Clearly some of these ideals are also more comprehensive than others and make quite different demands upon the individual. As we shall see, having to follow certain ideals quite naturally leads up to a morality of principles. Now each particular ideal is presumably explained in the context of the aims and purposes of the association to which the role or position in question belongs. In due course a person works out a conception of the whole system of cooperation that defines the association and the ends which it serves. One knows that others have different things to do depending upon their place in the cooperative scheme. Thus one eventually learns to take up their point of view and to see things from their perspective. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
It seems plausible, then, that acquiring a morality of association (represented by some structure of ideals) rests upon the development of the intellectual skills required to regard things from a variety of points of view and to think of these together as aspects of one system of cooperation. In fact, when we consider it, the requisite array of abilities is quite complex. First of all, we must recognize that these different points of view exist, that the perspectives of others are not the same as ours. However, we must not only learn that things look different to them, but that they have different wants and ends, and different plans and motives; and we must learn how to gather these facts from their speech, conduct, and countenance. Next, we need to identify the definitive features pf these perspectives, what it is that others largely want and desire, what are their controlling beliefs and opinions. Only in this way can we understand and assess their actions, intentions, and motives. Unless we can identify these leading elements, we cannot put ourselves into another’s place and find out what we would do in one’s position. To work out these things, we must, of course, know what the other person’s perspective really is. However, finally, having understood another’s situation, it still remains for us to regulate our own conduct in the appropriate way by reference to it. Doing these things to a certain minimum degree at least comes easily to adults, but it is difficult for children. No doubt this explains in part why the precepts of the child’s primitive morality of authority are usually expressed in terms referring to external behaviour, and why motives and intentions are largely neglected by children in their actions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The child has not yet mastered the art of perceiving the person of others, that is, the art of discerning their beliefs, intentions, and feelings, so that an awareness of these things cannot inform one’s interpretation of their behaviour. Moreover, one’s ability to put oneself in the place is still untutored and likely to lead one astray. It is no surprise, then, that these elements, so important from the final moral point of view, are left out of account at the earliest stage. However, this lack is gradually overcome as we assume a succession of more demanding riles with their more complex schemes of rights and duties. The corresponding ideals require us to view things from a greater multiplicity of perspectives as the conception of the basic structure implies. The self object state is succeeded, in a facilitating environment, by the child’s phantasy that the satisfying object is there when wanted. This phantasy helps the baby not to be overwhelmed by distress when it begins to feel ever more individual and separate from the (m)other. For, as this happens, it may more often have to wait for, or work for, or even forgo, the gratification of its wishes. However, though it must now change from “good things are there when needed,” to “you bring me good things when I need them,” it need not lose its feeling that it is a grand baby. That confident trust may remain, that memory of the reliable availability of goodness. In fortunate circumstances the baby may after differentiation feel that it is a grand baby in a grand environment. Here is the beginning of the useful process by which we can turn our phantasies into symbols. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Just to remind ourselves: a memory, however simple or complex, is a concept, an image or part of an image, part of a dynamic structure. The more complex of these structures we can call phantasies. A phantasy can be a symbol: it can stand for, stand in for, represent something. Thus the memory that good things come when they are needed “represents” the good thing and “stands for” a guarantee that it will come. In between the infant and the object is some thing, or some activity or sensation. Insofar as this joins the infant to the object, so far is this the basis for symbol formation. A memory can stand for—be symbolic of—a future event. It can be maintained as an active phantasy for a while, even in the absence of sensory confirmation. The process is like that of “reverberation,” whereby a concept continues to be maintained for a while even without sensor reinforcement. It can operate to prevent a rise in anxiety, such as a baby might feel in the absence of the mother. So the baby is able to hold the mother in mind, and the comfort and security which are associated wit the mother, while she is not there—even when there is n sensory reinforcement of that complex concept of comfort and security which “mother” connects with. The presence of a transitional object which can be held on to, helps to keep the reverberations going. Blanket edges, teddy bears, and such stand in for the phantasied (m)other. They stand on the margins of shared reality, representing the more uncontrollable mother and others who are known to come eventually, if not now. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

I have touched upon these aspects of intellectual development for the sake of completeness. I cannot consider them in any detail, but we should note that they obviously have a central place in the acquisition of moral views. How well the art of perceiving the person is learned is bound to affect one’s moral sensibility; and it is equally important to understand the intricacies of social cooperation. However, these abilities are not sufficient. Someone whose designs are purely manipulative and wishes to exploit others for one’s own advantage, must likewise, if one lacks overwhelming force, possess these skills. The tricks of persuasion and gamesmanship call upon the same intellectual accomplishments. We must, then, examine how we become attached to our fellow associates and later to social arrangements generally. Consider the case of an association the public rules of which are known by all to be just. Now how does it come about that those taking part in the arrangement are bound by ties of friendship and mutual trust and that they rely on one another to do their part? We may suppose that these feelings and attitudes have been generated by participation in the association. Thus once a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by one’s acquiring attachments in accordance with the first psychological law, then as one’s associates with evident intention live up to their duties and obligations, one develops friendly feelings toward them, together with feelings of trust and confidence. And this principle is a second psychological law. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

As individual enter the association one by one over a period of time, or group by group (suitably limited in size), they acquire these attachments when others of longer standing membership do their part and live up to the ideals of their situation. Thus if those engaged in a system of social cooperation regularly act with evident intention to uphold its just (or fair) rules, bonds of friendship and mutual trust tend to develop among them, thereby holding them ever more securely to the scheme. Once these ties are established, a person tends to experience feelings of (association) guilt when one fails to do one’s part. These feeling show themselves in various ways, for example, in the inclination to make good the harms caused to others (reparation), if what one has done is unfair (wrong) and to apologize for it. Feelings of guilt are also manifest in conceding the propriety of punishment and censure, and in finding it more difficult to be angry and indignant with others when they likewise fail to do their share. The absence of these inclinations would betray an absence of ties of friendship and mutual trust. It would indicate a readiness to associate with others in disregard of the standards and criteria of legitimate expectations that are publicly recognized and used by all to adjudicate their disagreements. A person without these feelings of guilt has no qualms about burdens that fall on others, nor is one troubled by the breaches of confidence by which they are deceived. However, when relations of friendship and trust exist, such inhibitions and reactions tend to be aroused by the failure to fulfill one’s duties and obligations. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

If these emotional constraints are missing, there is at best only a show of fellow feeling and mutual trust. Thus just as in the first stage certain natural attitudes develop toward the parents, so here ties of friendship and confidence grow up among associates. In each case certain natural attitudes underlie the corresponding moral feelings: a lack of these feelings would manifest the absence of these attitudes. The second psychological law presumably takes hold in ways similar to the first. Since the arrangements of an association are recognized to be just (and in the more complex roles the principles of justice are understood and serve to define the ideal appropriate), thereby insuring that all of its members benefit and know that they benefit from its activities, the conduct of other in doing their part is taken to be the advantage of each. Here the evident intention to honour one’s obligations and duties is seen as a form of good will, and this recognition arouses feelings of friendship and trust in return. In due course the reciprocal effects of everyone’s doing one’s share strengthen one another until a kind of equilibrium is reached. However, we may also suppose that the newer members of the association recognize moral exemplars, that is, persons who are in various ways admired and who exhibit to a high degree the ideal corresponding to their position. These individuals display skills and abilities, and virtues of character and temperament, that attract our fancy and arouse in us the desire that we should be like them, and able to do the same things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Partly this desire to emulate springs from viewing their attributes as prerequisites for their more privileged positions, but it is also a companion effect to the Aristotelian Principle, since we enjoy the display of more complex and subtle activities and these displays tend to elicit a desire in us to do these things ourselves. Thus when the moral ideals belonging to the various roles of a just association are lived up to with evident intention by attractive and admirable persons, these ideals are likely to be adopted by those who witness their realization. These conceptions are perceived as a form of good will and the activity in which they are exemplified is shown to be a human excellence that others likewise can appreciate. The same two psychological processes are present as before: other persons act with evident intention to affirm our well-being and at the same time they exhibit qualities and ways of doing things that appeal to us and arouse the desire to model ourselves after them. The morality of association takes many forms depending upon the association and role in question, and these forms represent many levels of complexity. However, if we consider the more demanding offices that are defined by the major institutions of society, the principles of justice will be recognized as regulating the basic structure and as belonging to the content of a number of important ideals. Indeed, these principles apply to the role of citizen held by all, since everyone, and not only those in public life, is meant to have political views concerning the common good. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Thus we may suppose that there is a morality of association in which the members of society view one another as equals, as friends and associates, joined together in a system of cooperation known to be for the advantage of all and governed by a common conception of justice. The content of this morality is characterized by the cooperative virtues: those of justice and fairness, fidelity and trust, integrity and impartiality. The typical vices are graspingness and unfairness, dishonesty and deceit, prejudice and bias. Among associates, giving in to these faults tends to around feelings of (association) guilt on the one side and resentment and indignation on the other. These moral attitudes are bound to exist once we become attached to those cooperating wit us in a just (or fair) scheme. Some people do not understand why people care about the homeless. They do not understand what good giving them blanket or food will do when the problem is so massive and that is not really a solution. However, when trying to meet the short-term needs and figure out ways to bring long-term changes to people’s life, starting with handouts and basic supplies is a great way to show compassion. Sometimes it seems like just a band-aid. However, this is how we build relationships. These people become our friends and they trust us to help them in bigger way. There are plenty of struggles, but giving always makes the difference in a Christian’s life. Instead of just reading the Scriptures, we can start living them. Everything someone does to improve the life of someone who is going through a struggle make a big difference to those in need—and to those who give as well. Some people’s problems are beyond the spiritual, and that is when we have to step out in faith. The Lord knows the challenges we all face. If we keep His commandments, we will be entitled to the wisdom and blessings of Heaven in solving them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The appeal to self-respect and accountability is they key to helping needy people. It is the only way to break the cycle of their poverty. Teaching people who to manage and extend their resources helps set them free. The principle of self-reliance or personal independence is fundamental to the happy life. In too many places, in too many ways, we are getting away from it. Unless we use care, we are on the verge of doing to ourselves emotionally (and, therefore, spiritually) what we have been working so hard for generations to avoid materially. Being a Christian is a matter of obedience—and that means helping people in need as the Holy Spirit leads. The people in the inner city are living by the roadside, wounded by economic hardship; they do not even know how to help themselves. Meanwhile, there are a lot of good church people passing by on the other side. Someone needs to cautiously stop and take a risk. We cannot help the poor from afar. Those who want to help them need to relocate and become part of their neighbourhoods. Also, racial, social, and economic barriers created by racial hostility can be broken only by the forgiveness and healing that takes place through reconciliation; only the gospel of Christ truly provides this. As we read the Christian Bible, Jesus Christ presents a radical call for those who have, to share with those who do not. This means redistribution through sharing skills, technology, and educational resources. We have to model the hopes and values of the Kingdom of God for the kingdom of man. They are based in human dignity and a view of economics designed to equip people to climb out of their condition rather than manacling them to their poverty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

It is a magicians bargain: give up our souls, get power in return. However, once our souls, that is, ourselves have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. Truly important changes in culture begin not from officials or celebrities, but through ordinary people: the little platoons. Every person can—and should—seek to make a difference in one’s corner of the World by personal helping those in need. Beyond this, some people, like William Wilberforce, are called to work through government structure and by political means to being Christian influence into the culture. Those who do, however, need to be forewarned: the everyday business of politics is power, and power, as I know well from own experience, can be perilous for anyone. The human desire to control one’s own destiny and to impose one’s will on other is the most basic human motivation. We are moved without know it by an imperious will to power, which brooks no obstacles. The will to power has filled society’s vacuum of values. We see it on an individual level in the quest for autonomy and the shedding of all restraints. On a corporate level, it is dramatically evident in the rise of gangster leaders, and evident as well in the bloated growth of Western governments. The resultant illusion—that all power resides in large institutions—is the salient characteristic of modern politics. Since power is often measures by one’s prominence and ability to influence others, in today’s World, politics is the most visible means to both. Hunger for political power lures men and women from the comfort of their homes and jobs in the private sector and drives them to spend months, even years, traveling about their state or nation, subsisting on stale sandwiches, greasy chicken, and little sleep as they should the same soul-stirring speech over and over until they are hoarse. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Candidates for Congress spend several million dollars to fight for a job that pay a little under $200,000 a year; others settle for lower-paying bureaucratic positions. Still others give huge political contributions in the hopes of acquiring even an obscure embassy appointment. Certainly in every generation there are states-people motivated by a genuine noblesse oblige, a sense of high calling to serve humanity. For the most part, it is will to power that fuels political passion in every culture. In the political arena one of the most important attributes of power is its visibility. So people go to great lengths to protect their territory or prerogatives. The pursuit of power affects entire governments or regions, as well as individuals. Those in office use their power to keep themselves in office. This is an accepted tradition in most Wester democracies. In every American election since the forties the party in power has used grants and federal assistance programs for political advantage. President Truman won his upset victory in 1948 by doling out federal funds to struggling farmers and openly courting special-interest groups. President Eisenhower judiciously announced grants in key states during the 1956 campaign. In the Kennedy and Johnson year a special White House office monitored election-year grants, and party fund-raisers notified defense contractors of impending contracts. Administrations since have adopted similar practices. All governments also use the reality as well as the façade of power to maintain their own power. Eventually people start to see public office as a holy crusade. They party seeks power entirely for its own sake, they are interested only in power, the object of power is power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

While power may begin as a means to an end, it also becomes the end itself. Having witnessed Watergate, one can attest to the wisdom of Lord Acton’s well-known adage: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is crucial to note, however, that it is power that corrupts, not power that is corrupt. It is like electricity. When properly handled, electricity provides light and energy; when mishandled it destroys. God has given power to the state to be used to restrain evil and maintain order. It is the use of power, whether for personal gain or for the state’s ordained function, that is at issue. The problem of power is not limited to public officials, of course. It affects all human relationships, from the domineering parent to the bullying boss to the manipulative spouse of the pastor who plays God. It is also wielded effectively by the seemingly weak who manipulate others to gain their own ends. The temptation to abuse power confronts everyone, including people in positions of spiritual authority. It is ludicrous for any Christian to believe that one is the worthy object of public worship; it would be like a donkey carrying Jesus Christ into Jerusalem believing that crows were cheering and laying down their garments for him or her, not Jesus. However, the perks and public adoration accompanying television exposure are enough to inflate anyone’s ego. This leads to the self-indulgent use of power some have subbed the “Imelda Marcos syndrome,” which reasons, “because I am in this position, I have a right to do whatever I want,” with total selfishness and disregard for others. Power is like saltwater; the more you drink the thirstier your get. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It is difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below. It was this very temptation of power that led to the first sin. Eve was tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge to be like God and acquire power reserved for Him. The sin of the Garden was the sin of power. Power has been one of Satan’s most effective tools from the beginning, perhaps because one lusts for it so oneself. Milton wrote of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, “To reign is worth ambition, though in hell. Better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven.” The claims of the inner life for attention and satisfaction are too often thrust aside, with a consequent unbalance. This deplorable condition increases until in middle life bodily malfunctions and maladies begin to appear, nervous and emotional stresses begin to cause trouble. It is then that the little “I” starts to break down. However, because those clams are still, consciously or unconsciously, resisted, the cures are either temporary or followed, later, by new forms of ill health. This is not to say that there is only a single origin of sickness or disease, but it is certainly a very modern one. If the change begins in the body’s behaviour it may influence the mind to a very limited extent, but if it begins in the mind’s thinking it will influence the body to a very large extent. That is the difference. If, when we consider a subject from the standpoint of medicine, psychology, biology, or philosophy, we treat the body and the mind as two entirely separable things, it would be a mistake. They have a common origin. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

We agree with all those virile advocates of health who assert that it is the foundation of human happiness. However, we would widen its definition and make it include mental, emotional, and spiritual health. The psychological causes of disease have only recently come under investigation by the strict methods of modern science, but the general fact of their existence was known thousands of years ago. Plato, for instance, said: “This is the great error of our say, that physicians separate the inner being from the body.” What needs to be learned and accepted is the mentalist law of reproduction—as apart from the biological law—which teaches that sustained thoughts or violent feelings may produce physical-body effects. Many of the conventional ideas prevalent in the medical profession are still materialistic, although some members of that profession do not shut their eyes to the dominant role of mind in the mind-body relationship. When the perceptions of the inner being are developed, the all-importance of healing wrong thought-emotion becomes clear. The belief that disease exists entirely in the mind is an exaggerated one. The opposite belief that it exists entirely in the body is equally carried too far. In both cases experience and reflection must ultimately produce a reaction, provided prejudice is not stronger than the spirit of truth-seeking. Nothing that happens to a human happens to one’s flesh alone or to one’s mind alone. The one can never exclude the other, for both have to suffer together, or enjoy together, or progress together. Here again mentalism makes it possible for us to understand the basic principle which is at work. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The entire body being a mental construct, it is occasionally possible to apply mental forces so as to repair wastage, heal disease, and restore healthy functioning. We say “occasionally” advisedly, for reasons which will shortly be given. Psychosomatic medicine deals with physical diseases caused by emotional or mental factors, by moods of fears, by hidden conflicts or repressions. It has steadily been rising into an influence place of its own in recent years. Mentalism affirms the true nature of the body, and hence of the nerves in the body. Pain is a condition of those nerves and hence must ultimately be what the body is—an idea in the mind. What healing agent can be used successful to cure a pathological condition whose first origin is the mind? Should it not also be mental? The power of bodily conditions to control thinking is admittedly true. Experience tells us that this is so, that physical causes are effectual in producing mental-emotional results. However, this is not the whole true. The reverse fact, that spiritual and psychic forces can heal or injure the body, that thoughts and feelings can affect its functioning, must also be admitted into consideration. Even if it be hard to grant by sceptics that the mind is the whole cause of a particular sickness, they may be willing to grant that it is at least a contributing cause. If the individual mind were completely cut off from the Universal Mind, if it really lived in a realm composed only of its own thought, then the formation and continuation of the World-image would be fully under its control. However, this is not the case. Consequently it lacks the freedom to mold the body-thought as it would or prolong its life at will. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

In the process of announcing the Kingdom and offering redemption from the Fall, Jesus Christ turned conventional views of power upside down When His disciples argued over who was the greatest, Jesus rebuked them. “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves,” he said. Imagine the impact His statement would make in the back rooms of American politicians or in the carpeted boardrooms of big business—or, sadly, in some religious councils. Jesus was as good as His words. He washed His own followers’ dusty feet, a chore reserved for the lowliest servant of the first-century Palestine. A king serving the mundane physical needs of His subjects? In comprehensible. Yet servant leadership is the heart of Christ’s teaching. “Whoever want so be first must be slave of all.” His was a revolutionary message to the class-conscious culture of the first century, where position and privilege were entrenched, evidenced by the Pharisees with their reserved seats in the synagogue, by masters ruling slaves, and by men dominating women. It is no less revolutionary today in the class-conscious cultures of the Old World and the New World where power, money, fame, and influence are idolized in various forms. I have the feeling that the Christian theologian are reluctant to come in through the door I have tried to open. I have tried to relate Christianity to the sacredness of all life. It seems to me this is a vital part of Christianity as I understand it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

However, the Christian theologians, many of the, confine Christianity to be the human form of life. It does not seem to me to be correct. It lacks the essential universalization that I associate with Jesus. Why limit reverence for life to the human form? We cannot understand God’s ways. However, we can understand through Jesus that in all our suffering we still have a Father in Heaven. And this calms people’s hearts. I know that many are as convinced as I that in spite of suffering we need not doubt God’s love and faithfulness. We are still heirs of His Kingdom and still His children, and so we may rest assured that He will always lift us above misfortune. That is why our Lord says to be: “Blessed are those who suffer, for they shall be comforted.” It is amazing paradox that the Overself completely transcends the body yet completely permeates it: both these descriptions are simultaneously true. Although the Overself does not pass through the diverse experiences of its imperfect image, the ego, nevertheless it witnessed them. Although it is aware of the pan and pleasure experienced by the body which it is animating, it does not itself feel them; although detached from physical sensations, it is not ignorant of them. On the other hand, the personal consciousness does feel them because it regards them as states of its own self. Thus the Overself is conscious of our joys and sorrows without itself sharing them. It is away of our sense-experience without itself being physically sentient. Those who wonder how this is possible should reflect that a human awakened from nightmare is aware once again in the form of a revived memory of what one suffered and what one sensed but yet does not share again either the suffering or the sensation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The Overself perceives and knows that individual self, but only as an imperturbable witness—in the same way that the sun witnesses the various objects upon the Earth but does not enter into a particular relation with a particular object. So too the Overself is present in each individual self as the witness and as the unchanging consciousness which gives consciousness to the individual. The “I” is immeasurably greater than the ego which it projects or than the intellect, which the ego uses. The normal human thinks one is body plus mind, with emphasis on the body. However, self-questioning and analysis show that, although one certainly has these two things and is certainly associated with them, the “I” is in fact neither of them. It is, by contrast, not changing and quite elusive. It is not in space, as the body is, nor in time, as the mind is. It is, in fact, a mystery. The attempt to find out what it is brings up the questions of existence, life, activity, and consciousness. All that anyone basically possesses unlost through all one’s life is one’s “I.” All that one really is, is this same “I.” The physical body, although seemingly inseparable from it, is something lived in and used, as a house is lived in and a tool is used. To look at a human and at one’s life from the outside is only to see half the human. To look at one from the inside is to see the other half. Put these two fragments together and there is the whole human. Or so it would seem. However, what if behind one’s thoughts and feelings there were still another self of an utterly different kind and quality? And this exactly is one’s situation. One does not know all of oneself, and one understands it even less. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Those who have been privileged to look being the veil can only urge one to recognize this incompleteness and teach one what steps to take to overcome it. The divine soul in us utterly above and unaffected by the sense impressions. If we become conscious of it, we also become conscious of a supersensual order of existence. It is a higher self not only in a moral sense but also in a cosmic sense. For the lower one issued forth from it, but under limitations of consciousness, form, space, and time which are not in the parent Self. When we come to see that it is the body alone that expresses the coming into life and the going into death, that in the true self there is neither a beginning nor an ending but rather LIFE itself, we shall see aright. We thank Thee, O Father for the joy and gladness of this festival. At this Season of our Freedom, we are grateful unto Thee, O Redeemer of America, for the redemption Thou hast wrought for our fathers and for us. Thou did bring us forth from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from human bondage to Thy divine service. As Thou wast with our fathers, we pray Thee, be with us in every generation, and bear growth and provide safe harbour in unlimited recesses. We would travel eternity to experience your grace for there lies beauty in radiant abundance and it gives tenor to the vast ocean of our lives. Please protect this paradise. Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Writing Free Verse is Like Playing Tennis with the Net Down!
I believe that humans will not merely endure; they will prevail. A writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of humans has no dedication nor any membership in literature. There is only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that are real and immediate is the process of a rational mind. Catch-22 is a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. For example, I cannot start my own business until I have the money, and I cannot get the money until I start my own business. Oh my goodness, this is a real Catch-22. When you view it from the outside, nature looks beautiful and marvelous. However, when you read its pages like a book, it is horrible. And its cruelty is so senseless! The most precious form of life is sacrificed to the lowliest. A child breathes the germs of tuberculosis. He grows and flourishes but is destined to suffering and premature death because these lowly creatures multiply in his vital organs. How often in Africa have I been overcome with horror when I examined the blood of a patient who was suffering from sleeping sickness. Why did this man, his face contorted in pain, have to sit in front of me, groaning, “Oh, my head, my head”? Why should he have to suffer night after night and die a wretched death? Because there, under the microscope, were minute, pale corpuscles, one ten-thousandth of a millimeter long—not very many, sometimes such a very few that one had to look for hours to find them at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
The fact that in nature one creature may cause pain to another and even deal with in instinctually in the most cruel way, is a harsh mystery that weighs on us as long as we live. The World given over to ignorance and egotism is like a valley shrouded in darkness. Only one creature can escape and catch a glimpse of the light: the highest creature, man. His is the privilege of achieving the knowledge of shared experience and compassion, of transcending the ignorance in which the rest of creation pines. It comes to this—that much of human disease and sickness is traceable to the faculty functioning of the human self. Learn how to use that self correctly in its physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects and you learn how to prevent or cure part, or most, or even all of your ill health. When a person’s healthy has broken down, nothing seems so important to one as its restoration. It is only then that one realizes the value of good health. This has been stated from the merely conventional and Worldly standpoint. However, what of the spiritual standpoint? The aspirant whose health has broken down becomes continually preoccupied with the condition of one’s body, so that the thoughts and time which one gives to it are taken from the thoughts and time which one could have given to one’s spiritual aspiration. And when one comes to one’s meditation periods, one may find it difficult to rise above one’s bodily states, so that even one’s concentration and power of meditation may be disturbed by it. For after all, the body is the instrument with which one has to work, and through which one has to achieve one’s high purpose during incarnation on this Earth. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
This is why systems have been created to lay a foundation of health and strength for the spiritual endeavours of the aspirant. Moreover, if one seeks to be of service to one’s fellow humans, one’s capacity to serve will be limited by the condition of one’s health, and may even be inhibited on the physical plane altogether. With good health one becomes more valuable to others but with bad health less so. What is wrong with offering physical benefits to the students of philosophy? Why should it not make them healthier and help overcome their difficulties? Why should philosophy be indifferent to their personal welfare? It is something fit only to be read about in library chairs or meditated upon in mountain caves? That is to say, fit only for dreamers and not for those who have to struggle and suffer in the World? No—it is something to be proud of, not something to be ashamed of, that philosophy shows us how to live so as to prevent avoidable sickness and how to find a path out of perplexing difficulties. There is nothing meritorious in meekly accepting illness and disease because they are God’s will. The human being is entitled to defend its body against them. One should be ready to die at any times but not willing to do so. For the need of staying on in the body until a deeper spiritual awareness has been gained should make one care more for one’s health, fitness, and efficiency. If the body does not become non-existent because, ultimately, it is a thought-form, neither does it become unimportant. For it is only in this body that we can attain and realize the ultimate consciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
If, as has been explained in the past, the physical wakeful state is the only one in which the task of true self-realization can be fully accomplished by the individual, then it is also the only state in which all humankind will ever accomplish it. As the social arrangements and living conditions in the World may accelerate or slow down the process of enlightenment, it becomes clear that the nature of those physical arrangements and conditions is important in the eyes of those who care for humankind’s spiritual welfare. Consequently, true wisdom cannot be indifferent to them but, on the contrary, will always seek to improve the one and ameliorate the other. Why should we refuse, in the name of an other-World sanctity, the healing gifts of Nature because they help heal the body which belongs to this World? Are we such ethereal creatures already, have we attained the disembodied state, that we can afford to neglect the aches and pains, the ills and malfunctions of this, our Earthly body? Most of the individual’s health troubles are the result of Universal law. The body is a source of pleasure and misery to nearly all; but both being temporary, the one balances the other. One should do one’s utmost to keep one’s body in good health by following the best program of physical living, diet, and so on, that one’s own experience and expert advice can suggest. One should try the most reasonable treatment for illness which both the Old World and New World medical systems can offer. After one has done these things then there is nothing more one can do except to take one’s suffering as a constant reminder of the necessity of seeking happiness in a spiritual self above the body. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
If you did not carry something valuable, the enemy would not fight you. They try to tackle the one with the ball, not the one on the bench. The question you ask about the inevitability of ill health on this needs a page to itself. Generally speaking, there is no such inevitability. Indeed the cleansing of the subconscious mind, the discipline of the bodily senses, and the quieting of the emotional nature promote good health. Where, however, the student through ignorance or through outside factors fails to make certain period for one’s further evolution—then one’s higher self forces those changes upon one through upheavals or upsets in one’s environment or in one’s body. This is done by sending down some Universal Laws. In the later case it means, of course, illness or disease—sometimes “accident.” This cover certain individual cases, but there are many others where ill health is only the ordinary Universal Legal result of earlier transgressions of the laws of physical, emotional, moral, or mental health, and not the result of special Overself intervention. Finally, there is the third group where it is the result of the natural imperfection of life on this Earth where everything is, at this point in time, more than likely doomed to decay and perish, unless supernatural forces are employed to keep things under constant maintenance. Nobody escapes this general law. Queen Akasha could not escape it nor could Nino Brown. Such higher life, a diviner better existence; so it is not useless. This Earth is not our true how. We are here on mortal probation. We belong elsewhere, nearer to God’s perfection, beauty, and harmony. The Word tells us to bless God in all things not for all things! No matter what you are facing—PRAISE HIM! #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The days of our mortal probation are numbered, but none of us knows the number of those days. Each day of preparation is precious. This life is the time for humans to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for humans to preform their labours. We have a special understanding of the eternal nature of our souls. We know that we had a premortal existence. We accepted our Heavenly Father’s great plan of happiness and chose to follow our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Principles we adopted and for which we contended were: agency, the ability to choose good or evil; progress, the ability to learn and become like our Heavenly Father; and faith, faith in our Father’s plan and in the Atonement of Jesus Christ that enables us to return to the presence of God. Consequently, we were permitted to enter mortal life. Concerning mortal life, the Master said, “We will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all thing whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” We understand that we will live a postmortal life of infinite duration and that we determine the kind of life it will be by our thoughts and actions in mortality. Mortality is very brief but immeasurably important. We learn from the scriptures that the “course of the Lord is one eternal round” and that God knows “all thing, being from everlasting to everlasting.” We are also eternal beings. Our presence here on Earth is an essential step in our loving Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness for His children. “We are, that we might have joy.” The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that “happiness is the object and design of our existence. If we purse the path of virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
We do not need gun control; humans need to learn to control the violence in their hearts. We, too, are under the painful law of necessity when, to prolong our own existence, we must bring other creatures to a painful end. However, we should never cease to consider this as something tragic and incomprehensible. Right now, this very moment, is part of our eternal progression toward retuning with our families to the presence of our Father in Heaven. President Gordon B. Hinckley taught: “We are here in this life with a marvelous inheritance, a divine endowment. If every person realized that all of one’s actions have eternal consequences, how different this World would be. If we recognized that we form each day the stuffy of which eternity is made, how much more satisfying our years may be.” That understanding helps us to make wise decisions in the many choices of our daily lives. Seeing life from an eternal perspective helps us focus our limited mortal energies on the things that matter most. We can avoid wasting our lives and laying “up for ourselves treasures upon the Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt.” We can lay up treasures in Heaven and not trade our eternal spiritual birthright. The time will come when public opinion will no longer tolerate amusements based on the mistreatment and killing of living and inanimate beings. The time will come, but when? When will we reach the point that hunting, the pleasure of killing living beings for sport, will be regarded as a mental aberration? When will all the killing that necessity imposes upon us be undertaken with sorrow? #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The rate of turnover in our lives in our lives, for example, can be influenced by conscious decisions. We can, to further highlight this illustration, cut down on change and stimulation by consciously maintaining longer-term relationships with the various elements of our physical environment. Thus, we can refuse t purchase throw-away products. We can hang onto the old jacket for another season; we can stoutly refuse to follow the latest fashion trend; we can resist when the salesperson tells us it is time to trade in our Ultimate Driving Machine. In this way, we reduce the need to make and break ties with the physical objects around us. We can use the same tactic with respect to people and the other dimensions of experience. There are times when even the most gregarious person feels anti-social and refuses invitations to parties or other events that call for social interaction. We consciously disconnect. In the same way, we can minimize travel. We can resist pointless reorganizations in our company, church, fraternal or community groups. In making important decisions, we can consciously weight the hidden costs of change against the benefits. None of this is to suggest that change can or should be stopped. Nothing is less sensible than the advice of the Duke of Cambridge who is said to have harumphed: “Any change, at any time for any reason is to be deplored.” The theory of the adaptive range suggests that, despite its physical costs, some level of change is as vital to health as too much change in damaging. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Some people, for reasons still not clear, are pitched at a much higher level of stimulus hunger than others. They seem to crave change even when others are feeling from it. A new Cresleigh house, a new Ultimate Driving Machine, another trip to Paris, another crisis on the job, more house guests, visits, financial adventures and misadventures—they seem to accept all these and more without apparent ill effect. Yet close analysis of such people often reveals the existence of what might be called “stability zones” in their lives—certain enduring relationships that are carefully maintained despite all kinds of other changes. One man I know has run through a series of love affairs a divorce, and remarriage—all within a very short span of time. One thrives on change, enjoys travel, new foods, new ideas, new movies, plays, and books. He has a high intellect and a low “boring point,” is impatient with tradition and restlessly eager for novelty. Ostensibly, he is walking exemplar of change. When we look more closely, however, we find that he has stayed on the same job for ten years. He drives a car he bought brand new, which is still in perfect condition. His clothes are not new. His closet friends are long-time professional associates and even a few old college buddies. Another case involves a man who has changed jobs at a mind-staggering rate, has moved his family thirteen times in eighteen years, travels extensively, rents cars, uses throw-away products, prides himself on leading the neighbourhood in trying out new gadgets, and generally lives in a restless whirl of transience, newness and diversity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Once more, however, a second look reveals significant stability zones in his life: a good, tightly woven relationship with his wife of nineteen years; continuing ties with his parents; old college friends interspersed with the new acquaintances. A different form of stability zone is the habit pattern that goes with the person wherever one travels, no mater what other changes alter one’s life. A professor who has moved seven times in ten years, who travels constantly in the United States of America, South America, Europe and Africa, who has changed job repeatedly, pursues the same daily regimen wherever he is. He reads between eight and nine in the morning, takes forty-five minutes for exercise at lunch time, and then catches a half-hour cat-nap before plunging into work that keeps him busy until 10.00 P.M. The problem is not, therefore, to suppress change, which cannot be done, but to manage it. If we opt for rapid change in certain sectors of life, we can consciously attempt to build stability zones elsewhere. A divorce, perhaps, should not be too closely followed by a job transfer. Since the birth of a child alters all the human ties within a family, it ought not, perhaps, be followed too closely by a relocation which causes tremendous turnover in human ties outside the family. The recent widow should not, perhaps, rush to sell her Cresleigh McMansion. To design workable stability zones, however, to alter the larger patterns of life, we need far more potent tools. We need, first of all, a radically new orientation toward the future. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Ultimately, to manage change we must anticipate it. However, the notion that one’s personal future can be, to some extent, anticipated, files in the face of persistent folk prejudice. Most people, deep down, believe that the future is a blank. Yet the truth is that we can assign probabilities to some of the changes that lie in store for us, especially certain large structural changes, and there are ways to use knowledge in designing personal stability zones. We can, for example, predict with certainty that unless or science intervenes, we shall grow older; that our children, our relatives and friends will also grow older; and that after a certain point our health will begin to deteriorate. Obvious as this may seem, we can, as a result of this simple statement, infer a great deal about our lives one, five or ten years hence, and about the amount of change we will have to absorb in the interim. Few individuals or families plan head systematically. When they do, it is usually in terms of a budget. Yet we can forecast and influence our expenditure of time and emotion as well as money. Thus it is possible to gain revealing glimpses of one’s own future, and to estimate the gross level of change lying ahead, by periodically preparing what might be called a Time and Emotion Forecast. This is an attempt to assess the percentage time and emotional energy invested in various important aspects of life—and to see how this might change over the years. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
One can, for example, list in a column those sectors of life that seem most important to us: Health, Occupation, Leisure, Material Relations, Parental Relations, Filial Relations, et cetera. It is then possible to jot down next to each item a “guesstimate” of the amount of time we presently allocate to that sector. By way of illustration: given a nine-to-five job, a half-hour commute, and the usual vacations and holidays, a man employing this method would find that he devotes approximately 25 percent of his time to work. Although it is, of course, much more difficult, one can also make a subjective assessment of the percentage of one’s emotional energy invested in the job. If one is bored and secure, one may invest very little—there being no necessary correlation between time devoted and emotion invested. If one performs this exercise for each of the important sectors of one’s life, forcing oneself to write in a percentage even when it is no more than an extremely crude estimate, and toting up the figures to make sure they never exceed 100 percent, one will be rewarded with some surprising insights. For the way one distributes one’s time and emotional energies is a direct clue to one’s value system and one’s personality. The payoff for engaging in this process really begins, however, when one projects forward, asking oneself honestly and in detail how one’s job, or one’s marriage, or one’s relationship with one’s children or one’s parents is likely to develop within the years ahead. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
If, for example, one is a thirty-year-old middle manager with two teenage sons, two surviving parents or in-laws, and an incipient duodenal ulcer, one can assume that within half a decade one’s boys will be off to college or living away on their own. Time devoted to parental concerns will probably decline. Similarly, one can anticipate some decline in the emotional energies demanded by one’s parental role. On the other hand, as one’s own parents and in-laws grow older, one’s filial responsibility will probably look larger. If they are sick, one may have to devote large amounts of time and emotion to their care. If they are statistically likely to die within the period under study, one needs to face this fact. It tells one that one can expect a major change in one’s commitments. One’s own health, in the meantime, will not be getting any better. In the same way, one can hazard some guesses about one’s job—one’s chances for promotion, the possibility of reorganization, relocation, retraining, et cetera. All this is difficult, and it does not yield, “knowledge of the future.” Rather, it helps one make explicit some of one’s assumptions about the future. As one moves forward, filling in the forecast for the present year, the next year, the fifth or tenth year, patterns of change will begin to emerge. One will see that in certain years there are bigger shifts and redistributions to be expected than in others. Some years are choppier, more change-filled than others. And one can then, on the strength of these systematic assumptions, decide how to handle major decisions in the present. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Should the family move next year—or will there be enough turmoil and change without that? Should he quit his job? Buy a new Ultimate Driving Machine with the Competition Package? Take a costly vacation to Tahiti? Put his elderly father-in-law in a nursing home? Have an affair? Can he afford to rock his marriage or change his profession? Should he attempt to maintain certain levels of commitment unchanged? These techniques are extremely crude tools for personal planning. Perhaps the psychologists and social psychologist can design sharper instruments, more sensitive to differences in probability, more refined and insight-yielding. Yet, if we search for clues rather than certainties, even these primitive devices can helps us moderate or channel the flow of change in our lives. For, by helping us identify the zones of rapid change, they also help us identify—or invent-stability zones, pattern of relative constancy in the overwhelming flux. They improve the odds in the personal struggle to manage change. Nor is this a purely negative process—a struggle to suppress or limit change. The issues for any individual attempting to cope with rapid change is how to maintain oneself within the adaptive range, and, beyond that, how to find the exquisite optimum point at which one lives at peak effectiveness. Dr. John L. Fuller, a senior scientist at the Jackson Laboratory, a bio-medical research center in Bar Harbour, Maine, has conducted experiments in the impact of experiential deprivation and overload. “Some people,” he says, “achieve a certain sense of serenity, even in the midst of turmoil, not because they are immune to emotion, but because they have found ways to get just the “right” amount of change in their lives. The search for that optimum may be what much of the “pursuit of happiness” is about. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Trapped, temporarily, with the limited nervous and endocrine systems given us by evolution, we must work out new tactics to help us regulate the stimulation to which we subject ourselves. It was quite incomprehensible to me—this was before I began going to school—why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and has kissed me goodnight, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: “O Heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; please guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace.” It is our duty to share and maintain life. Reverence concerning all life is the greatest commandment in its most elementary form. Or expressed in negative terms: Thou shalt not kill. In everything you recognize yourself. The tiny birds that fly in your path—it is a little creature, struggling for existence like yourself, rejoicing in the sun like you, knowing fear and pain like you. And now it is no more than decaying matter—which is what you will be sooner or later, too. When I hear a baby’s cry of pain change into a normal cry of hunger, to my ears that is the most beautiful music—and there are those who say I have good ears for music. Whoever is spared personal pain must feel oneself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. The point where humans meet the Infinite is the Overself, where one, the finite, responds to what is absolute, ineffable and inexhaustible Being, where one reacts to That which transcends one’s own existence—this is the Personal God one experiences and comes into relation with. In this sense one’s belief in such a God is justifiable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Overself is the inner or true self of humans, reflecting the divine being and attributes. The Overself is an emanation from the ultimate reality but is neither a division nor a detached fragment of it. It is a ray shinning forth but not the sun itself. It is true that the nature of God is inscrutable and that the laws of God are inexorable. However, it is also true that the God-linked soul of humans is accessible and its intuitions available. This divine self is the unkillable and unlosable soul, forever testifying to the source, whence it came. Those who consider the hidden mind to be a mere storehouse of forgotten childhood memories or adolescent experiences and repressed adult wishes consider only a part of it, only a fraction. There is another and even still more hidden part which links humans with the very sources of the Universe—God. That point of contact in consciousness where humans first feels God and later vanishes into God, is the Overself. The Overself is a part of the One Infinite Life-Power as the dewdrop is a part of the ocean. In the normally covered center of a human’s being, covered by one’s thoughts and feelings and passions as a person, a self, IT IS. It is here that one is connected with the larger Being behind the Universe, the World-Mind. In this sense one is not really an isolated unit, not alone. God is with one. It was a simple shepherd on Mount Horeb who, during a glimpse, asked “Who are Thou?” Came the answer: “I am He Who IS!” With this grand consciousness, humans reach the APHELION of one’s orbit. One can go no higher and remain human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Speaking metaphorically, we may say that the Overself is that fragment of God which dwells in humans, a fragment which has all the quality and grandeur of God without all is amplitude and power. The World-Mind’s reflection in us is the Overself. The thoughts and feelings which flow like a river through our consciousness make up the surface self. However, underneath them there is a deeper self which, being an emanation from the divine reality, constitutes our true self. The greatest thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as the our World might last a hundred years. Ever since giving to the needy became chic in Hollywood, we have been treated to a billion-dollar bonanza of celebrity benefits. Band-Aid, the Britney concert to help starving children, started the assistance wagons rolling. Then came Hands Across America which linked up from Los Angeles to New York to raise $100 million for domestic homelessness and hunger, while the Freedom Festival raised money for Vietnam veterans. And then there is my favorite: Sport Aid, which began with a runner leaving Ethiopia with a torch lighted from a refugee’s campfire. One jogged through several Ethiopia with a torch lighted from a refugee’s campfire. He jogged through several European cities. Then this tireless athlete flew to New York, torch in hand, (I wonder what he did when the “no smoking” sign came on?), where he lighted a flame in Manhattan’s United Nations Plaza, signaling the start of simultaneous 10-kilometer runs around the World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The plan, said organizer Bob Geldof was to raise money to fight disease and hunger in Africa. While few of us would deny that helping starving, homeless, and needy people is a good thing, this sudden aid frenzy did raise some practical questions. In an industry where publicity is the ticket to success, one may be excused for wondering if celebrity participation in such compassion extravaganzas is altogether altruistic. The “We Are the World” video, which has sold millions of copies, reminds us less of starving children than of the great humanitarianism of its showcase of rock idols. The goals may be worthy, but such slickly publicized charity certainly recalls biblical warnings against hiring trumpeters—or camera crews—to record one’s good deeds. We might put aside our suspicions as petty if only we knew that those in need were being helped. However, are they? The New Republic reports that while USA for Africa, the organization behind Live Aid, appeals for contributions to help the starving, 55 percent of its money is instead waiting to be spent on “recovery and long-term development projects,” something celebrity efforts may be ill-equipped to pull off. As of early 1986, of the $92 million raised by Live Aid and Band Aid, according to Newsweek, only $7 million has gone to emergency relief. Another $.6.5 million has been spent on trucks and ships to haul supplies; $20 million has been earmarked for projects like bridges in Chad. The rest sits in banks accounts somewhere. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Even noncontroversial goals such as feeding the hungry can get bogged down in squabbles over how money and food should be distributed, or stymied at the Marxist-controlled ports of Ethiopia. Let us not kid ourselves. Just because the fans in London or Philadelphia go home satisfied does not mean that the hungry in Africa go home fed. Rock promoter Bill Graham said of celebrity assistance, “It is an incredible power, knowing on any given day you can raise a million dollars.” Newsweek observed: “Perhaps that is why Live Aid and Farm Aid were such oddly upbeat exercises in self-congratulation. An industry was celebrating its power. Far from challenging the complacency of an audience, such mega-events reinforce it. Now by watching a pop music telethon and making a donation, fans can enjoy vicariously a sense of moral commitment.” Despite all the ballyhoo, feeding the hungry did not originate with Live-Aid. Christians have been doing it since the church began, not for T-shirts and pop albums, but in obedience to Christ’s command to care for those in need. Organizations such as World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, the Salvation Army, and millions of local churches have for generations been feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and clothing the needy without the glamorous carrot-and-stick razzle-dazzle so recently discovered by the rich and famous. This kind of Christian patriotism also benefits society as a whole. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Jacques Ellul wrote that the answer to the big government illusion is small voluntary associations. As mentioned earlier, eighteenth-century statesman Edmund Burke described such voluntary groups as the “little platoons.” These are citizens—individuals or groups—who perform works of mercy and oppose injustice. They are the salt and light of which Jesus Christ spoke. Culture is most profoundly changed bot by the efforts of huge institutions but by individual people being changed. In the process, these citizens provide the main bulwark against government’s insatiable appetite for power and control, and a safeguard against the sense of impotence fostered by today’s overwhelming social problems. One person can make a difference. A few months after Bob Geldof announced the success of Life Aid, and while critics were still questioning whether food was actually arriving in the places of need, I want to Nairobi, Kenya, for a Prison Fellowship International conference. There I met a man who, though worthy of adulation, will never make the cover of Rolling Stone. Pascal was a university professor when he was thrown into a Madagascar prison after a Marxist coup. While in prison he became a Christian. After his release, Pascal began a small import-export company, but he kept returning to prison to preach the gospel to the men he had met there and others who had arrived since. During one such visit in early 1986, he walked past the infirmary and was shocked to see more than fifty naked corpses piled on the screened veranda, identification tags stuck between their toes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Pascal went to the nurse. Had there been an epidemic, he asked. Of sorts, he was told. Prisoners were dying by the dozens of malnutrition. Pascal left the prison in tears. He tried to get help to fee the starving inmates, but his own church was too poor, and there were no relief agencies to assist. So he began cooking food in his own kitchen and taking it to the prison. Today, Pascal and his wife feed prisoners every week, paying for the food out of the earnings from their small business. Without benefit of a government agency or even a theme song, this little platoon makes all the difference for seven hundred prisoners in Madagascar. The fellowship of those who bear the Mark of Pain. Who are the members of this Fellowship? Those who have learnt by experience what physical pain and bodily anguish mean, belong together all the World over; they re united by a secret bond. Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of humans but that of the whole creation. From this community of suffering, I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of burden of pain which lies upon the World. We have invented many things, but we have not mastered the creation of life. We cannot even create an insect. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
O Thou great, powerful and mighty King Amaimon, who bearest rule by the power of the Supreme God El over all spirits both superior and inferior of the infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and true name of God; and by that God Thou Worshipped; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of God, Iehovah Tetragrammation who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name Primeumaton who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirit Amy to come unto me here before this Circle in a fair and comely shape, without hard unto me or unto any other creature, to answer truly and faithfully unto all my requests; so that I may accomplish my will and desire in knowing or obtaining any matter or thing which by office thou knowest is proper for one to perform or accomplish, through he power of God, El, Who created and doth dispose of all things both celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. After thou shalt have invocated the King in this manner twice or thrice over, then conjure the spirit thou wouldst call forth by the aforesaid conjurations, rehearsing them several times together, and he will come without doubt, if not at he first or second time of rehearsing. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
However, if he does not come, add the “Spirit’s Chain” unto the end of the aforesaid conjurations, and he will be forced to come, even if he be bound in chains, for the chains must break off from him, and he will be at liberty. Lord of Universe, fulfill the wishes of my heart for good. Grant my request and my petition; make me worthy to do Thy will with a perfect heart; and keep me strong to resist temptation. O grant our portion in Thy Torah. Make us worthy of Thy divine presence. Bestow upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, that I may be worthy to perform good deeds in Thy sight, and to walk before Thee in the way of the upright. Sanctify us by Thy commandments, that we may merit on Earth a life of goodness and health and be worthy of life eternal. Guard us from evil deeds and from evil times that may threaten the World. May lovingkindness surround one who trusts in the Lord. Amen. Feel your soul spreading out. Feel it becoming infinite. It must be to kiss creation. Then in one embrace you can caress the Moon and Stars, Mountains, Lakes, people, streams. Everyone, everything in one kiss. Such kissing leaves the kisser behind…and the Earth seems idly wrought coined for words meter bare physic to space. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Accept my prayer, O Lord, and answer me with Thy great mercy and with Thy saving truth. Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Is this the New Phenomenon? Running Away from America and Running Away from Emotion?

Every time you win, you are reborn; when you lose, you die a little. Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one. The definition of the good is purely formal. It simply states that a person’s good is determined by the rational plan of life that one would choose with deliberative rationality from the maximal class of plans. Although the notion of deliberative rationality and the principles of rational choice rely upon concepts of considerable complexity, we still cannot derive from the definition of rational plans alone what sorts of ends these plans are likely to encourage. In order to draw conclusions about these ends, it is necessary to take note of certain general facts. First of all, there are the broad features of human desires and needs, their relative urgency and cycles of recurrence, and their phases of development as affected by physiological and other circumstances. Second, plans must fit the requirements of human capacities and abilities, their trends of maturation and growth, and how they are best trained and educated for this or that purpose. Moreover, I shall postulate a basic principle of motivation which I shall refer to as the Aristotelian Principle. Finally, the general facts of social interdependency must be reckoned with. The basic structure of society is bound to encourage and support certain kinds of plans more than others by rewarding its members for contributing to the common good in ways consistent with justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Taking account of these contingencies narrows down the alternative plans so that the problem of decision becomes, in some cases anyway, reasonably definite. To be sure, as we shall see, a certain arbitrariness still remains, but the priority of right limits it in such a way that it is no longer a problem from the standpoint of justice. Taking account of these contingencies narrows down the alterative plans so that the problem of decision becomes, in some cases anyway, reasonably definite. To be sure, as we shall see, a certain arbitrariness still remains, but the priority of right limits it in such a way that it is no longer a problem from the standpoint of justice. The general facts about human needs and abilities are perhaps clear enough and I shall assume that common sense knowledge suffices for our purpose here. Before taking up the Aristotelian Principle, however, I should comment briefly on the human goods (as I shall call them) and the constraints of justice. Given the definition of a rational plan, if not a central place in our life, we may think of these goods as those activities and ends that have the features whatever they are that suit them for an important. Since in the full theory rational plans must be consistent with the principles of justice, the human goods are similarly constrained. Thus the familiar values of personal affection and friendship, meaningful work and social cooperation, the pursuit of knowledge and the fashioning and contemplation of beautiful objects, are not only prominent in our rational plans but they can for the most part be advanced in a manner which justice permits. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Admittedly to attain and to preserve these values, we are often tempted to act unjustly; but achieving these ends involves no inherent injustice. In contrast with the desire to cheat and to degrade others, doing something unjust is not included in the description of the human goods. The social interdependency of these values is shown in the fact that not only are they good for those who enjoy them but they are likely to enhance the good of others. In achieving these ends we generally contribute to the rational plans of our associates. In this sense, they are complementary goods, and this accounts for their being singled out for special commendation. For to commend something is to praise it, to recount the properties that make it good (rational to want) with emphasis and expressions of approval. These facts of interdependency are further reasons for including the recognized values in long-term plans. For assuming that we desire the respect and good will of other persons, or at least to avoid their hostility and contempt, those plans of life will tend to be preferable which further their aims as well as our own. Turning now to our present topic, it will be recalled that the Aristotelian Principle runs as follows: others things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

Aristotelian Principle denotes that enjoyment and pleasure are not always by any means the result of returning to a healthy or normal state, or of making up deficiencies; rather many kinds of pleasure and enjoyment arise when we exercise our faculties; and that the exercise of our natural power is a leading human good. Further, the idea that the more enjoyable activities and the more desirable and enduring pleasures spring from the exercise of greater abilities involving more complex discriminations is not only compatible with Aristotle’s conception of the natural order, but something like it usually fits the judgments of value he makes, even when it does not express his reasons. The intuitive idea here is that human beings take more pleasures in doing something as they become more proficient at it, and of two activities they do equally well, they prefer the one calling on a larger repertoire of more intricate and subtle discriminations. For example, chess is a more complicated and subtle game than checkers, and trigonometry is more intricate than algebra. Thus the principle say that someone who can do both generally prefers playing chess to playing checkers, and that one would rather study trigonometry than algebra. We need not explain here why the Aristotelian Principle is true. Presumably complex activities are more enjoyable because they satisfy the desire for variety and novelty of experience, and leave room for feats of ingenuity and invention. They also evoke the pleasures of anticipation and surprise, and often the overall form of the activity, its structural development, is fascinating and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Moreover, simpler activities exclude the possibility of individual style and personal expression which complex activities permit or even require, for how could everyone do them in the same way? If we are to find our way at all, that we should follow our natural bent and the lessons of our past experience seems inevitable. Each of these features is well illustrated by chess, even to the point where grand masters have their characteristic style of play. Whether these considerations are explanations of the Aristotelian Principle or elaboration of its means, I shall leave aside. I believe that nothing essential for the theory of the good depends upon this question. It is evident that the Aristotelian Principle contains a variant of the principle of inclusiveness. Or at least the clearest cases of greater complexity are those in which one of the activities to be compared includes all the skills and discrimination of the other activity and some further ones in addition. Once again, we can establish but a partial order, since each of several activities may require abilities not used in the others. Such an ordering is the best that we can have until we possess some relatively precise theory and measure of complexity that enables us to analyze and compare seemingly disparate activities. I shall not, however, discuss this problem here, but assume instead that our intuitive notion of complexity will suffice for our purposes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
The Aristotelian Principle is a principle of motivation. It accounts for many of our major desires, and explains why we prefer to do some things and not others by constantly exerting an influence over the flow of our activity. Moreover, it expresses a psychological law governing changes in the pattern of our desires. Thus the principle implies that as a person’s capacities increase over time (brought about by physiological and biological maturation, for example, the development of the nervous system in a young child), and as one trains these capacities and learns how to exercise them, one will in due course come to prefer the more complex activities that one can now engage in which call upon one’s newly realized abilities. The simpler things one enjoyed before are no longer sufficiently interesting or attractive. If we ask why we are willing to undergo the stresses of practice and learning, the reason may be (if we leave out of account external rewards and penalties) that having had some success at learning things in the past, and experiencing the present enjoyments of the activity, we are led to expect even greater satisfaction once we acquire a greater repertoire of skills. As we witness the exercise of well-trained abilities by others, these displays are enjoyed by us and arouse a desire that we should be able to do the same things ourselves. We want to be like those persons who can exercise the abilities that we find latent in our nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Thus it would appear that how much we learn and how far we educate our innate capacities depends upon how great these capacities are and how difficult is the effort of realizing them. There is a race so to speak, between the increasing satisfaction of exercising greater realized ability and the increasing strains of learning as the activity becomes more strenuous and difficult. Assuming that natural talents have an upper bound, whereas the hardships of training can be made more severe without limit, there must be some level of achieved ability beyond which the gains from a further increase in this level are just offset by the burdens of the further practice and study necessary to bring it abut and to maintain it. Equilibrium is reached when these two forces balance one another, and at this point the effort to achieve greater realized capacity ceases. It follows that if the pleasures of the activity increase too slowly with rising ability (an index let us suppose of a lower level of innate ability), then the correspondingly greater efforts of learning will lead us to give up sooner. In this case we will never engage in certain more complex activities not acquire desires by taking part in them. When we combine the effects of decisional stress with sensory and cognitive overload, we produce several common forms of individual maladaptation. For example, one widespread response to high-speed change is outright denial. The Denier’s strategy is to “block out” unwelcome reality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

When the demand for decisions reaches crescendo, one flatly refuses to take in new information. Like the disaster victim whose face registers total disbelief, Th Denier, too, cannot accept the evidence of one’s senses. Thus one concludes that things really are the same, and that all evidences of change are merely superficial. One finds comfort in such cliches as “young people were always rebellious” or “there is nothing new on the face of the Earth,” or “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” An unknowing victim of future shock, The Denier sets oneself up for personal catastrophe. One’s strategy for coping increases the likelihood that wen one finally is forced to adapt, one’s encounter with change will come in the form of a single massive life crisis, rather than a sequence of manageable problems. A second strategy of the future shock victim is specialism. The Specialist does not block out all novel ideas or information. Instead, one energetically attempts to keep pace with change—but only in a specific narrow sector of life. Thus we witness the spectacle of the physician or financier who makes use of all the latest innovations in one’s profession, but remains rigidly closed to any suggestion for social, political, or economic innovation. The more universities undergo paroxysms of protest, the more ghettos go up in flames, the less one wants to know about them, and the more closely one narrows the slits through which one sees the World. Superficially, one copes well. However, one, too, is running the odds against oneself. One may awake one morning to find one’s specialty obsolete or else transformed beyond recognition by events exploding outside one’s field of vision. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

A third common response to future shock is obsessive reversion to previously successful adaptive routines that are now irrelevant and inappropriate. The Reversionist sticks to one’s previously programmed decisions and habits with strict doctrines and covenants desperately. The more change threatens from without, the more meticulously one repeats past modes of action. One’s social outlook is regressive. Shocked by the arrival of the future, one offers hysterical support for the not-so-status quo, or one demands, in one masked form or another, a return to the glories of yesteryear. The Barry Goldwaters and George Wallaces of the World appeal to one’s quivering gut through the politics of nostalgia. Police maintained order in the past; hence, to maintain order, we need only supply more police. Authoritarian treatment of children worked in the past; hence, the troubles of the present spring from permissiveness. The middle-aged, right-wing reversionst yearns for simple, ordered society of the small town—the slow-paced social environment in which one’s old routines were appropriate. Instead of adapting to the new, one continues automatically to apply the old solutions, growing more and more divorced from reality as one does so. If the older reversionist dreams of reinstating a small-town past, the youthful, left-wing reversionst dreams of reviving an even older social system. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This accounts for some of the fascination with rural communes, the bucolic romanticism that fills the posters and the poetry of the hippie and post-hippie subcultures, the deification of Che Guevara (identified with mountains and jungles, not with urban or post-urban environments), the exaggerated veneration of pre-technological societies and the exaggerated contempt for science and technology. For all their fiery demands for change, at least some sectors of the left share with the Wallacites and Goldwaterites a secret passion for the past. Just as their Indian headbands, their Edwardian capes, their Deerslayer boots and gold-rimmed glasses mimic various eras of the past, so, too, their ideas. Turn-of-the-century terrorism and quaint Black Flag anarchy are suddenly back in vogue. The Rousseauian cult of the noble savage flourishes anew. Antique Marxist ideas, applicable at best to yesterday’s industrialism, are hauled out as knee-jerk answers for the problems of tomorrow’s super-industrialism. Reversionism masquerades as revolution. Finally, we have the Super-Simplifier. With old heroes and institutions toppling, with strikes, riots, and demonstrations stabbing at one’s consciousness, one seeks a single neat equation that will explain all the complex novelties threatening to engulf one. Grasping erratically at this idea or that, one becomes a temporary true believer. This helps account for the rampant intellectual faddism that already threatens to outpace the rate of turnover in fashion. McLuhan? Prophet of the electric age? Levi-Strauss? Wow! Marcuse? Now I see it all! The Maharishi of Whatchmacallit? Fantastic! Astrology? Insight of the ages! #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The Super-Simplifer, groping desperately, invests every idea one comes across with universal relevance—often to the embarrassment of its author. Alas, no idea, not even mine or thine, is omni-insightful. However, for the Super-Simplifer nothing less than total relevance suffices. Maximization of profits explains America. The Communist conspiracy explains race riots. Participatory democracy is the answers. Permissiveness (or Dr. Spock) are the root of all evil. This search for a unitary solution at the intellectual level has its parallels in action. Thus the bewildered, anxious student, pressured by parents, uncertain of one’s draft status, nagged at by an educational system whose obsolescence is more strikingly revealed every day, forced to decide on a career, a set of values, and a worthwhile life style, searches wildly for a way to simplify one’s existence. By turning on to LSD, Methedrine or heroin, one performs an illegal act that has, at least, the virtue of consolidating one’s miseries, but that will only make them worse and lead to jail, addiction, and possibly death. One trades a host of painful and seemingly insoluble troubles for one big problem, thus radically, if temporarily, simplifying existence. The teenage girl who cannot cope with the daily mounting tangle of stresses may choose another dramatic act of super-simplification: running for homecoming queen. Like drug abuse, being homecoming queen may vastly complicate her life later, but it immediately plunges all her other problems into relative insignificance. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Violence, too, offers a “simple” way out of burgeoning complexity of choice and general overstimulation. For the older generation and the political establishment, police truncheons and military bayonets loom as attractive remedies, a way to end dissent once and for all. Many political extremists and racial vigilantes both employ violence to narrow their choices and clarify their lives. For those who lack an intelligent, comprehensive program, who cannot cope with the novelties and complexities of blinding change, terrorism substitutes for thought. Terrorism may not topple regimes, but it removes doubts. Most of us can quickly spot these patterns of behaviour in others—even in ourselves—without, at the same time, understanding their causes. Yet information scientists will instantly recognize denial, specialization, reversion and super-simplification as classical techniques for coping with overload. All of the dangerously evade the rich complexity of reality. They generate distorted images of reality. The more the individual denies, the more one specializes at the expense of wider interests, the more mechanically one reverts to past habits and policies, the more desperately one’s super-simplifies, the more inept one’s responses to the novelty and choice flooding into one’s life. The more one relies on these strategies, the more one’s behaviour exhibits wild erratic swings and general instability. Every information scientist recognizes that some of these strategies may, indeed, be necessary in overload situations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

Yet, unless the individual begins with a clear grasp of relevant reality, and unless one begins with cleanly defined values and priorities, one’s reliance on such techniques will only deepen one’s adaptive difficulties. These preconditions, however, are increasingly difficult to meet. Thus the future shock victim who does employ these strategies experiences a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Caught in the turbulent flow of change, called upon to make significant, rapid-fire life decisions, one feels not simply intellectual bewilderment, but disorientation at the level of personal values. As the pace of change quickens, this confusion is tinged with self-doubt, anxiety and fear. One grows tense, tires easily. One may fall ill. As the pressures relentlessly mount, tension shades into irritability, anger, and sometimes, senseless violence. Little events trigger enormous responses; large events bring inadequate responses. Pavlov many years ago referred to this phenomenon as the “paradoxical phase” in the breakdown of the dogs on whom he conducted his conditioning experiments. Subsequent research has shown that humans, too, pass through this stage under the impact of overstimulation, and it may explain why riots sometimes occur even in the absence of serious provocation, why, as though for no reason, thousands of teenagers at a resort will suddenly go on the rampage, smashing windows, heaving rocks and bottles, wrecking cars. It may explain why pointless vandalism is a problem in all of the techno-societies, to the degree that an editorialist in the Japan Times passionately reported: “We have never before seen anything like the extensive scope that these psychopathic acts are indulged in today.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
And finally, the confusion and uncertainty wrought by transience, novelty and diversity may explain the profound apathy that de-socializes millions, old, and young alike. This is not the studied, temporary withdrawal of the sensible person who needs to unwind or slow down before coping anew with one’s problems. It is total surrender before the strain of decision-making in conditions of uncertainty and overchoice. Affluence makes it possible, for the first time in history, for large numbers of people to make their withdrawal a full-time proposition. The family man who retreats into his evening with the help of a few martinis and allows televised fantasy to narcotize him, at least works during the day, performing a social function upon which others are dependent. One’s is a part-time withdrawal. However, for some (not all) hippie dropouts, for many of the surfers and lotus-eaters, withdrawal is full-time and total. A check from an indulgent parent may be the only remaining link with the larger society. On the beach at Matala, a tiny sun-drenched village in Crete, are forty or fifty caves occupied by runaway American troglodytes, young men and women who, for the most part, have given up any further effort to cope with the exploding high-speed complexities of life. Here decisions are few and time plentiful. Here the choices are narrowed. No problem of overstimulation. No need to comprehend or even to feel. A reporter visiting them in 1968 brought them news of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Their response: silence. “No shock, no rage, no tears. Is this the new phenomenon? Running away from America and running away from emotion? I understand uninvolvement, disenchantment, even noncommitment. But where has all the feeling gone?” #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

If he understood the impact of overstimulation, the apathy of COVID-19 and guerrilla wars going on in American cities, the blank face of the disaster victim the intellectual and emotional withdrawal of the culture shock victim, the reporter might understand where all the feeling has gone. For these young people, and millions of others—the confused, the violent, and the apathetic—already evince the symptoms of future shock. They are its earliest victims. In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State—in other words, the whims of the chieftains who manipulate it—from every wholesome restriction, all sociopolitical movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under religion. For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, one’s dependence on anything else must be taken from one. Religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions; they concern far more individual’s psychic attitude. However, it is possible to have an attitude to the external conditions of life only when there is a point of reference outside them. Religion gives, or claims to give, such a standpoint, thereby enabling the individual to exercise one’s judgment and one’s power of decision. It builds up a reserve, as it were, against the obvious and inevitable force of circumstances to which everyone is exposed who lives only in the outer World and has no other ground under one’s feet except the pavement. If statistical reality is the only one, then that is the sole authority. There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible. Then the individual is bound to be a function of statistics and hence a function of the State or whatever the abstract principle of order may be called. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
Religion, however, teaches another authority opposed to that of the “World.” The doctrine of the individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim upon one as the World does. It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges one from the World in the same way as one is estranged from oneself when one succumbs to the collective mentality. One can forfeit one’s judgment and power of decision in the former case (for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter. This is the goal which religion openly aspires to unless it compromises with the State. When it does do, I prefer to call it not “religion” but a “creed.” A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to a certain metaphysical, extramundane factors. A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the World at large and is thus an intermundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism). From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality. Since they are compromises with mundane reality, the creed have accordingly seen themselves obliged to undertake a progressive codification of their views, doctrines, and customs, and in so doing have externalized themselves to such an extend that the authentic religious element in them—the living relationship to and direct confrontation with their extramundane point of reference—has been thrust into the background. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
The denominational standpoint measures the worth and importance of the subjective religious relationship by the yardstick of traditional doctrine, and where this is not so frequent, as in Protestantism, one immediately hears talk of pietism, sectarianism, eccentricity, and so forth, as soon as anyone claims to be guided by God’s will. A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public institution whose members include not only true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to it simply by force of habit. Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable. Let no one imagine that contact with the Overself is a kind of dreamy reverie or peasant, fanciful state. It is a vital relationship with a current of peace, power, and goodwill flowing endlessly from the invisible center to the visible self. Although it is true that the Overself is the real guardian angel of every human being, we should not be so foolish as to suppose its immediate intervention in every trivial affair. On the contrary, its care is general rather than particular, in the determination of long-term phases rather than day-by-day events. Its intervention, if that does occur, will be occasion by or will precipitate a crisis. There is a knowing element in man, the real knower which makes intellectual knowing possible and which is Consciousness-by-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

It is that part of man which is fundamental, real, undying, and truly knowing. This is the element in the human being that is covered with mystery, which is why, to some extent, the ancient pagan religious secret or semi-secret organized institutional attempts to penetrate it were titled “The Mysteries.” What could be closer to a human than one’s own be-ing? What could be more inward than the core of one’s self-awareness? Knowledge of law, language, or history can be collected and becomes a possession but knowledge of the Overself is not at all the same. It is something one must be: it owns us, we do not have it. Stillness is both a sign that sense and thought, body and intellect, have been transcended and a symbol of the consciousness of the presence of the Overself. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” reports Jesus Christ. This commandment is a central law of the Kingdom. This law of the Kingdom is what motivates Christians to serve the good of society. Certainly it motivated Christians of the nineteenth center when they spearheaded most of our nation’s significant works of mercy and moral betterment. They founded hospitals, colleges, and schools; they organized social choice programs and fed the hungry; they campaigned to end abuses ranging from dueling to slavery. Though much of this work has now been taken over by government agencies, Christians provided the original impetus. Today, Christians still contribute the bulk of resources for private charities of compassion. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is not to say that all good deed are done by Christians or that all Christians do good deeds. Sacrificial deeds are often done for other than religious motives, of course. However, in those instances the actions depend on the individual’s personal reasons. Motive is crucial. In one instance it is an individual choice—a choice that often wavers or falters. For the Christian it is a matter of obedience to God’s commandments; it is not choice, but necessity. It is, in fact, their dual citizenship that should, as Augustine believes, make Christians the best of citizens. Not because they are more patriotic or civic-minded, but because they do out of obedience to God that which others do if they choose or if they are forced. And their very presence in society means the presence of a community of people who live by the Law behind the law. Even as unreligious a figure as modern educator John Dewey recognized that “the church-going classes, those who have come under the influence of evangelical Christianity form the backbone of philanthropic and social interest, of social reform through political action, of passivism, of popular education. They embody and express the spirit of kindly good will towards [those] in economic disadvantage.” A study shows that forty-six percent of those in the United States of America who describe themselves as “highly spiritually committed” work among the poor, the infirm, or the elderly—twice as many as those describing themselves as “highly uncommitted” spiritually. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The Holy Ghost was called by Origen “the active force of God.” This is its mystery, that seeing all, it is itself seen by none. Whatever humans may say about it will not be enough to describe it properly, justly, accurately. All such efforts will be clumsy but they will not be useless. They will be suggestive, offer clues perhaps, each in its own way. What is its consciousness like? If we use our ordinary faculties only, we may ponder this problem for a lifetime without discerning its solution for it is evident that we enter a realm where the very questioner oneself must disappear as soon as one crosses the frontier. The personal “I” must be like a mere wave in such an ocean, a finite center in incomprehensible infinitude. It would be impossible to realize what mind-in-itself is so long as we narrow down the focus of attention to the personal “I”-thought. For it would be like a wave vainly trying to collect and cram the whole ocean within itself, while refusing to expand its attention beyond its own finite form. All that one knows and experiences are things in this World of five senses. The Overself is not within their sphere of operation and therefore not to be known and experienced in the same way. This is why the first real entry into it must necessarily be an entry into no-thing-ness. The mystical phenomena and mystical raptures happen merely on the journey to this Void. It is a consciousness where the “here” is universal and the “now” is everlasting. There is a sense of the total absence of time, a feeling of the unending character of one’s inner being. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

The being which one finds at the end of this inner search is an anonymous one. One may ask for a name but one will not get one. One must be satisfied with the obscure response: “I Am That I Am!” The Overself is there, but it is hidden within our conscious being. Only there, in this deep atmosphere, do we come upon the mirage-free Truth, the illusion-free Reality. There are deep places in human’s hearts and minds into which they rarely venture. And yet treasures are hidden there—flashes of intuition, important revelations, extra strengths, and above all a peace out of this World. It is Conscious Silence. The Knowing or Self-awareness of the Overself is never absent; it is always seeing. Yes, your guardian angel is always present and always the secret witness and recorder of your thoughts and deeds. Whether you go down into the black depths of hell or ascend to the radiant heights of Heaven, you do not walk alone. “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.16. To accomplish works of mercy and justice, however, Christians do not rely on government, but on their own penetration of society as “salt and light.” This too is in obedience to a command of God that orders them to be the “salt of the Earth” and “light of the World”—the great cultural commission of the Kingdom. In Hebrew times salt was rubbed into meat to prevent it from spoiling. In the same way the citizen of the Kingdom is “rubbed in” to society as its preservative. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Citizens of the Kingdom, therefore, form what Edmund Burke called “the little platoons,” mediating structures between the individual and government that carry out works of justice, mercy, and charity. The presence of Christians in society also helps break the endless cycle of evil and violence in the World. For example, the generations-old conflicts of Northern Ireland and the Middle East and American thrive on fake news, hatred and bigotry, the basest of human instincts, which in turn beget violence, which begets more violence. Only forgiveness and love can break this cycle, and only the Kingdom of God orders its citizens to take such radical steps. God commands His people to forgive those who hurt or wrong hem and to love their enemies. Though “turning the other cheek” may sound like weakness, or impractical idealism, in reality, it takes raw courage and is the most powerful weapon for restoring civil tranquility—far surpassing any bayonet or legislation. No conquering army can destroy evil; at best it can suppress it. However, when men and women are reconciled by the Law of the Kingdom, evil is defeated. Wherever they happen to be, in wide-scattered countries, widely different climates, and far-apart centuries, humans have experienced this divine presence. What does this show? That it is not dependent on place and hour, not subject to the laws of space-time. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Deep down in the mind and feeling of humans is the mysterious Godlike Essence seemingly too deep—alas!—for the ordinary human, who therefore lets oneself be content with hearing from others about it and thus only at second hand. If we believe in or know of the reality of the Overself, we must also believe or know that our everyday, transient life is actively rooted in its timeless being. It is the life-giving, body-healing, or occult-power-bestowing force in humans. It is not a theoretical conception but a quickening, transforming power. Thee I invoke, the Bornless one. Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens: Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day. Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light. Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no human has seen at any time. Thou art Jabas. Thou art Japos: Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust. Thou didst make the Female and the Male. Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit. Thou didst form Men to love one another, and to hate one another. I am Mosheh Thy Prophet, unto Whom Thou didst commit Thy Mysteries, the Ceremonies of Ishrael: Thou didst produce the moist and the dry, and that which nourisheth all created Life. Hear Thou Me, for I am the Angel Paphro Osorronophris: this is Thy True Name, handed down to the Prophets of Ishrael. Hear Me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me: so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether; upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land and in the Water: of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
I invoke Thee, the Almighty and Invisible God: Who dwellest in the Void Place of the Spirit:–the Lord is my strength and my song, there is not a part of Thou not rich in offering: each eye a fest, your grace a banquet, you blessings soft rubies in the night. For those who wish to stare back in time and gaze upon the earliest moments of the Universe, I say, look no father than God to witness all the marvels unfolding in creation. For in the Heaven are embodied bits of the floating soul like galactic wonder in brief eclipse, and God has become my salvation. Hark! Rejoicing and triumph in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right had of the Lord doeth valiantly.” I shall not die, but live, and recount the works of the Lord. The Lord hath indeed chastened me, but He hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of victory; I will enter them; I will give thanks unto the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter it. I will give thanks unto Thee, for Thou hast answered me and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected is become the chief cornerstone. By the grace of the Lord has this been done; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; on it we will rejoice and be glad. We beseech Thee, Lord, do Thou save us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou save us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou prosper us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou prosper us! Blessed be one that comes in the name of the Lord; we bless you from the house of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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You Buy Some Flowers for Your Table and Tend them Tenderly as You are Able!

A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall. There are certain time-related principles that also can be used to select plans. The principle of postponement holds that, other things equal, rational plans try to keep our hands free until we have a clear view of the relevant facts. And the grounds for rejecting pure time preferences we have also considered. We are to see our life as one whole, the activities of one rational subject spread out in time. Mere temporal position, or distance from the present, is not a reason for favouring one moment over another. Future aims may not be discounted solely in virtue of being future, although we may, of course, ascribe less weight to them if there are reasons for thinking that, given their relation to other things, their fulfillment is less probable. The intrinsic importance that we assign to different parts of our life should be the same at every moment of time. These values should depend upon the whole plan itself as far as we can determine it and should not be affected by the contingencies of our present perspective. Two other principles apply to the overall shape of plans through time. One of these is that of continuity. It reminds us that since a plan is a scheduled sequence of activities, earlier and later activities are bound to one another. The whole plan has a certain unity, a dominant theme. “O the greatness and the justice of our God! for He executeth all His words, and they have gone forth out of His moth, and His law must be fulfilled,” reports 2 Nephi 9.17 #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
There is no, so to speak, a separate utility function for each period. Not only must effects between periods be taken into account, but substantial swings up and down are presumably to be avoided. A second closely related principle holds that we are to consider the advantages of rising, or at least of not significantly declining, expectations. There are various stages of life, each ideally with its own characteristic tasks and enjoyments. Other things equal, we should arrange things at the earlier stages so as to permit a happy life at the later ones. It would seem that for the most part rising expectations over time are to be preferred. If the value of an activity is assessed relative to its own period, assuming that this is possible, we might try to explain this preference by the relatively greater intensity of the pleasures of anticipation over those of memory. Even though the total sum of enjoyment is the same when enjoyments are estimated locally, increasing expectations provide a measure of contentment that makes the difference. However, even leaving this element aside, the rising or at least the nondeclining plan appears preferable since later activities can often incorporate and bind together the results and enjoyments of an entire life into one coherent structure as those of a declining plan cannot. This should present the notion of a person’s good. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

If the future were accurately foreseen and adequately realized in the imagination, our good is determined by the plan of life that we would adopt with full deliberative rationality. The matters we have just discussed are connected with being rational in this sense. If certain conditions were fulfilled, it is worth stressing that a rational plan is one that would be selected. The criterion of the good is hypothetical in a way similar to the criterion of justice. When the question arises as to whether doing something accords with our good, the answer depends upon how well it fits the plan that would be chosen with deliberative rationality. Now one feature of a rational plan is that in carrying it out the individual does not change one’s mind and wish that one had done something else instead. A rational person does not come to feel an aversion for the foreseen consequences so great that one regrets following the plan one has adopted. The absence of this sort of regret is not however sufficient to insure that a plan is rational. There may be another plan open to us that were we to consider it we would find much better. Nevertheless, if our information is accurate and our understanding of the consequences complete in relevant respects, we do not regret following a rational plan, even if it is not a good one judged absolutely. In this instance the plan is objectively rational. We may, of course, regret something else, for example, that we have to live under such unfortunate circumstances that a happy life is impossible. Conceivably we may wish that we had never been born. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

However, when judged by some ideal standard, we do not regret that, having been born, we followed the best plan as bad as it may be. A rational person may regret one’s pursuing a subjectively rational plan, but not because one thinks one’s choice is in any way open to criticism. For one does what seems best at the time, and if one’s beliefs later prove to be mistake with untoward results, it is through no fault of one’s own. There is no cause for self-reproach. There was no way of knowing which was the best or even a better plan. Putting these reflections together, we have the guiding principle that a rational individual is always to act so that one need never blame oneself no matter how one’s plans finally work out. Viewing oneself as one continuing being over time, one can say that at each moment of one’s life one has done what the balance of reason required, or at least permitted. Therefore any risks one assumes must be worthwhile, so that should the worst happen that one had any reason to foresee, one can still affirm that what one did was above criticism. One does not regret one’s choice, at least not in the sense that one later believes that at the time it would have been more rational to have done otherwise. This principle will not certainly prevent us from taking steps that lead to misadventure. Nothing can protect us from the ambiguities and limitations of our knowledge, or guarantee that we find the best alternative open to us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Acting with deliberative rationality can only insure that our conduct is above reproach, and that we are responsible to ourselves as one person over time. If someone said that one did not care about how one will view one’s present actions later any more than one cares about the affairs of other people (which is not much, let us suppose), we should indeed be surprised. One who rejects equally the claims of one’s future self and the interests of others is not only irresponsible with respect to them but in regard to one’s own person as well. One does not see oneself as one enduring individual. Now looked at in this way, the principle of responsibility to self resembles a principle of right: the claims of the self at different times are to be so adjusted that the self at each time can affirm the plan that has been and is being followed. The person at one time, so to speak, must not be able to complain about actions of the person at another time. This principle does not, of course, exclude the willing endurance of hardship and suffering; but it must be presently acceptable in view of the expected or achieved good. From the standpoint of the original position the relevance of responsibility to self seems clear enough. Since the notion of deliberative rationality applies there, it means that the parties cannot agree to a conception of justice if the consequences of applying it may lead to self-reproach should the least happy possibilities be realized. They should strive to be free from such regrets. And the principles of justice as fairness seem to meet this requirement better than other conceptions, as we can see from the earlier discussion of the strains of commitment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

A final observation about goodness as rationality. It may be objected that this conception implies that one should be continually planning and calculating. However, this interpretation rests upon a misunderstanding. The first aim of the theory is to provide a criterion for the good of the person. This criterion is defined chiefly by reference to the rational plan that would be chosen with full deliberative rationality. The hypothetical nature of the definition must be kept in mind. A happy life is not one taken up with deciding whether to do this or that. From the definition alone very little can be said about the content of a rational plan, or the particular activities that comprise it. It is not inconceivable that an individual, or even a whole society, should achieve happiness moved entirely by spontaneous inclination. With great luck and good fortune some humans might by nature just happen to hit upon the way of living that they would adopt with deliberative rationality. For the most part, though, we are not so blessed, and without taking thought and seeing ourselves as one person with a life over time, we shall almost certainly regret our course of actions. Even when a person does succeed in relying on one’s natural impulses without misadventure, we still require a conception of one’s good in order to assess whether one has really been fortunate or not. One may think so, but one may be deluded; and to settle this matter, we have to examine the hypothetical choices that it would have been rational for one to make, granting due allowance foe whatever benefits one may have obtained from not worrying about these things. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The value of the activity of deciding is itself subject to rational appraisal. The efforts we should expend making decisions will depend like so much else on circumstances. Goodness as rationality leaves this question to the person and the contingencies of one’s situation. We need to learn that we cannot just have faith. We cannot have the miracle until after the exercise of faith. I am a product of a household of faith. I learned faith in my home. I was taught it. It was drilled into me. I need that faith now as much as I ever did. I think we all do. We are not going to survive in this World, temporally or spiritually, without increased faith in the Lord—and I do not mean an optimistic mental attitude—I mean downright solid faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Overself is not merely a mental concept for all humans but also a driving force for some humans, no merely a pious pleasant feeling for those who believe in it but also a continuing vital experience for those who have lifted the ego’s heavy door-bar. That is the one thing that gives vitality and power to otherwise weak individuals. I bear you my humble witness that I know that God lives. I know that He lives, that He is our Father, that He loves us. I bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, our Saviour and our Redeemer. I understand better what that means now. I am grateful for His atonement in our behalf and for knowing something about our relationship to Him and to our Heavenly Father and about the meaning and purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for Joseph Smith. I know that he was a prophet, and I know that President Ezra Taft Benson is a living prophet today. I bear that witness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Whether are submitting masses of humans to information overload or not, we are affecting their behaviour negatively by imposing on them still a third form of overstimulation—decision stress. Many individuals trapped in dull or slowly changing environments yearn to break out into new jobs or roles that require them to make faster and more complex decisions. However, among the people of the future, the problem is reversed. “Decisions, decisions…” they mutter as they race anxiously from task to task. The reason they feel harried and upset is that transience, novelty and diversity pose contradictory demands and thus place them in an excruciating double bind. The accelerative thrust and its psychological counterpart, transience, force us to quicken the tempo of private and public decision-making. New needs, novel emergencies and crises demand rapid response. Yet the very newness of the circumstances brings about a revolutionary change in the nature of the decisions they are called upon to make. The rapid injection of novelty into the environment upsets the delicate balance of “programmed” and “non-programed” decisions in our organizations and our private lives. A programmed decision is one that is routine, repetitive and east to make. The commuter stands at the edge of the platform as the 8.05 rattles to a stop. One climbs aboard, as one has done every day for months are years. Having long ago decided that the 8.05 I the most convenient run on the schedule, the actual decision to board the train is programed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

It seems more like a reflex than a decision at all. The immediate criteria on which the decision is based are relatively simple and clear-cut, and because all the circumstances are familiar, one scarcely has to think about it. One is not required to process very much information. In this sense, programmed decisions are low in psychic cost. Contrast this with the kind of decisions that same commuter thinks about on one’s way to the city. Should one take the new job corporation Golden 1 Credit Union has offered as a Bank Secrecy Act Investigator making $97,983.00 annually or at Guild Mortgage Company as regional administrator making $118,887.00 annually? Should one buy a new Cresleigh Home? Should one have an affair with one’s secretary? How can one get the Management Committee to accept one’s proposals about the new ad campaign? Such questions demand non-routine answers. They force one to make one-time or first-time decisions that will establish new habits and behavioural procedures. Many factors must be studied and weighed. A vast among of information must be processed. These decisions are non-programmed. They are high in psychic cost. For each of us, life is a blend of the two. If this blend is too high in programmed decisions, we are not challenged; we find life boring and stultifying. We search for ways, even unconsciously, to introduce novelty into our lives, thereby altering the decision “mix.” However, if this mix is too high in non-programmed decisions, if we are hit by so many novel situations that programming becomes impossible, life becomes painfully disorganizes, exhausting and anxiety-filled. Pushed to its extreme, the end-point is psychosis. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Rudeness, talkativeness, destructiveness, meanness, belligerence, and stubbornness all add to the chronic problem of poor discipline. Such behaviour, in whatever form, greatly reduces the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process in the home and classroom or a work. Because many people no longer respond to an authoritarian adult, parent, teacher, or boss with obedience, more effective approaches are needed. One who tends to be effective with other rational individuals is one who encourages learning and good discipline by being warm, relaxed, friendly, flexible, a good communicator, well organized, confident in oneself, and reasonable in one’s request. One also strives to be consistent in one’s behaviour, curious about the World around one, able to smile readily, competent, approachable, and sincere. There is an advantage in people treating subordinates and peers with respect and maintaining routine being calm, casual, and orderly. In addition to being well prepared, an effective leader presents ideas in novel and stimulating ways. One is able to make them relevant to other’s concerns and interests. An effective adult has the courage to be imperfect oneself, admitting that one does not have all the answers. One’s children will then also have courage to admit their unenlightened ways and they will be more open to learning. “Rational behaviour,” write organization theorist Bertram M. Gross, “always includes an intricate combination of routinization and creativity. Routine is essential [because it] frees creative energies for dealing with the more baffling array of new problems which routinization is an irrational approach.” When we are unable to program much of our lives, we suffer. There is no more miserable person than one for whom the cooking of a meal, the drinking of every cup of coffee, the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of deliberation. For unless we can extensively program our behaviour, we waste tremendous amounts of information-processing capacity on trivia. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

This is why we form habits. Watch a committee break for lunch and then return to the same room: almost invariably its members seek out the same seats they occupied earlier. Some anthropologists drag in the theory of “territoriality” to explain this behaviour—the notion that humans are forever trying to carve out for oneself a sacrosanct “turf.” A simpler explanation lies in the fact that programming conserves information-processing capacity. Choosing the same seat spares us the need to survey and evaluate other possibilities. In a familiar context, we are able to handle many of our life problems with low-cost programmed decisions. Change and novelty boost the psychic price of decision-making. When we move to a new neighbourhood, for example, we are forced to alter old relationships and establish new routines or habits. This cannot be done without first discarding thousands of formerly programmed decisions and making a whole series of costly new first-time, non-programmed decisions. In effect, we are asked to re-program ourselves. Precisely the same is true of the unprepared visitor to an alien culture, and it is equally true of the human who, still in one’s own society, is rocketed into the future without advance warning. The arrival of the future in the form of novelty and change makes all one’s painfully pieced-together behaviour routines obsolete. One suddenly discovers to one’s horror that these old routines, rather than solving one’s problems, merely intensify them. New and as yet unprogrammable decisions are demanded. Novelty disturbs decision mix, tipping the balance toward the most difficult, most costly form of decision-making. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

It is true that some people can tolerate more novelty than others. The optimum mix is different for each of us. Yet the number and type of decision demanded of us are not under our autonomous control. It is the society that basically determines the mix of decisions we must make and the pace at which we must make them. Today there is a hidden conflict in our lives between the pressures of acceleration and those of novelty. One forces us to make faster decisions while the other compels us to make the hardest, most time-consuming type of decisions. The anxiety generated by this head-on collision is sharply intensified by expanding diversity. If one needs to deal with them, incontrovertible evidence shows that increasing the number of choices open to an individual also increases the amount of information one needs to process. Laboratory tests on humans and animals alike prove that the more the choices, the slower the reaction time. It is the frontal collision of these three incompatible demands that is now producing a decision-making crisis in the techno-societies. Taken together these pressures justify the term “decisional overstimulation,” and they help explain why masses of humans in these societies already feel themselves harried, futile, incapable of working out their private futures. The conviction that the way of life in which people are caught up in a fiercely competitive struggle, exhausting, and usually routine to obtain wealth, power, and success is too touch, that things are out of control, is the inevitable consequence of these clashing forces. For the uncontrolled acceleration of scientific, technological and social change subverts the power of the individual to make sensible, competent decisions about one’s own destiny. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Many have certain patterns of disturbing behaviour that have been successfully used elsewhere to achieve the goals, and they may attempt to use them again. An individual’s behaviour is purposeful. One behaves or misbehaves in order to achieve the goals one sets for oneself. Only if one perceives oneself achieving one’s goals through such behaviour, one will set a pattern of behaving or misbehaving. This is called opportunity costs. The opportunity cost of an item is what you give up to get that item. When making any decision, such as whether to attend college, decision makers should be aware of the opportunity costs that accompany each possible action. In fact, they usually are. Singers who can earn millions if they drop out of school and perform preform professionally are well aware that their opportunity costs of college are very high. It is not surprising that they often decide that the benefit is not worth the cost. However, it should be remembered that many are only dimly aware of their goals. Each individual has an overriding goal to belong, to have a place, to be noticed, to be a concern of those who one respects and considers important in one’s life. An individual who sets a pattern of disturbing in the home, classroom, community, or workplace is misbehaving in order to belong. It is one’s way, logical or not, of having a place in the group. Opportunity costs for one is when parents, authority figures, community members, teachers or peers focus their positive or negative attention on one when one is misbehaving. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
An individual has a certain amount of free agency and, therefore, is actively engaged in influencing the behaviour of others interacting with one. However, one is ultimately responsible for one’s own behaviour. One’s parents, teachers, and associates also share responsibility with one, however, for one behaves in a social context where all persons influence one another, and their actions influence one’s perfections of how one can best belong. If they pay off one’s misbehaviour, one will tend to be stimulated to belong through misbehaviour; but if they pay off one’s good behaviour, one will be encouraged to belong through good behaviour. The payoff matrix is a tool used to simplify all of the possible outcomes of a strategic decision. It is a visual representation of all the possible strategies and all of the possible outcomes. It is the obligation of authority figures, guardians, leaders, teachers, and peers to show one that one can belong by behaving and that one will not find a place through misbehaving. It is the obligation of the individual to strive to belong in cooperative ways. The specific goal of the disturbing individual may be to get our attention, to be boss, to counter hurt, or to appear disabled. In general, it is recommended that authority figures, parents, leaders, teachers and peers disengage themselves from an individual who is misbehaving. If one removes the focus of one’s involvement from a misbehaving individual and places it elsewhere, the misbehaving individual will see in the payoff matrix, their behaviour has bad consequences, and one will find no value in expending energy to misbehave. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

When one is no longer able to achieve one’s goals through disturbing behaviour, the misbehaving individual may be worse because one can no longer achieve one’s goals through the usual form of conflict habitual, but those who refuse to pay off for misbehaviour can be certain that the induvial is on one’s way to becoming more effective. The individual may be saying, “It has worked in the past. Maybe I am not trying hard enough.” It is important that leaders, teachers, and peers be firm with their own behaviour at this time. If one gives in and reverts to one’s old behaviour, one will have paid off the misbehaving individual for one’s increased misbehaviour, thus stimulating one’s personal economy to supply more misbehaviour because them seems to be a marginal increase in demand and this may lead to more misbehaviour than ever. Bad behaviour is contagious. Conduct disorder is a psychiatric syndrome occurring in childhood and adolescence, and is characterized by a longstanding patter of violations of rules and antisocial behaviour. Symptoms typically include aggression, frequently lying, running away from home overnight and destruction of property. Adults who have conduct disorder may have difficulty holding down a job or maintaining relationships and may become prone to illegal or dangerous behaviour. Symptoms of conduct disorder in an adult may be diagnosed as adult antisocial personality disorder. They often bully, threaten, or intimate others. Often initiates physical fights. Has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm to others, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
With the rise of rebellion and rebel culture, more of our leaders, authority figures, community members, media personalities and others display signs of conduct disorder. Professionalism has gone out the window. It is now all about raging and making innocent people feel your vengeance. Sometimes therapy is not enough and some children and adults need medication to help reduce dangerous behaviours. If you are someone you know may be suffering from conduct disorder, you should talk to your doctor about atypical antipsychotics such as risperidone or methylphenidate. Although church and state stand separate, the political order cannot be renewed without theological virtues working upon it. It is from the church that we receive our fundamental postulates of order, justice, and freedom, applying them to our civil society. When state policy decides what shall be taught and studied, the seemingly omnipotent State doctrine is for its part manipulated in the name of State policy by those occupying the highest positions in the government, where all the power is concentrated. Whoever, by election or caprice, gets into one of these positions is subject to no higher authority; one is the State policy itself and within the limits of the situation can proceed at one’s own discretion. With Louis XIV one can say, “L’etat c’ est moi.” One is thus the only individual or, at any rate, one of the few individuals who could make use of their individuality if only they knew how to differentiate themselves from the State doctrine. They are more likely, however, to be the slaves of their own fictions. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Such one-sidedness is always compensated psychologically by unconscious subversive tendencies. Slavery and rebellion are inseparable correlates. Hence, rivalry for power and exaggerated distrust pervade the entire organism from top to bottom. Furthermore, in order to compensate for its chaotic formlessness, a mass always produces a “Leader,” who infallibly becomes the victim of one’s own inflated ego-consciousness, as numerous examples in history show. This development become logically unavoidable the moment the individual combines with the mass and thus renders oneself obsolete. Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of one’s foundations and one’s dignity. As a social unit one has lost one’s individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. One can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what one is, and from this point of view it sees absolutely absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual. Indeed, one can hardly imagine how one ever came to endow individual human life with so much dignity when the truth to the contrary is as plain as the palm of your hand. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Seen from this standpoint, the individual really is of diminishing importance and anyone who wished to dispute this would soon find oneself at a loss for arguments. The fact that the individual feels oneself or the members of one’s family or the esteemed friends in one’s circle to be important merely underlines the slightly comic subjectivity of one’s feeling. For what are the few compared with ten thousand or a hundred thousand, let alone a million? This recalls the argument of a thoughtful friend with whom I once got caught up in a huge crowd of people. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Here you have the most convincing reason for not believing in immortality: all that lot wants to be immortal!” The bigger the crowd the more negligible the individual becomes. However, if the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of one’s own puniness and impotence, should feel that one’s life has lost its meaning—which, after all, is not identical with public welfare and higher standards of living—then one is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte. The person who looks only outside and quails before the big battalions has nothing with which to combat the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. However, that is just what is happening today: we are all fascinated and overawed by statistical truths and large numbers and are daily apprised of the nullity and futility of the individual personality, since it is not represented and personified by any mass organization. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Conversely, those personages who strut about on the World stage and whose voices are heard far and wide seem, to the uncritical public, to be borne along on some mass movement or on the tide of public opinion and for this reason are either applauded or execrated. Since mass suggestion plays the predominate role here, it remains a moot point whether their message is their own, for which they are personally responsible, or whether they merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion. Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgment grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, id est, is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. In this way the individual becomes more and more a function of society, which in its turn usurps the function of the real-life carrier, whereas, in actual fact, society is nothing more than an abstract idea like the State. Both are hypostatized, that is, have become autonomous. The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it. Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society—the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or an oligarchy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
If Solzhenitsyn, MacArthur, and many of the great political philosophers since Cicero are right that society cannot survive without a vital religious influence, then where does this leave us? Will any religion or belief do? No. I believer as a matter of faith and intellect that the Judeo-Christian religion must be that transcendent base. However—and I cannot emphasize this too strongly—even if I did not, I would still argue that Christianity is the only religious system that provides for both individual concerns and the ordering of a society with liberty and justice for all. A creed alone is not enough, nor is some external law code. If Christianity were merely another creed, it would have no superior claim over Hinduism and Buddhism, for example. Or if it were merely another prescriptive order for society, it would have no advantage over Islam. Instead, Christianity alone, as taught in Scripture and announced in the Kingdom context by Jesus Christ, provides both a transcendent moral influence and a transcendent ordering of society without the repressive theocratic system of Islam. Humanists fail to understand human nature just as Christians fail to understand Christianity, just as professional fail to understand professionalism. Ignoring and ignorance and corruption is not the key to life. This is particularly true when it comes to the presence of the Kingdom of God in this World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
Christians tend to see their faith as either a belief system or a religious palliative for all life’s ills. Secularists see it, most often, through the pejorative pen or the selective lens of the media, which portray the Christian activist as a religious Archie Bunker—a Bible-thumping, red blooded, American patriot, who believed in hard work, home ownerships, owning a business, speaking his mind and a deep love for White America, while he seemed to condemn everyone, expounding simplistically on everything from evolution, war, gun control, diversity, and morals with a steadfast devotion to the Republican part. He was often seen as a bigot, but the only White with Black friends, and Hispanic people living in his house, a Jewish doctor and a Jewish niece living with him, and also at one time an Asian pastor. He also supported his daughter’s Polish boyfriend by providing him with a place to stay and pay for his medical care, while he went to college and his daughter worked. He even has a friend who was reassigned a new gender, when it was unheard of, and Mr. Bunker also kissed Sammy Davis on the cheek, and went on to hire a Black nanny, who took the place of his wife Mrs. Bunker after she passed away. Nonetheless, many people in the church have perpetuate this negative stereotype of Archie Bunker, and preach thoughtless rhetoric and posturing. However, no one sees that Archie Bunker was actually a good person. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
When you look beyond Mr. Bunker’s words and pay attention to his actions, he did not assault people, was very understanding and even at one point thought God was Black. Mr. Bunker also explained that he only said hurtful things because that is the way his father raised him, and the man that loves you, puts a roof over your head, buys you your first ice cream, loves you, and teaches you to throw a baseball can never be wrong. This paradoxically bears some resemblance to Christianity because the Bible tells us to love our parents and respect them and our days on this Earth will be long. The show was set in the 1940s, I believe, and immigration and America was still pretty new. Some people have never even seen a person of colour before. So, it was going to take some time to adapt. The Kingdom of God provides unique moral imperatives that can cause men and women to rise above their natural egoism to serve the greater good. God intends His people to do this; furthermore, He commands them to influence the World through their obedience to Him, not by taking over the World through the corridors of power. No one can be coerced into truth faith, and the last people who even ought to try to do so are Christians, either individually or as members of the institutional Church. As the Westminster Confession states, “God alone is the Lord of conscience.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
God alone being the Lord of conscience is the conviction that lies at the heart of the agreement reached by American’s Founding Fathers and their wives. For them, secularists and believers alike, freedom of conscience was the first liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. This means religious liberty for all—Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Wiccan, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheists, or California Victorian Worshiper. However, fundamentally, America is a Christian nation. This is One Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all and it has a code of conduct called the United States Constitution that every American Citizen is required to memorize and practice. The Christian, knowing that the will of the majority cannot determine truth, seeks no preferential favour for one’s religion from government. We do not force the government to block programs that are not Christian, or censor music that is not Christian, or decorations that are not Christian. Our confidence, instead, is that truth is found in Christ alone—and this is so no matter how many people believe it, no matter whether those in power believe it. You can strip every Christian object from public display, but you can never strip Christianity out of America. Christianity is as important to Americans as the American flag. While this may sound exclusivist, it is this very assurance that makes (or should make, when properly understood) the Christian the most vigorous defender of human liberty. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
And those who resent the exclusive claims of Christianity are practicing the same intolerance they profess to resent. The essence of pluralism is, after all, that each person respects the other’s right to believe in an exclusive claim to truth. If society’s well-being depends on the presence of a healthy religious influence, then, it is crucial that Christians understand their responsibilities in the kingdom of man as mandated by the Kingdom of God. It is equally imperative that the rest of society realize the benefits those responsibilities, when properly carried out, offer them. We are a benefit-driven society. How will this move benefit us? we ask. What benefits come with this plan? What benefits does this company offer if I take the job? Does it come with medical, dental, vision, company-paid Life and Long-Term Disability Insurance, and various Supplemental Cover Programs, Flexible Spending Accounts, Wellness Incentive Programs, In-House Fitness Center, Paid Sick Leave, Short Term Disability, Employee Assistance Program, 401(k) with an automatic 3 percent contribution by Corporation with dollar per dollar matching up to a certain percent, Paid Vacation, 10 Paid Holidays Annually, Home Loan discounts for first mortgages, and Fond Perks? It should come as welcome news to the pragmatists of the World that the Kingdom of God offers benefits no society can afford to be without. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
No one can explain what the Overself is, for it is the origin, the mysterious source, of the explaining mind, and beyond all its capacities. However, what can be explained are the effects of standing consciously in its presence, the conditions under which it manifests, the ways in which it appears in human life and experience, the paths which lead to its realization. It is a state of pure intelligence but without the working of the intellectual and ideational process. Its product may be named intuition. There are no automatically conceived ideas present in it, no habitually followed ways of thinking. It is pure, clear stillness. The very essence of that Stillness is the Divine Being. Yet from it come forth the energies which makes and break Universes, which are perpetually active, creative, inventive, and mobile. The Lord is with me, I will not fear; what can man do unto me? The Lord is with me as my helper, I shall see my adversaries discomfited. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Many nations beset me; verily, in the name of the Lord, I will overcome them. They are beset me, yea, they compassed me about; verily, in the name of the Lord, I will overcome them. They compassed me about like bees, but they were extinguished like a fire of thorns; verily, in the name of the Lord I did subdue them. Thou, O foe, didst thrust at me that I might fall; but the Lord helped me. He shut my eyes—then placed a compass in my hands. Only one with a heart at each of the cardinal points instead of the four directions. This became my new compass for life, my heart guiding me every step—in any direction. Praise the Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes

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Nothing Less than Spiritual Renewal Can Save the New World!

When a person begins to act logically according to others, then one has left one’s youth behind. Rational principles can focus our judgments and set up guidelines for reflection, and we must finally choose for ourselves in the sense that the choice rests on our direct self-knowledge not only of what things we want but also of how much we want them. Sometimes there is no way to avoid having to assess the relative intensity of our desires. Rational principles can help us to do this, but they cannot always determine these estimates in a routine fashion. To be sure, there is one formal principle that seems to provide a general answer. This is the principle to adopt that plan which maximizes the expected net balance of satisfaction. Or to express the criterion less hedonistically, if more loosely, one is directed t take that course most likely to realize one’s most important aims. However, this principle also fails to provide us with an explicit procedure for making up our minds. It is clearly left to the agent oneself to decide what it is that one most wants and to judge the comparative importance of one’s several ends. The notion of deliberative rationality is one that characterizes a person’s future good on the whole as what one would now desire and seek if the consequences of all the various courses of conduct open to one were, at the present point of time, accurately foreseen by one and adequately realized in imagination. An individual’s good is the hypothetical composition of impulsive forces that results from deliberative reflection meeting certain conditions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
We can say that the intelligible plan for a person is the one (among those consistent with the counting principles and other principles of rational choice once established) which one would choose with deliberative rationality. It is the plan that would be decided upon as the outcome of careful reflection in which the agent reviewed, in the light of all the relevant facts, what it would be like to carry out these plans and thereby ascertained the course of action that would best realize one’s more fundamental desires. In this definition of deliberative rationality it is assumed that there are no errors of calculation or reasoning, and that the facts are more correctly assessed. I suppose also that the agent is under no misconceptions as to what one really wants. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out,” reports Proverbs 25.2. In most cases anyway, when one achieves one’s aim, one does not find that one no longer wants it and wishes that one had done something else instead. Moreover, the agent’s knowledge of one’s situation and the consequences of carrying out each plan is presumed to be accurate and complete. No relevant circumstances are left out of account. Thus the rational plan for an individual is on that one would adopt if one possessed full information. It is the objectively rational plan for one and determines one’s real good. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

As things are, of course, if we follow this or that plan, our knowledge of what will happen is incomplete. Often we do not know what is the rational plan for us; the most that we can have is a reasonable belief as to where our good lies, and sometimes we can only conjecture. However, if the agent does the best that a rational person can do with the information available to one, then the plan one follows is a subjectively rational plan. One’s choice may be an unhappy one, but if so it is because one’s beliefs are understandably mistaken or one’s knowledge insufficient, and not because one drew hasty and fallacious inferences or was confused as to what one really wanted. In this case a person is not to be faulted for any discrepancy between one’s apparent and one’s real good. The notion of deliberative rationality is obviously high complex, combining many elements. One could if necessary classify the kinds of mistake that can be made, the sorts of tests that the agent might apply to see if one has the adequate knowledge, and so on. It should be noted, however, that a rational person will not usually continue to deliberate until one has found the best plan open to one. Often one will be content if one forms a satisfactory plan (or subplan), that is, one that meets various minimum conditions. Rational deliberation is itself an actively like any other, and the extent to which one should engage in it is subject to rational decision. The formal rule is that we should deliberate up to the point where the likely benefits from improving our plan are just worth the time and effort of reflection. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Once we take the costs of deliberation into account, it is unreasonable to worry about finding the best plan, the one that we would choose had we complete information. It is perfectly rational to follow a satisfactory plan when the prospective returns from further calculation and additional knowledge do not outweigh the trouble. There is even nothing irrational in an aversion to deliberation itself provided that one is prepare to accept the consequences. Goodness as rationality does not attribute any special value to the process of deciding. The importance to the agent of careful reflection will presumably vary from one individual to another. Nevertheless, a person is being irrational if one’s unwillingness to think about what is the best (or a satisfactory) thing to do leads one into misadventures that on consideration one would concede that one should have taken thought to avoid. In this account of deliberative rationality I have assumed a certain competence on the part of the person deciding: one knows the general features of one’s wants and ends both present and future, and one is able to estimate the relative intensity of one’s desires, and to decide if necessary what one really wants. Moreover, one can envisage the alternatives open to one and establish a coherent ordering of them: given any two plans one can work out which one prefers or whether one is indifferent between them, and these preferences are transitive. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Once a plan is settled upon, one is able to adhere to it and one can resist present temptations and distractions that interfere with its execution. These assumptions accord with the familiar notion of rationality that I have used all along. Keeping in mind that our overall aim is to carry out a rational plan (or subplan), it is clear that some features of desires make doing this impossible. For example, we cannot realize ends the descriptions of which are meaningless, or contradict well-established truths. Since pie (3.14) is a transcendental number, it would be pointless to try to prove that it is an algebraic number. To be sure, a mathematician in attempting to prove this proposition might discover by the way many important facts, and this achievement might redeem one’s efforts. However, insofar as one’s end was to prove a falsehood, one’s plan would be open to criticism; and once one became aware of this, one would no longer have this aim. The same thing holds for desires that depend upon our having incorrect beliefs. It is not excluded that mistake opinions may have a beneficial effect by enabling us to proceed with our plans, being so to speak useful illusions. Nevertheless, the desires that these beliefs support are irrational to the degree that the falsehood of these beliefs makes it impossible to execute the plan, or prevents superior plans from being adopted. (I should observe here that in the thin theory the value of knowing the facts is derived from their relation to the successful execution of rational plans. So far at least there are no grounds for attributing intrinsic value to having true beliefs.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

We may also investigate the circumstances under which we have acquired our desires and conclude that some of our aims are in various respects out of line. Thus a desire may spring from excessive generalization, or arise from more or less accidental associations. This is especially likely to be so in the case of aversions developed when we are younger and do not possess enough experience and maturity to make the necessary corrections. Other wants may be inordinate, having acquired their peculiar urgency as an overreaction to a prior period of severe deprivation or anxiety. The study of these processes and their disturbing influence on the normal development of our system of desires is not our concern here. They do however suggest certain critical reflections that are important devices of deliberation. Awareness of the genesis of our wants can often make it perfectly clear to us that we really do desire certain things more than others. As some aims seem less important in the face of critical scrutiny, or even lose their appeal entirely, others may assume an assured prominence that provides sufficient grounds for choice. Of course, it is conceivable that despite the unfortunate conditions under which some of our desires and aversions have developed, they may still fit into and even greatly enhance the fulfillment of rational plans. If so, they turn out to be perfectly rational after all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
If overstimulation at the sensory level increases the distortion with which we perceive reality, cognitive overstimulation interferes with our ability to “think.” While some human responses to novelty are involuntary, others are preceded by conscious thought, and this depends upon our ability to absorb, manipulate, evaluate and retain information. Rational behaviour, in particular, depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least fair success, the outcome of one’s own actions. To do this, one must be able to predict how the environment will respond to one’s acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on human’s ability to predict one’s immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed one by the environment. When the individual is plunged into a fast and irregular changing situation, or a novelty-loaded context, however, one’s predictive accuracy plummets. One can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on which rational behaviour is dependent. To compensate for this, to bring one’s accuracy up to the normal level again, one must scoop up and process far more information than before. And one must do this at extremely high rates of speed. In short, the more rapidly changing and novel the environment, the more information the individual needs to process in order to make effective, rational decisions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Yet just as there are limits on how much sensory input we can accept, there are in-built constraints on our ability to process information. In the words of psychologist George A. Miller of Rockefeller University, there are “severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember.” By classifying information, by abstracting and “coding” it in various ways, we manage to stretch these limits, yet ample evidence demonstrates that our capabilities are finite. To discover these outer limits, psychologist and communications theorists have set about testing what they call the “channel capacity” of the human organism. For the purposes of these experiments, the regard humans as a “channel.” Information enters from the outside. It is processed. It exists in the form of actions based on decisions. The speed and accuracy of human information processing can be measured by comparing the speed of information input with the speed and accuracy of output. Information has been defined technically and measure in terms of units called “bits.” (A bit is the amount of information needed to make a decision between two equally likely alternatives. The number of bits needed increases by one as the number of such alternatives doubles.) By now, experiments have established rates for the processing involved in a wide variety of tasks from reading, typing, and playing the piano to manipulating dials or doing mental arithmetic. And while researcher differ as to the exact figures, they strongly agree on two basic principles: first, that humans have limited capacity; and second, that overloading the system leads to serious breakdown of performance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Imagine, for example, an assembly line worker in a factory making childrens’ blocks. One’s job is to press a button each time a red block passes in front of one on the conveyor belt. So long as the belt moves at a reasonable speed, one will have little difficulty. One’s performance will approach 100 percent accuracy. So long as the belt moves at a reasonable speed, one will have little difficulty. One’s performance will approach 100 percent accuracy. We know that if the pace is too slow, one’s mind will wander, and one’s performance will deteriorate. We also know that is the belt moved too fast, one will falter, miss, grow confused and uncoordinated. One is likely to become tense and irritable. One may even take a swat at the machine out of pure frustration. Ultimately, one will give up trying to keep pace. Here the information demands are simple, but picture a more complex task. Now the blocks streaming down the line are of many different colours. One’s instructions are to press the button only when a certain colour pattern appears—a yellow block, say, followed by two reds and a green. In this task, one must take in and process far more information before one can decide whether or not to hit the button. All other things being equal, one will have even greater difficulty keeping up as the pace of the lines accelerates. In a still more demanding task, we not only force the worker to process a lot of data before deciding whether to hit the button, but we then can force one to decide which of several buttons to press. We can also vary the number of times each button must be pressed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Now one’s instructions might read: For colour pattern yellow-red-red-green, hit button number two once; for pattern green-blue-yellow-green, hit button number six three times; and so forth. Such tasks require the worker to process a large amount of data in order to carry out one’s task. Speeding up the conveyor now will destroy one’s accuracy even more rapidly. Experiments like these have been built up to dismaying degrees of complexity. Test have involved flashing lights, musical tones, letters, symbols, spoken words, and a wide array of other stimuli. And subjects, asked to drum fingertips, speak phrases, solve puzzles, and perform an assortment of other tasks, have been reduced to blithering ineptitude. The results unequivocally show that no matter what the task, there is a speed above which it cannot be performed—and not simply because of inadequate muscular dexterity. The top speed is often imposed by mental rather than muscular limitations. These experiments also reveal that the greater the number of alternative courses of action open to the subject, the longer it takes one to reach a decision and carry it out. Clearly, these findings can help us understand certain forms of psychological upset. Managers plagued by demands for rapid, incessant and complex decisions; pupils deluged with facts and hit with repeated tests; housewife or househusbands confronted wit squalling children, jangling telephone, over flowing email, broken washing machines, the wail of rock and roll from the teenager’s loft areas on the second floor of the house, and the whine of the television set in the parlor—may well find their ability to think and act clearly impaired by the waves of information crashing into their senses. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
It is more than possible that some of the symptoms noted among battle-stressed soldiers, disaster victims, and culture shocked travelers are related to this kind of information overload. One of the men who has pioneered in information studies, Dr. James G. Miller, director of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, states flatly that “Glutting a person with more information than one can process may lead to disturbance.” Dr. Miller suggests, in fact, that information over load may be related to various forms of mental illness. One of the striking features of schizophrenia, for example, is “incorrect associative responses.” Ideas and words that ought to be linked in the subject’s mind are not, and vice versa. The schizophrenic tends to think in arbitrary or highly personalized categories. Confronted with a set of blocks of various kinds—triangles, cubes, cones, et cetera—the normal person is likely to categorize them in terms of geometric shape. The schizophrenic askes to classify them is just as likely to say, “They are all soldiers” or “They all make me feel sad.” In the volume Disorders of Communication, Dr. Miller describes experiments using word association test to compare normals and schizophrenics. Normal subjects were divided into two groups, and asked to associate various words with other words or concepts. One group worked at its own pace. The other worked under time pressure—id est, under conditions of rapid information input. The time-pressed subject camp up with responses more like those of schizophrenics than of self-paced normals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Similar experiments conducted by psychologist G. Usdansky and L.J. Chapman made possible a more refined analysis of the types of errors made by subjects working under forced-pace, high information-input rates. They, too, concluded that increasing the speed of response brought out a pattern of errors among normals that is peculiarly characteristic of schizophrenics. “One might speculate,” Dr. Miller suggests, “that schizophrenia (by some as-yet-unknow process, perhaps a metabolic fault which increases neural ‘noise’) lowers the capacities of channels involved in cognitive information processing. Schizophrenics consequently have difficulties in coping with information inputs at standard rates likes the difficulties experienced by normals at rapid rates. As a result, schizophrenics make errors at standard rates like those made by normals under fast, forced-input rates.” Dr. Miller argues, the breakdown of human performance under heavy information loads may be related to psychopathology in ways we have not yet begun to explore. Yet, even without understanding its potential impact, we are accelerating the generalized rate of change in society. We are forcing people to adapt to a new life pace, to confront novel situations and master them in ever shorter intervals. We are forcing them to choose among fast-multiplying options. We are, in other words, forcing them to process information at a far more rapid pace than was necessary in slowly-evolving societies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

There can be little doubt that we are subjecting at least some of them to cognitive overstimulation. What consequences this may have for mental health in the techno-societies has yet to be determined. Now whether it is a question of understanding a fellow human being or of self-knowledge, I must in both cases leave all theoretical assumptions behind me. Since scientific knowledge not only enjoys universal esteem but, in the eyes of modern humans, count as the only intellectual and spiritual authority, understanding the individual obliges me to commit the lese majeste, so to speak, of turning a blind eye to scientific knowledge. This is a sacrifice not lightly made, for the scientific attitude cannot rid itself so easily of its sense of responsibility. And if the psychologist happens to be a doctor who wants not only to classify one’s patient scientifically but also to understand one as a human being, one is threatened with a conflict of duties between the two diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive attitudes of knowledge on the one had and understanding on the other. This conflict cannot be solved by an either/or but only by a kind of two-way thinking: doing one thing while not losing sight of the other. In view of the fact that, in principle, the positive advantages of knowledge work specifically to the disadvantage of understanding, the judgement resulting therefrom is likely to be something of a paradox. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Judged scientifically, the individual is nothing but a unit which repeats itself ad infinitum and could just as well be designated with a letter of the alphabet. For understanding, on the other hand, it is just the unique individual human being who, when stripped of all those conformities and regularities so dear to the heart of the scientist, is the supreme and only real object of investigation. The doctor, above all, should be aware of this contradiction. On the one hand, one is equipped with the statistical truths of one’s scientific training, and on the other, one is faced with the task of treating a sick person, who especially in the case of psychic suffering, requires individual understanding. The more schematic the treatment is, the more resistances it—quite rightly—calls up in the patient, and the more the cure is jeopardized. The psychotherapist sees oneself compelled, willy-nilly, to regard the individuality of a patient as an essential fact in the picture and to arrange one’s methods of treatment accordingly. Today, over the whole field of medicine, it is recognized that the task of the doctor consists in treating the sick person, not an abstract illness. This illustration from the realm of medicine is only a special instance of the problem of education and training in general. Scientific education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the World, in which the individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The individual, however, as an irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete human as opposed to the unreal ideal or “normal” human to whom the scientific statements refer. What is more, most of the natural sciences try to represent the results of their investigations as though these had come into existence without human’s intervention, in such a way that the collaboration of the psyche—an indispensable factor—remains invisible. (An exception to this is modern physics, which recognize that the observed is not independent of the observer.) So, in this respect as well, science conveys a picture of the World from which a real human psyche appears to be excluded—the very antithesis of the “humanities.” Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual human and, indeed, all individua events whatsoever suffer a levelling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical World-picture: it thrusts aside the individual in favour of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations. Instead of the concreter individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d’etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goals and meaning of the individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how one should live one’s own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance wit the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but throughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied. This is why religion is important. It is a way that we are able to retain our identity for God is the highest authority and in control and we cannot allow our minds to be solely focused on the material World and forget our true purpose. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Humankind now has three choices: to remain divorced from the transcendent; to construct a rational order to preserve society without recourse to real or imagined gods; or to establish the viable influence of the Kingdom of God in the kingdoms of humans. The first option invites chaos and tyranny, as the bloodshed, repression, and nihilism of this century testify. We are then left with the second and third choices. These opposing arguments were well presented by two of the great thinkers of the twentieth century: the eminent journalist, Walter Lippmann, and Nobel laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Before writing A Preface to Morals, Lippmann concluded that modern humans could no longer embrace a simple religious faith. For Lippmann, the goal was to create a humanistic view in which “mankind, deprived of the great fictions, is to come to terms with the needs which created those fictions.” For himself, Lippmann came to a rather fatalistic conclusion: “I take the humanistic view because, in the kind of World I happen to live in, I can do no other.” Lippmann thus set about to extract the ethical ideals of religious figures from their theological and historical context. Humans in one’s own rational interest, he believed, could sustain a human-made religion. Some religion, even if it was a religion that denied religion, had to be followed. On the other side of the spectrum from this religion of humanism stands Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a lonely and often outspoken profit. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard commencement address, Solzhenitsyn listed a litany of woes facing the West: the loss of courage and will, the addiction to comfort, the abuse of freedom, the capitulation of the intellectuals to fashionable ideas, the attitude of appeasement with evil. The cause for all this was the humanistic view Lippman had embraced. “The humanistic way of thinking,” thundered Solzhenitsyn, “which had proclaimed itself as our guide, did not admit the existence of evil in man, nor did it seek any task higher than the attainment of happiness on Earth. It started modern western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs…gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today.” In American democracy, said Solzhenitsyn, rights “were granted on the ground that man if God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility.” Solzhenitsyn lamented that over two hundred years ago, as the Constitution was being written, or even nearly seventy years ago, when Walter Lippman was tying to preserve the husk of Western virtue, “it would have seemed quite impossible…that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims…The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society had grown simmer and dimmer.” Like MacArthur, Solzhenitsyn was saying that nothing less than spiritual renewal could save the New World. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
If we reject the nihilism that denies all meaning and hope, we must believe human society has purpose. We are forced to choose, therefore, belief in humans, in faith in faith, hope in hope, and love of love; or we must look for a point beyond ourselves to steady our balance. The view that humans in their own rational interest can sustain a humanmade religion is voiced regularly on op-ed pages, on television specials, even from church pulpits. It remains fashionable because it offers a beneficial view of human nature, filled with hopeful optimism about human’s capacities. However, it ignored the ringing testimony of a century filled with terror and depravity. If the real benefits of the Judeo-Christian ethic and influence in secular society were understood, it would be anxiously sought out, even by those who repudiate the Christian faith. The influence of the Kingdom of God in the public arena is god for society as a whole. Everything else can be known, as things and ideas are known, as something apart or processed, but the Overself cannot be truly known in this way. Only by identifying oneself with It can this happen. From the ordinary human point of view the Overself is the Ever-Still: yet that is our own conceptualization of it, for the fact is that all the Universe’s tremendous activity is induced by its presence. That out of which we draw our life and intelligence is unique and indestructible, beginning less and infinite. Each of us feels that there is something which directs one’s will, controls one’s movements, and constitutes the essence of one’s awareness. This something expresses itself to us as the “I.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

It is not only the hidden and mysterious source of their own little self but also the unrecognized source of the only moments of real happiness that they ever have. At some time, to some degree, and in some way, everything else in human experience can be directly examined and analysed. However, this is the one thing that can never be treated in this way. For it can never acknowledge itself without objectifying itself, thus making something other than itself, some simulacrum that is not its real self. The Overself is a fountain of varied forces. What does the coming of Overself consciousness means to humans? It means, first of all, an undivided mind. Listen to the Roman Stoics’ definition of the Overself: “the divinity which I planted in his heart” of Marcus Aurelius; “your guardian spirit” of Epictetus. This is the “UNDIVIDED MIND” where experience as subject and object, as ego and the World, or as higher self and lower self does not break consciousness. At the center of every human’s being there is one’s imperishable soul, one’s guardian angel. What can I render unto the Lord for all His bountiful dealings toward me? Some would say it begins with the mind, or perhaps above on the astral plane that our souls embrace the wonder Spirit of the Lord in His merry chase. That is where we become blessed by speech and freedom and begin to give our thanks. In the chase on pace toward grace and freedom, I will lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. My vows will I pay unto the Lord, yea, in the presence of all His people. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Grievous in the sight of the Lord is the death of His faithful one. Ah, Lord, I am indeed Thy servant: I am Thy servant, the son of Thy handmaid; thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to Thee a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and call upon the name of the Lord. Lord, will you hold me close enough to hear the beating of your heart? There is but ne Heart with a single pulse. May I be lucky enough, one day, to be with Thou and feel it beating for us both. I will pray my vows unto the Lord, yea, in the presence of all His people; in the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of America. Hallelujah. Thy depth of range, O Lord, makes Thou so strong and wonderful. I stay charmed in Thy race. There is nothing better than to make life’s journey with Thou. O praise the Lord, all ye nations; laud Him, all ye peoples. For great is His mercy toward us; and the faithfulness of the Lord is everlasting. Hallelujah. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness endureth forever. O let now America say: His lovingkindness endureth forever. Let now the house of Aaron say: His loving kindness endureth forever. Let them that revere the Lord say: His lovingkindness endureth forever. Bind me your will, tie me to your grace, chain me to your mercy, lock me to your forgiveness. Let us live eternally, in your Heavenly Kingdom. Even in ten thousand years our life shall not break, even for a single breath, enterally in your arms shall I stay. Out of my straits I called upon the Lord; He answered me and set me free. The Lord is with me as my helper, I shall see my adversaries discomfited. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

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