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Faith and the World: Oh, Earth, You are too Wonderful for Anybody to Realize You!

April 10, 2020 3:08 am

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. Drugs make people susceptible to ideas, and that is why propaganda is so effective. Gaslighting is a manipulation tactic used to gain power, and it works too well. In order to gain more power, gaslighting makes a victim question their reality by putting them through situation that are prohibited by law and thought to not be practiced in modern society. Gaslighters tell blatant lies, and they deny they said something even though one may have blatant proof that they did. These aggressors often use what is near and dear to one as ammunition to upset you. They may assault you, steal vandalize your property, break and enter into your home, cyberstalk you and spy on you. The goal is to try and wear a person down over time, usually by a variation of a violation of your rights and physical and mental attacks. Gaslighters often use law enforcement as tools to act as intimidators. Often times people who use these tactics display actions that do not match their words, and sometimes what they say means nothing when the real issue is their actions. Another tactic is they try to make a person schizophrenic by praising them and then cutting them down so an individual is always questing their own thought process and self-value. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

People who try to use mind control also project their own problems and insecurities onto a victim, as gaslighters are masters at manipulation. They will often tell people you are crazy because dismissing your credibility is one of the main ways to make sure no one believes what one is saying. Legal subordination between members of the same gender or opposite gender is wrong in itself, and now is one of the chief hindrances to human improvements; and it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other. So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a prepondering weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper grounds, which the arguments to not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarism to which people cling longest must be less barbarism than those which they shake off. The study of objected image that preconscious perception grew out of the observation that subjects dreamed about parts of a projected image that were not immediately recalled. In fact, people seem to record subconsciously a lot more than they consciously relate. Further, what they record subconsciously does not lie passive but works actively on the mind. Subliminal projection uses this phenomenon by planting sensations in minds that are not aware of the process. Although no conclusive evidence exists to confirm the effectiveness of subliminal projection in practical situations such as buying popcorn, the possibility itself is suggestive. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Education is a foundation of facts and values, and the aim of education is to make people free. The biological principle upon which humanistic education rests is that humans are all different. Unfortunately for humankind, the opinion in favour of the present system, which entirely subordinates women as a weaker gender to men, who are viewed as the stronger gender, rests upon theory only; for there never has been trial made of any other; so that experience, in the sense in which it is vulgarly opposed to theory, cannot be pretended to have pronounced any verdict. And in the second place, the adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every women (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man. Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognising the relations they find already existing between individuals. They convert what was a mere physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and principally aim at the substitution of public and organized means of asserting and protecting the sights, instead of the irregular and lawless conflict of physical strength. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

To avoid the tyranny that seems inevitable, education is the great equalizers for the masses and will greatly contribute to the freedom of humanity. This program should include environmental studies, the facts of individual diversity and genetic uniqueness and the values of freedom, tolerance and mutual charity. The forces of evil propaganda must be combatted by a critical study of language, which should include a full study of the devices that are used against freedom. Those who have already been compelled to obedience by the masses have become in this manner legally bound to it. Slavery, from being a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, become regularized and a matter of compact among the masters, who, bind themselves to one another for common protection guaranteed by their collective strength the private possessions of each, including the people they enslave mentally and/or physically. In early times, the great majority of the male gender were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of the ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness and absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the others. We must find a willing to help society and yet make them aware of the wiles of mind-manipulators. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Above all, values need to be taught—individual freedom, charity and compassion, and intelligence. With these values, humans should be able to pierce through the veil of propaganda, and they would be able to remain free. Those who wish to control humankind want to believe that all people are easily categorized and easily manipulated, that all are essentially the same, and that individuals are not very important in the historical process. We do not want to see demagogues and charlatans abusing humankind, the environment, nor animals or other living being—animate or inanimate. We must refrain from creating a nation of Mary’s sheep. It is important that value is placed on genetic differences and on environmental differences, and people are taught respect for human differences. At the same time, respect for the integrity of the social order, which allows freedom to be exercised has to be preserved, without making it a dictatorship masquerading as a free society. Less than two hundred and fifty-four years ago, people might still by law hold human beings in bondage as saleable property; within the present century they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work them literally to death. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feelings of all who look at it from an impartial position, is the law of civilized and the Christian World within the memory of persons now living: and not only in the past did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but it was also considered the customer abuse of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence. The possessor of the undue power, the person directly interested in it, only one person, while those who are subject to it and suffer form it is literally all the ret. The yoke is naturally and necessarily humiliating to all persons, expect the one who is on the throne, together with, at most, the one who expects to succeed to it. How different are these cases from that of the power of men over women! I am not now prejudging the question of its justifiableness. I am showing how vastly more permanent it could not but be, even if not justifiable, than those other dominations which have nevertheless lasted down to our own time. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever person interest in its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but common to the whole male gender. Instead of being, to most of its supporters, a thing desirable chiefly in the abstract, or, like the political ends usually contended for by factions, of little private importance to any but the leaders, it comes home to the person and hearth of every male head of family, and of every one who looks forward to being so. The clodhoppers exercise, or is to exercise, one’s share of the power equally with the highest noble person. And the case is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for everyone who desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest to one with whom one’s life is passed, with whom one has most concerns in common, and it who any independence of one’s authority is oftenest likely to interfere with one’s individual preferences. If, in the other cases specified, power manifestly grounded only on force, and having so much less to support them, are so slowly and with so much difficulty got rid of, much more must it be so with this, even if it rests on no better foundation than those. We must consider, too, that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to prevent any uprising against it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

In struggles for political emancipation, everybody knows how often its champions are bought off by bribes, or daunted by terrors. In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. In setting up the standard of resistance, a large number of the leaders, and still more of the followers, must make an almost complete sacrifice of the pleasures of the alleviations of their own individual lt. If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had it yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has. All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. People do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All me, expect the brutish, desire to have in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are bought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to the of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the only ones they are allowed to have—those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and indefeasible bond between them and a man. When we put together three things—first, the natural attraction between opposite genders; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in general be sough or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

And, this great avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of attractiveness in pleasures of the flesh. Can it be doubted that any other yokes which humankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been as sedulously used to bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the life of every young plebeian to find with one, and a share of one’s personal affection, had been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable prizes; and if, when this prize had been obtained, they had been shut out by a wall of brass from all interests not centering in him, all feelings and desires but those which he shared or inculcated; would not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been as broadly distinguished at the day as men and women are? And would not all but a thinker here and there, have believed the distinction to be a fundamental and unalterable fact in human nature? #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

To deal with overpopulation, the birth rate must be reduced so that it does not exceed the death rate, and natural resources managed to increase food and fuel. In the absence of a Pill for birth control, some way must be found to reduce the birth rate—and problems of all sorts are involved here. And how soon can the industrial and social potential of underdeveloped nations be enhanced? Both food and raw materials will be in short supply by the end of the century. Does humankind really want to solve the problems they have? The urge towards freedom diminishes as long as people are well fed, but if conditions change, they will rise up in their chains. If youth does not value freedom, the future will surely be slavery. And not only do the young fail to see the value of freedom, they also wish for some form of benign totalitarian control. Overpopulation and overorganization may be inevitable even if people rise to the banner of freedom now, but the freedom fighters are few and time is short. The dodo, now extinct, is what humankind will become if we do not think about freedom now. We will no longer be able to fly, through we may wish to fly to escape our captor later. Humans will sacrifice their wings of freedom to become flightless like the dodo, and regret the act latter, when the game is up. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Sometimes when people finally achieve the social status they desire, they will no longer mock or hold disdain for people they could not stand when they were not able to achieve the social status they wanted. Nonetheless, personal liberty is absolutely essential to human dignity and happiness. When people kill, they kill the Bible: those who senselessly kill, kill God’s image; but one who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Realizing that suffer and frustration are necessary for creation, some accept voluntary exile in preference to stability and conformity. The World structure has changed, human nature has not improved: people are still petty, hypocritical, malicious, dishonest, emotionally sterile and quite capable of revenging themselves on others for their own lapses of accepted “good taste.” For, what is the peculiar character of the modern World—the difference which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern social ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lost which may appear to them most desirable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Human society of one was constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position, were mostly kept in it by law, or interdicted from any means by which they could emerge from it. Nobody things it necessary, still, to this day, to throw each operation into the hands of those who are best qualified for it. Nobody thinks in necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed person shall be a blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths strong0armed people, because the weak-armed can earn more by engaging in occupations for which they are more fit. In consonance with this doctrine, it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of authority fit beforehand, on some general presumption, that certain persons are not fit to do certain things. It is now thoroughly known and admitted that is some such presumptions exist, no such presumption is infallible. Even if it be well grounded in a majority of cases, which it is very likely not to be, there will be a minority of exceptional cases in which it does not hold; and in those it is both an injustice to the individuals, and a detriment to society, to place barriers in the way of their using their faculties for their own benefit and for that of others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

In the cases, on the other hand, in which the unfitness is real, the ordinary motives of human conduct will on the whole suffice to prevent the incompetent person from making, or from persisting in, the attempt. Nephi is commanded to build a ship—his brethren oppose him—e exhorts them by recounting this history of God’s dealings with Israel—Nephi is filled with the power of God—his brethren are forbidden to touch him lest they wither as a dried reed. About 591-591 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth. And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness and our women did bear children in the wilderness. And so great were the blessings of the Lord upon us, that while we did live upon raw meat in the wilderness, our women did give plenty of suck for their children, and were strong, yea, even like uno the men; and they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings. And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of humans keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the things which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

“And we did sojourn for the space of many years, yes, even eight years in the wilderness. And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful, because of its much fruit and also wild honey; and all these things were prepared of the Lord hat we might not perish. And we beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum, which being interpreted, is many waters. And it cam to pass that we did pitch our tents by the seashore; and notwithstanding we had suffered many afflictions and much difficulty, yea, even so much that we cannot write them all, we were exceedingly rejoiced when we came to the seashore; and we called the place Bountiful, because of is much fruit. And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been in the land of Bountiful for the space of many days, the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Arise, and get thee into the mountain. And it came to pass that I arose and went up into the mountain, and cried unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters. And I said: Lord, whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me? And it came to pass that the Lord told me whither I should go to find ore, that I might make tools. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

“And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beast; and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire. For the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness; for he said: I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not; and I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led. Yea, and the Lord said also that: After ye have arrived in the promised land, ye shall know that I, the Lord, did deliver you from destruction: yea, that I did bring you out of the land of Jerusalem. Wherefore, I, Nephi, did strive to keep the commandments of the Lord, and I did exhort my brethren to faithfulness and diligence. And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock. And when my brethren aw that I was about to build a ship, they began to murmur against me, saying: Our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship; yea, and he also thinketh that he can cross these great waters. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“And thus my brethren did complain against me, and were desirous that they might not labour, for the did not believe that I could build a ship; neither would they believe that I was instructed of the Lord. And now it came to pass that I, Nephi, was exceedingly sorrowful because of the hardness of their hearts; and now when they saw that I began to be sorrowful they were glad in their hearts, insomuch that they did rejoice over me saying: We knew that ye could not construct a ship, for we knew that ye were lacking in judgment; wherefore, thou canst not accomplish so great work. And thou art like unto our father, ed away by the foolish imaginations of his heart; yea, he hath led us out of the land of Jerusalem, and we have wandered in the wilderness for these many years; and our women have toiled, being big with child; and they have borne children in the wilderness and suffered all things, save it were death; and it would have been better that they had died before they came out of Jerusalem than to have suffered these afflictions. Behold, these may years we have suffered in the wilderness, which time we might have enjoyed our possessions and the land of our inheritance; yea, and we might have been happy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“And we know that the people who ere in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they have kept that statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people; and our father hath judged them, and hath led us away because we would hearken unto his words; yea, and our brother is like unto him. And after this manner of language did my brethren murmur and complain against us. And it came to pass that I, Nephi, spake unto them, saying: Do ye believe that our fathers, who the children of Israel, would have been led away out of the hands of the Egyptians if they had not hearkened unto the words of the Lord? Yea, do you suppose that they would have been led out of bondage, if the Lord hand not commanded Moses the he should lead them out of bondage? Now ye know that the children of Israel were in bondage; and ye know that they were laden with tasks, which were grievous to be borne; wherefore, ye know that it must need be a good thing for them, that they should be brought out of bondage. Now ye know that Moses was commanded of the Lord to do that great work; and ye know that by his word the waters of the Red Sea were divided hither and thither, and hey passed through on dry grounds. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“But ye know that the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea, who were the armies of Pharaoh. And ye also know that they were fed with manna in the wilderness. Yea, and ye also know that Moses, by his word according to the power of God which was in him smote the rock, and there came forth water, that the children of Israel might quench their thirst. And notwithstanding they being led, the Lord their God, their Redeemer, going before them, leading them by day and giving them light unto them by night, and doing all things for them which were expedient for humans to receive, they hardened their hears and blinded their minds, and reviled against Moses and against the true and living God,” reports 1 Nephi 17.1-30. I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone. Varied prayer grows out of what we have learned about continual prayer, because it we pray continually, the various situation we encounter will demand a variety of prayers. Think of the variety of appropriate to life’s situations—prayer to resist temptation, prayer for wisdom, for power, for self-restraint, for protection of others, for growth, for conviction. On all occasion with all kinds of prayer request will we learn to survive. I always pray before I drive. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

We must have a vibrant inner spiritual reality which emanates with all kinds of prayer requests. Grant Thy servants whom Thou hast united to us by the intimacy of holy affection, or by the bonds of blood, or hast associated with us in the unity of faith, to be subject to Thee with their whole heart; that being filled with the Spirit of Thy love, they may be cleansed from Earthly desires, and be made worthy, by Thy grace, of Heavenly blessedness. O Lord, the World is artful to entrap, approaches in fascinating guise, extends many a gilded bait, presents many a charming face. Let my faith scan every painted babuble, and escape every bewitching snare in a victory that overcomes all things. In my duties give me firmness, energy, zeal, devotion to Thy cause, courage in Thy name, love as a working grace, and all commensurate with my trust. Let faith stride forth in giant power, and love respond with energy in every act. I often mourn the absence of my beloved Lord whose smile makes Earth a paradise, whose voice is sweetest music, whose presence gives all graces strength. However, by unbelief I often keep Him outside my door. Let faith give entrance that he may abide with me forever. Thy word is full of promises, flowers of sweet fragrance, fruit of refreshing flavour when culled by faith. May I be made rich in its riches, be strong in its power, be happy in its joy, abide in its sweetness, feast on its preciousness, draw vigour from its manna. Lord, please increase my faith. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Release Your Faith in Uncommon Ways and You Will See God do Uncommon things!

February 26, 2020 1:29 am

It is impossible, indeed, to separate works from faith, just as it is impossible to separate heat and light from the fire. There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Nature hath made people so equal, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one person sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between being, and being, is not so considerable, as that one being can thereupon claim to oneself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as one. For as the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to mute the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same sanger with oneself. And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon general, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born with us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else,) I find yet a greater equality amongst people, than that of strength. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

For Prudence, is but Experience; which equal time, equally bestowes on all beings, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps makes such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all beings think they have in a greater degree, than the Vulgar; that is, than all beings but themselves, and a few others, whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of people, that however they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: for they see their own wit at hand, and other people’s at a distance. However, the proveth rather than people are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything, than that every person is contented with one’s share. Also, parents have to teach their kids and make them responsible. One has to tell their children what is expected of them and that there is no way around it. Children must be held responsible for getting an education and learning how to behave. The television is very interesting, but those TV programs will always be there. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

It is far more for children to get an education than to watch TV. And when your child is in junior high school, that is the time to start talking to them about college and letting them explore college campuses and speak with guidance counselors at the college so they will know what is expected of them, and so the child can form a vision of what they want to do after high school. So many children are solely focused on just getting out of high school, and then in the last semester of high school this idea of college and dumped on them and many of them have no idea what to do because they never even considered it. Therefore, it is important to make sure your child knows that they need to have a career vision, something they can do for the rest of their lives to make money to be able to support themselves, and their wife and child. Furthermore, it is important that children learn that if they make a mistake and break something, they need to pay for it. It may require them to get a Summer job, but it is important for them to learn responsibility as youths so they become good adults. The great masters who taught people truth or gave them supreme works of art or lifted their feelings deserve a large gratitude for such benedictions. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

It is those who create ways and means for others to follow in the search for spiritual fulfilment, the teachers and awakeners, who deserve our best honours. Such a person is a focal-point for all that is noble. A nature sensitive to the serenity, benevolence, and wisdom radiating from such a being will gladly give its homage to one. It is a grave mistake made by uneducated persons or by proud ones to fail in holding such a being in deep veneration. God keeps a vacant seat for one in the high places, while simple men and women throw unseen roses of appreciation when one enters their orbit. We should listen to the plain statements of such a being as the ancient Greeks listened to the enigmatic utterances of their oracles. Sokrates tried to awaken the Greeks, Jesus tried to awaken Christians. Their failure was followed by consequences to their people which can be traced in history. If the higher power takes the trouble to send a messenger, it is better to tremble, listen, and obey than to sneer, reject, and suffer. The comments made by the self-actualized upon the varied situations in human life are worth far fare more than the commentaries written by pundits on the sacred or philosophic texts. The former are very much in a minority. What one is testifies to THAT WHICH IS. Where lesser humans have to shout their opinions, one’s silence is eloquent and, to the receptive, an initiation in itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

There is no such act as a one-sided self-giving. Karma brings us back our due. One who spends one’s life in the dedicated service of philosophic enlightenment may reject the merely material rewards that this service could bring one, but one cannot reject the beneficent thoughts, the loving remembrances, the sincere veneration which those who have benefited sometimes send one. Such invisible rewards help one to atone more peacefully and less painfully for the strategic errors one has made, the tactical shortcomings one has manifested. Life is an arduous struggle for most people, but much more so for such a one who is always a hated target for the unseen powers of darkness. Do not hesitate to send one your silent humble blessing, therefore, and remember that Nature will not waste it. The enemies you are now struggling against within yourself one has already conquered, but the enemies one is now struggling against are beyond your present experience. One has won the right to sit by a hearth of peace. If one has made the greatest renunciation and does not do so, it is for your sake and for the sake of those others like you. Education is about discovering the special skills and talents of students and guiding their learning according to high standards. Education is also about teaching our children and young people basic Southern values and uncorking that World-renowned American ingenuity that has characterized our country. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Respect for God demands that the face, the hands, and the feet be washed once a day. The wise person indulges oneself not in gossip with women, not even his own wife. Leave the “kitchen table talk” for the women. Men should talk about cars, sports, or the economics. For America to move forward and continue as a World leader, and for all our communities to become prosperous and strong, more individuals need to become involved in improving our schools and colleges. We also need to take time for self-care, reflection, and affirmation. We have a choice. We can allow the stress of the job to crush our ability to be the kind of inspirational leaders we want to be, or we can energetically and enthusiastically demonstrate that we are the absolute climate creators at our school. Our challenge is that every day we need to rekindle the passion and get in touch with the joy in our job. Joy is an essential ingredient if inspirational leadership. Leadership is being visible when things are going awry and invisible when they are working well. From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends. And therefore if any two beings desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End, (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only,) endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

And from hence it comes to pass, that where an Invader hath no more to fear, than another being’s single power; if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient Seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces untied, to dispossess, and deprive one, not only of the fruit (product) of one’s labour, but also of one’s life, or liberty And the Invader again is in the like danger of another. And from this diffidence of another, there is no way for any individual to secure oneself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all people one can, so long, till one see no other power great enough to endanger one: and this is no more than one’s own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. Also because there be some, that taking pleasure in contemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue father than their security requires; if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only on their defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over people, being necessary to a human’s conservation, it ought to be allowed one. Again, people have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deal of grief) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

For every human looketh that one’s companion should value one, at the same rate one sets upon oneself: And upon all signs of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as one dares (which amongst them that have no common power, to keep them in quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other,) to extort a greater value from one’s contemners, by dommage; and from others, by the example. So that in the nature of humans, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh people invade for Gain, the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters f other people’s persons, wives, children, cattle, and ultimate driving machines; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in the Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name. Leaderships is a people process. It calls for the application of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow each of us to successfully influence and inspire others towards doing the right things. Leadership deals with effectiveness. On the other hand, management is a coordinating process we carry out to make sure the work functions and tasks get done well and in a timely way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Over the years, Dr. Freudian analysts have softened their views of the politics of therapy. Along with Gestalt therapists, Jungians, rational emotive therapists, advocates of transactional analysis, and many other new therapies, they now take a middle-of-the-road view. The expert is at times definitely the authority (as in the Gestalt therapist dealing with the person in the “hot seat”), but there is also a recognition of the right of the individual to be responsible for oneself. There has been no attempt to rationalize these contradictions. These therapists take a paternalistic stance, or follow the medical model, believing that at times control is best vested in the therapist, at other times (to be decided by the therapist) control and responsibility are best placed in the client’s, or patient’s hands. One approach which has been very definite in the politics of relationships is behaviourism. Its clear purpose is outlined in Skinner’s famous Walden II. For the good of the person (individually or collectively), an elitist technocracy of behaviourists sets the goals that will make the person happy and productive. It then shapes one’s behaviour by operant conditioning (with out without the “subject’s” knowledge) to achieve those goals. The environmental model, based on learning theory, assumes that behaviour that is in some way rewarded or reinforced tends to be repeated, while nonrewarded or punished behaviour tends not to be repeated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

So most of the behaviour problems we have seen (except those problems having a directly organize root, or perhaps some of the more stubborn psychotic reactions) are viewed, not as unconscious conflicts or illnesses, but as dysfunctional learning: bad habits. Since these problems were learned through conditioning, the behaviour modifiers believe that they can be unlearned, or deconditioned; and more effective or functional behaviour can be relearned, or reconditioned. Whereas analytic approaches sees no value in this. In fact, such past-oriented emphasis is seen as further rewarding the dysfunctional behaviour—giving the person beneficial stokes for their problems. If you want children to stop throwing temper tantrums (which have been reinforced by the attention of parents), do not give them further reinforcement by yelling at them or spanking them. Since those kinds of responses are actually rewards by some quirk of reasoning (“negative strokes are better than no strokes at all”), the answer is to stop responding to—and hence reinforcing—the tantrums. No attention at all is one way of withholding reinforcers. Ignore the behaviour, and after awhile its payoff value to the child is gone. To complete the conditioning process, give the child a lot of optimistic attention and affection for doing those things you want the child to do. This is how operant conditioning techniques work. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

When using operant conditioning, much success has been reported in the treatment of weight management, smoking, and conduct disorder and other similar issues. Not all behaviour problems respond to such treatment, but the results are encouraging. Much use has been made of one of the behaviour modification techniques in working with people who have intellectual disabilities and some psychotic patients in hospitals. It is called the “token economy” program. Patients are trained to do simple tasks by reinforcement of each step of the task with poker chips or other tokens which can be cashed in at the end of the session or the day for candy, gum, juice, and other goodies. Also, these techniques can work with students. If you want them to preform better or tests or increase their attendance, one has to reward the class with something like a pizza party at the end of the semester, but also keep in mind that it will be important to also provide extra guidance for the students so they do not get harassed by others for failing to meet the standards and holding the class back. Another issue is to make sure there is a realistic budget for the party. Most students will problem want about three slices of pizza. Domino’s Pizza always has some kind of deal like the large three topping pizza for $7.99 or the Mix and Match pizza for $5.99 when you order two or more. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The behavioural modifiers believe that tangible rewards used in the early stages of any behaviour change process should later be replaces with praise, hugs, pats on the back, or compliments if that kind of thing is acceptable in your family and community. Secondary reinforcers are substituted for primary reinforcers. Later, inner reinforcers—pride, sense of achievement, realization of goals—can be substituted for the secondary reinforcers. After all, most of us do not spend our lives behaving well in order to win chips or M&Ms! One’s behaviour is, after all, completely determined by environment for the planners so that their completely determined behaviour causes them to operate as such a wise and good elite is a question always deftly avoided. Nevertheless it is assumed that their goals will be constructively social, and the shaping of behaviour will be for the good person as well as society. Yet at times, when applied to the aberrant behaviour, this approach seems a little startling. We would assume that a demerit was clear evidence that the individual had somehow acquired a full-blown social neurosis and needed to be cured, not punished. We would send him or her to a rehabilitation center where one would undergo absolute brainwashing or reeducation until we were quite sure one had become a law-abiding citizen who would not again commit an antisocial act. We would probably have to restructure one’s entire personality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

However, this means that we are completely oblivious to the political implications of what we are doing. Clearly a psychologist who believes brainwashing or reeducating people in detention would be the first to be subsidized and employed by a dictator, who would be very happy to have them “cure” various “demerits” that threatened the state, which could be labeled as, for example, things like race, skin colour, hair texture, profession, medical history, political party, age, number of children, socioeconomic status, and so on. In fairness to behaviorists it should be said that many of them have come to adopt a greatly changed view of the politics of relationships. In the commune Twin Oaks, patterned initially after Walden II, the residents often choose for themselves which behaviors they wish to change, and select the rewards which will be most reinforcing. Clearly this is completely opposed to the politics of the strict behavourist, since it is self-evaluated change. It is not the environment shaping the individual’s behaviour, but the individual choosing to shape the environment for one’s own personal development. Some behavioursists have gone even further. Rather than controlling the individual, they are helping the person learn to achieve one’s own betterment. In its politics this is the reverse of strict behaviourism. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

However, there will come a time in the experience of the apprentice of Jesus where it is appropriate to speak of our being muted to the self. There is no one way this comes to us, I think, and the language here must be handled carefully. It has been the source of much understanding in and harm in the past. However, the fact that it represents is a fundamental, indispensable element in the renovation of the heart, soul, and life. Being muted to self is the condition where the mere fact that I do not get what I want does not surprise or offend me and has no control over me. Faithful servants of God know the secret, and man have left their testimony. They day when some have muted themselves, they report their opinions, preferences, tastes and will; was muted to the World, its approval or censure; muted to the approval or blame even of one’s brethren or friends, and since that point on, individuals will study only to show oneself “approved unto God.” We often speak of those who sleep soundly as “sleeping like a baby.” By that we mean that what is happening around them does not disturb them, that they are unconscious f it and are doing nothing with reference to it. There is an important lesson here, though not a precise parallel. The one who is muted to self will certainly not even notice some things that others would—for example, things such as social slights, verbal put downs and innuendos, or physical discomforts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

However, many other rebuffs to “the dear self,” will be noticed still, often quite clearly. However, if we are muted to self to any significant degree, these rebuffs will not take control of us, not even to the point of disturbing our feelings or peace of mind. We will wear the World like it is a precious gift from God. Does this mean that the person who is muted to self is without feeling? Does Christ commend the famous “apathy” of the Stoic or the Buddhist elimination of desire? Far from it. The issue is not just feeling or desire, but right feeling or desire, or being controlled by feeling and desire. Apprentices of Jesus will be deeply disturbed about many things and will passionately desire many things, but they will be largely indifferent to the fulfillment of their own desires as such. Merely getting their way has no significance for them, does not disturb them. They know that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those are called according to His purpose,” reports Romans 8.28. They do not have to look after things that concern them, but they do not worry about outcomes that merely affect adversely their own desires and feelings. They are free to focus their efforts on the service of God and others and the furthering of good generally, and to be as passionate about such things as may be appropriate to such efforts. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

People who truly understand the grace of God, not just intellectually but in very core of their being, will not abuse grace by living irresponsibly. “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will never count against one,” reports Romans 4.7-8. When I read, “Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will never count against one,” I was overcome with joy and gratitude. What a fantastic encouragement that God will never judge me for any of my sins. I know I have as wicked a sinful nature as anyone else, and apart from the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit in my life, I am fully capable of the so-called gross sins of immortality, drunkenness, stealing, and the like. However, those are not the sins that trouble me at this time. Rather, I struggle with what I called “refined” sins: selfishness, pride, impatience, a critical attitude, and a judgmental spirit. Despite my calling those areas “refined” sins, they are nevertheless very real sins. They are sins for which I would not want to give account at the judgment bar of God. They are sins that, apart from the atoning death of Christ for me, would send me to eternal Hell. And, if God operated on the basis of merit instead of grace in this life, they are sins that would forfeit all blessings from Him. In short those “refined” sins are very troublesome. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

So when I read that God will never count against me my selfishness, my pride, my impatience, and so on, I wept for joy. I stopped reading and uttered a prayer of deep, heartful thanksgiving to God for His gracious forgiveness. Then what did I do? I asked God to purge those sinful traits from my character. I asked Him to enable me to become more and more aware of specific instances when I was committing those sins so that I could, by His Spirit, put them to death as Paul tells us to do in Romans 8.13. I was compelled by His love to seek to put away those sins. “Finally, people, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things,” reports Philippians 4.8. The true, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable all defy negative exposition. Each ingredient was, and is, a matter of personal choice—and our choices make all the difference in the World. We all can choose a thought program which will produce a Christian mind. “And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the Kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if ye have no hope. And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair cometh because of iniquity. And Christ truly said unto our fathers: if ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me,” reports Moroni 10.21-23. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Lord God Almighty, Christ the King of glory, Who art our true Peace, and Love eternal; enlighten our souls with the brightness of Thy peace, and purify our consciences with the sweetness of Thy love, that we may with peaceful hearts wait for the Author of peace, and in the adversities of this World may ever have Thee for our Guardian and Protector; and so being fenced about by Thy care, may heartily give ourselves to the love of Thy peace. Searcher of Hearts, it is a good day to me when Thou givest me a glimpse of myself; sin is my greatest evil, but Thou art my greatest good; I have causes to loathe myself, and not to seek self-honour, for no one desires to commend one’s own dunghill. My country, family, church fare worse because of my sins, for sinners bring judgment in thinking sins are small or that God is not angry with them. Let me not take other good people as my example, and think I am good because I am like them, for all good people are not so good as thou desirest, are not always consistent, do not always follow holiness, do not feel eternal good in sore affliction. Show me how to know when a thing is evil which I think is right and good, how to know when what is lawful comes from an evil principle, as desire for reputation ow wealthy by usury. “And now I speak unto all the ends of the Earth—that is the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief,” reports Moroni 10.24. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Give me grace to recall my needs, my lack of knowing thy will in Scripture, of wisdom to guide others, of daily repentance, want of which keeps thee at bay, of the spirit of prayer, having words without love, of zeal for thy glory, seeking my own ends, of joy in thee and thy will, of love to others. And let me not lay my pipe too short of the fountain, never touching the eternal spring, never drawing water from above. O God, Who of Thy great love to this World, didst reconcile Earth to Heaven through Thine Only-begotten Son; grant that we who, by the darkness of our sins, are turned aside from brotherly love, may be Thy light shed forth in our souls be filled with Thine own sweetness, and embrace our friends in Thee, and our enemies for Thy sake, in a bound of mutual affection. O God, Who art Peace everlasting, Whose chosen reward is the gift of peace, and Who hast taught us that the peace-makers are Thy children, pour Thy sweet peace into our souls, that everything discordant may utterly vanish, and all that makes for peace be sweet to us forever. Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully grant unto Thy Church, that deadly pleasures may be cast aside, and that it may rather rejoice in the gladness of Thine eternal salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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If we are going to seize the promise of our times and educate our children so they can keep their dreams alive, we must all work together. Not government alone, not individuals alone, but as parents and children, as employers and employees, teachers and students, community leaders and community members, as government and citizens. We must renew our schools so every American child has the opportunity to get the best possible education for the twenty-first century.

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Do I Not Have the Right to do What I Want with My Own Money? Or are You Envious Because I am Generous?

February 13, 2020 1:38 am

An optimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good morning, God.” The pessimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good God! Morning!” If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. “And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11-12. If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a person, do not bother analyzing one’s ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much one is moved by noble ideas; if you watch one just laugh, you will get better results. If one laughs well, one is a good being. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all people are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other person. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

A state also of equality, wherein in the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of one’s will, set one above another, and confer on one, by an evident and clear appoint, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. This equality of humans by nature must be built on the foundation of an obligation to mutual love amongst humans, on which one builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence one derives the great maxims of justice and charity. The like natural inducement hath brought people to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every human’s hands, as any human can wish unto one’s own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the desire, which is undoubtedly in other beings, being of one and the same nature? #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

To have anything offered them repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully like the affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no being is ignorant. However, though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though humans in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of one’s person or possessions, yet one has not liberty to destroy oneself, or so much as nay creature in one’s possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all humankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in one’s life, health, liberty, or possession: for humans being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

All the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the World by his order, not another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as one is bound to preserve oneself, and not to quit one’s station willfully, so by the like reason, when one’s own preservation comes not in competition, ought one, as much as one can, to preserve the rest of humankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. And that all humans may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every human’s hands, where every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that laws to such a degree, as may hinder its violations: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern humans in the World be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature may punish another for any evil one has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Not only does God sovereignly determine how and to what extent He will bless us, He often blesses those who, in our opinion, seem most unworthy. We see this demonstrated rather forcefully in Jesus’s recounting of two Old Testament incidents as recorded in Luke 4.25-27: “I assure you that there were many windows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a window in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” Luke recorded that “all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.” Why were these Jewish people who heard Jesus so enraged that, as verse 29 tells us, they wanted to kill Him? It was because the widow and Naaman were despised Gentiles. In the opinion of the Jewry, these people were most unworthy. The reaction was, “How could God bless those Gentiles instead of more deserving Jewish people?” The fact is, God did bless those two Gentiles while passing right by His own chose people. Were in the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian more “deserving” than anyone in Israel? Not all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The Old Testament record of one’s healing indicates that Naaman, by his anger and haughtiness, was very undeserving. God often does bless people who seem to us to be quite unworthy. However, that is what grace is all about, because we are all unworthy. We rejoice in the generosity of God’s grace as it is directed toward us, or toward our family or friends. However, how do we feel wen someone whom we think does not deserve it is blessed by God? Are we envious because of the generosity of God toward that person? Do we feel, as did the workers in the parable, who got paid as much for one hour of work as did those who slaved away in the hot Sun for twelve hours, that we have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day, and yet that other person has been blessed more than we have? The workers who labored all day did not grumble because they received too little pay, but because less deserving workers received the same as they. The “A” students in the modern version of the parable were not outraged because they received only an “A,” but because some obviously undeserving students received the same grade. The reality of the Christian life, though, is that there is no “A” students in God’s Kingdom. Some are more obedient than others, some have labored more and sacrificed more than others, but none of us measures up to an “A.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

None of us wants to get what we actually deserve. We all want God’s grace, but we cannot enjoy God’s grace when there is an attitude of comparing. See the two groups of labourers as they severally wend their way home that evening. As to amount of money in their pockets, they are all equal: but as to amount of content in their spirits there is a great difference. The last go home each with a penny [a denarius] in one’s pocket, and astonished glad gratitude in one’s heart: their reward accordingly is a penny, and more. The first, on the contrary, go home, each with a penny in one’s pocket, and corroding discontent in one’s soul: their reward accordingly is less than a penny. Arnot believed it was in this sense that “the last will be first, and first will be last,” reports Matthew 20.16. That is, the last workers hired ended up “first” because they had a day’s wages plus contentment, whereas the first workers hired ended up “last” because of their discontentment. While that is certainly a helpful observation about life, I understand Jesus’ two statements in Matthew 19.30 and 20.16 somewhat differently than Arnot does. I believe Jesus is asserting the sovereign prerogative of God to dispense His favours as He pleases. I do not think His statement, “So the last will be the first, and the first will be last,” is to be taken in absolute sense as if this would always be the case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Rather, I think there is often no apparent correlation between what one seemingly “deserves” and what he or she receives. Remember, the whole point of the parable is to respond to Peter’s attitude as expressed in this statement: “The more we do, the more we earn, and the more God owes us.” If we are to succeed in living by grace, we must some to terms with the fact that God is sovereign in dispensing His gracious favours, and He owes us no explanation when His actions do not correspond with out system of merits. Indeed, as Paul said, “How unsearchable His decisions, and how mysterious His methods! For who has ever understood the thoughts of the Lord, or has even been His advisor?” reports Romans 11.33-34. We are left without any grounds for grumbling about the treatment we receive from God. God never becomes obligated to us, so He can always say to us, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you,” reports Matthew 20.13. At the same time God reserves the right to treat each of us differently, bestowing blessings as He sovereignly chooses. In the words of the landowner, God says to us, “Do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” reports Matthew 20.15. Doing what you want—God’s way. What does that mean? It means that they will then for the first time be able to do what they want to do. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Of course they will be able to steal, lie, and murder all they want—which will be none at all. However, they will also be able to be truthful and transparent and helpful and sacrificially loving, with joy—and they will want to be. Their life will be in this way caught up in God’s life. They will want the good and be able to do it, the only true human freedom. The mind set on the spiritual is in that sense “life and peace,” reports Romans 8.6, because it lives from God and, “sowing into the spirit, out of the spirit reaps the eternal kind of life,” reports Galatians 6.8. So—and this is of utmost importance to those who would enter Christian spiritual formation—life as normally understood, where the object is securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is to be set aside. “Can I still think about such things?” you may ask. Yes, you can. However, you increasingly will not. And when you do, as formation in Christlikeness progresses, they simply will not matter. In fact, they will seem ridiculous and uninteresting. Jesus’ words on not being anxious about what will happen to you and his admonitions to consider the flowers and birds, as reported in Luke 12.13-34, will seem obviously sane and right, whereas they previously sounded obviously crazy and wrong, or “out of touch with reality.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

From the perspective of interpersonal politics, this element of the relationship—congruence—gives a maximum space to be—for the client and for the therapist. The therapist is saying, in effect, “Here I am, as I am.” There is no hint of any kind of control over the client’s responses to one’s way of being. To the contrary, finding that the therapist is permitting oneself to be as one is, the client tends to discover that same freedom. The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for change is acceptance, or caring or prizing—unconditional beneficial regard. It means that when the therapist is experiencing an optimistic attitude, acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment, therapeutic movement r change is more likely. It involves the therapist’s willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on at that moment—confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. It is a nonpossessive caring. The therapist prizes the client in a total rather tan a conditional way. This resembles the love the parent sometimes feels toward the infant. Research indicates that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the greater the probability that therapy will be successful. It is not, of course, possible to feel such an unconditional caring all of the time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A therapist who is real will often have very different feelings, negative feelings toward the client. Hence it is not to be regarded as a “should,” that the therapist should have an unconditional optimistic regard for the client. It is simply a fact that unless this is a reasonably frequent ingredient in the relationship, constructive client change is less likely. What of the interpersonal politics of such an attitude? It is a powerful factor, but it is in no way manipulative or controlling in the relationship. There is no judgment or evaluation involved. Power over one’s own life is left completely in the hands of the client. It provides a nurturant atmosphere but not a forcing one. Another facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that are being experienced by the client and communicates this understanding to the client. At its best the therapist is so much inside the private World of the other that one can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. When the therapist responds at such a level of level the client’s reaction is of this sort: “Perhaps that is what I have been trying to say. I have not realized it, but yes, that is how I do feel!” This element of the relationship is perhaps the most easily improved through even brief training. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Therapists can learn, quite quickly, to be better, more sensitive listeners, more empathic. It is in part a skill as well as an attitude. To become more genuine or more caring, however, the therapist must change experientially, and this is slower and more complex process. Being empathic involves a choice on the part of the therapist as to what one will pay attention to, namely the inner World of the client as that individual perceives it. Thus it does change the interpersonal politics of the relationship. It in no way, however, exercises control over the client. On the contrary it assists the client in gaining a clearer understanding of, and hence a greater control over, one’s own World and one’s own behaviour. You may well ask why a person seeking help changes for the better when one is involved in a relationship with a therapist that contains these elements. Over the years I have come to see more and more clearly that the process of change in the client is a reciprocal of the attitudes of the therapist. As the client finds the therapist listening acceptingly to one’s feelings, one becomes able to listen acceptingly to oneself—to hear and accept the anger, the fear, the tenderness, the courage that is being experienced. As the client finds that therapist prizing and valuing even the hidden and awful aspects which have been expressed, one experiences a prizing and liking of oneself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

As the therapist is experienced as being real, the client is able to drop facades, to more openly be the experiencing within. Politically, by listening to the feelings within, the client reduces the power others have had in inculcating guilts and fears and inhibitions, and is slowly extending the understanding of, and control over, self. As the client is more acceptant of self, the possibility of being in command of self becomes greater and greater. The client possesses oneself to a degree that has never occurred before. The sense of power is growing. As the client becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, one finds at last some of the freedom to grow and change in the directions natural to the human organism. Life is not in one’s hands, to be lived as an individual. If there ever was a “man’s man,” it was Jonathan; and if there ever was a man who felt the need of a friend, I was Jonathan. The Philistines’ domination of Israel in that day was so complete that they allowed no blacksmiths in the land for fear they would make swords and spears for the Israelites. In fact, there were only two swords in the entire nation, those of King Saul and his son Jonathan. All Israel was in a dark storm of depression and despair—all, that is, expect Jonathan. Jonathan saw matters differently. He believed that if God willed it, Israel could be saved, even by a few. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

While others looked down, Jonathan looked up and saw a great and glorious God who could deliver hum anything He saw Fit. Armed with this conviction and his sword, Jonathan and his armour-bearer attacked a Philistine detachment alone. His sallying words say it all: “Come, let us go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few,” reports 1 Samuel 14.6. Assured that God would deliver them into his hand, Jonathan launched a horrifying single-handed attack. It was a mano a mano, hand-to-hand, man-to-man. Blood ran to the dust and white bone gleamed in the Sun as Jonathan sliced and hacked attacker after attacker, until twenty Philistine lay spread over a terrible half-acre. Blood-covered Jonathan was one tough Golden State Warrior! Jonathan’s heroics put some steel into his people, and a rebellion followed—and some good days for Israel. However, with Saul’s subsequent sin and rejection, Israel fell to even darker days than before (chapters 15-17), and Jonathan was more alone than ever. Even his greater heart was affected, as he too trembled before Goliath. There was no one of like mind, he thought—until he encountered David. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Jonathan could not believe his ears as David called out to the giant: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head…and the whole World will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (17.45-47). Then David ran full-speed at Goliath and nailed him right between the eyes! Blood-smeared David stood holding the great gory head, talking calmly with Jonathan’s father, Saul. At last Jonathan had found someone whose heart was in tune with his—a friend. What followed was the flowering of a deep male friendship, one of the most celebrated friendships in all of literature. As such, it provides the essential elements and wisdom for all genuine friendships. “Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy. And one that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of one and the power of one’s redemption. Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ,” Moroni 8.19-21. #RandolpHarris 15 of 19

And thus, in the state of nature, one being comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when one has got one in one’s hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of one’s own will; but only to retribute to one, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to one’s transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one being may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares oneself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of humans, for their mutual security; and so one becomes dangerous to humankind, the Simon clasp, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broke by one. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every being upon this score, by the right one hath to preserve humankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on anyone, who hath transgressed that law, as many make one repent the doing of it, and thereby deter one, and by one’s example of others, from doing the like mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, EVERY PERSON HATH A RIGHT TO PUNISH THE OFFENDER, AND BE EXECUTIONER OF THE LAW OF NATURE. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some people: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crimes one commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to one, nor, if they did, is one bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth, hath no power over one. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France, or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the World, beings without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every being hath not a power to punish offenses against it, as one soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to one, they can have no more power than what every being naturally may have over another. “Remember that The Maker knows all things, all that is past and present, all that has happened and will happen, and what might happen as well. Remember there is no past of future where The Maker is but only the vast present of all things living,” reports Anne Rice, Angel Time, page 132. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a being so far becomes degenerate, and declares oneself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other being receives damages by one’s transgression: in which case one who hath received any damages, has, besides the right of punishment common to one with other people, a particular right to seek reparation from one that has done it: and other person, who finds it just, may also join with one that is injured, and assist one in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm one has suffered. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy compassion to increase Thy faith in us; because Thou wilt not deny the assistance of Thy loving-kindness to those whom Thou bestowest a stedfast belief in Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us, O Lord, we pray Thee, to trust in Thee will our heart; seeing that as Thou dost always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so Thou does not forsake those who make their boast of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Confirm, O Lord, in our minds the mysteries of the true faith, that as we confess Him Who was conceived by the Virgin to be Very God and Man, so by the power of His saving Resurrection we may be enabled to attain eternal joy; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

O Divine Redeemer, great was thy goodness in undertaking my redemption, in consenting to be made sin for me, in conquering all my foes; great was thy strength in enduring the extremities of divine wrath, in taking away the load of my inequities; great was thy love in manifesting thyself alive, in showing thy sacred wounds, that every fear might vanish, and every doubt be removed; great was thy mercy in ascending to Heaven in being crowned and enthroned there to intercede for me, there to succour me in temptation, there to open the eternal book, there to receive me finally to thyself; great was thy wisdom in devising this means of salvation; bathe my soul in rich consolations of thy resurrection life; great was thy grace in commanding me to come hand in hand with thee to the Father, to be knit to Him eternally, to discover in him my rest, to find in him my peace, to behold His glory, to honour Him who is alone worthy; in giving me the Spirit as teacher, guide, power, that I may live repenting of sin, conquer Satan, find victory in life. When thou art absent all sorrows are here, when thou art present all blessings are mine. Be gracious to our prayers, O merciful God, and guard Thy people with loving protection; that they who confess Thine Only-begotten Son as God born in our bodily flesh, may never be corrupted by the deceits of the devil; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Fools makes complaint that the Prophet brings to then this old message of the eternal Deity that wait to light all human heart and brings nothing new or fit for this age and hour. We may make a preamble to our answer with the statement that one indubitabtly gives such scientific and practical turn to one’s teachings as the time demands, but we must admi that one’s first and last words remain ever the same as the first and last words of all the illustrious divine teachers. For what other message can one give? When the soul hungers for a happiness it has hitherto been unable to find in its mudpits of sensuality or in its marketplaces of barter, is one to offer it a stone of some economic doctrine and not the bread of spiritual nourishment? Is one to come to confirm our self-deceptions and our self-govellings and to give the lie to the divine bliss one enjoys in the moment? One’s continual serenity, one’s unemotional manner may draw the admiration of the discerning few, but it will also provoke the exasperation of the undiscerning many.

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Come to Me and You Will Find Rest in Your Souls–I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End!

December 18, 2019 2:11 am

We often worry about what we will be tomorrow, but do not take into account that we are somebody today. Life should be a place of learning suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity, and joy. When we are in the minority, that is when the test of courage comes; when we are in the majority is when the test of acceptance comes. It is our destiny and the destiny of everything in the World that we must come to an end. Very end that we experience in nature and humankind speaks to us with a loud voice: you also will come to an end! It may reveal itself in the farewell to a place where we have lived for a long time, the separation from the fellowship of intimate associates, the death of someone near to us. Or it may become apparent to us in the failure of a work that gave meaning to us, the end of a whole period of life, the approach of old age, or even in the melancholy side of nature visible in autumn. All this tells us: you will also come to an end. Whenever we are shaken by this voice reminding us of our end, we ask anxiously—what does it mean that we have a beginning and an end, that we come from the darkness of the not yet, and rush ahead towards the darkness of the no more? When Augustine asked this question, he began his attempt to answer it with a prayer. And it is right to do so, because praying means elevating oneself to the eternal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

In fact, there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. However, as human beings we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time. We speak of time in three ways or modes—the past, present, and future. Every child is aware of them, but no wise being has ever penetrated their mystery. We become aware of them when we hear a voice telling us: you also will come to an end. It is the future that awakens us to the mystery of time. Time runs from the beginning to the end, but our awareness of times goes in the opposite direction. It starts with the anxious anticipation of the end. In the light of the future we see the past and present. So let us first consider our going into the future and towards the end that is the last point that we can anticipate in out future. The image of the future produces contrasting feelings in beings. The expectation of the future gives one a feeling of joy. We may even learn to recapture the will to laugh and the art of laughing at will. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

It is a great thing to have a future in which one can actualize one’s possibilities, in which one can experience the abundance of life, in which one can create something new—be it new work, a new way of life, or the regeneration of one’s own being. Courageously one goes ahead towards the new, especially in the earlier part of one’s own life. However, this feeling struggles with other ones: the anxiety about what is hidden in the future, the ambiguity of everything it will bring us, the shortness of its duration that decreases with every year of our life and becomes shorter the nearer we come to the unavoidable end. And finally the end itself, with its impenetrable darkness and the threat that one’s whole existence in time will be judged as a failure. Therefore, it may be a good idea to think before one speaks, and read before one thinks. This may give one something to think about that we did not make up ourselves—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when one is at the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions. We want to be in the pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in the pursuit of us. The goal is to fully realize the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in our souls. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

How do beings, how do you, react to this image of the future with its hope and threat and inescapable end? Probably most of us react by looking at the immediate future, anticipating it, working for it, hoping for it, being anxious about it, while cutting off from our awareness the future which is farther away, and above all, by cutting off from our consciousness the end, the last moment of our future. Perhaps we could not live without doing so most of our time. However, perhaps we will not be able to die if we always do so. And if one is not able to die, is one really about to live? How do we react if we become aware of the inescapable end contained in our future? Are we able to bear it, to take its anxiety into a courage that faces ultimate darkness? Or are we thrown into utter hopelessness? Do we hope against hope, or do we repress our awareness of the end because we cannot stand it? Repressing the consciousness of our end expresses itself in several ways. Many try to do so by putting the expectation of a long life between now and the end. For them it is decisive that the end be delayed. Even old people who are near the end do this, for they cannot endure the fact that the end will not be delayed much longer. Many people realize this deception and hope for a continuation of this life after death. They expect an endless future in which they may achieve or possess what has been denied them in this life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

This attitude that we will achieve our hearts desires in the after life is a prevalent attitude about the future, and also a very simple one. It denies that there is an end. It refuses to accept that we are creatures, that we come from the eternal ground of time and return to the eternal ground of time and have received a limited span of time as our time. It replaces eternity by endless future. However, endless future is without a final aim; it repeats itself and could well be described as an image of hell. This is not the Christian way of dealing with the end. The Christian message says the eternal stands above past and future. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” The Christian message acknowledges that time runs towards an end, and that we move towards the end of that time which is our time. Many people—but not the Bible—speak loosely of the “hereafter” or the “life after death.” Even in our liturgies eternity is translated by “World without end.” However, the World, by its very nature, is that which comes to an end. If we want to speak in truth without foolish, wishful thinking, we should speak about the eternal that is neither timelessness nor endless time. The mystery of the future is answered in the eternal of which we may speak in images taken from time. However, if we forget that the images are images, we fall into absurdities and self-deceptions. There is no time after time, but there is eternity above time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Time is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each edge piece of a puzzle interlocks with two others to form the puzzle’s framework and give structure and support to the puzzle as a whole. Each piece has a unique design and cut that ensures just the right place to fit within the puzzle. Each morning, people from the edge pieces that interlock to create a safe environment and give support to one another and the whole. Each morning, they provide just the right place for every individual to fit safely and securely. The community members are strength and stability, and like the edge pieces, they do not stand alone in this responsibility. There are always others to support and assist, ensuring that every person has a place. The spirits temper the movements of bodily parts. Some infectious diseases are chiefly in the spirits, and not so much in the humours. We have complex and contradictory feelings toward the freedom and independence and self-determination of the individuals and countries: we desire these and are proud of the past support we have given to such tendencies, and yet we are often frightened by what they may mean. We tend to value and respect the dignity and worth of each individual, yet when we are frightened, we move away from this direction. Suppose we presented ourselves in some such fashion, openly and transparently, in our foreign relations. We would be attempting to be the nation which we truly are, in all our complexity and even contradictoriness. What would be the result? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

If we, as a country, were more open and transparent in our foreign relations, it seems the results would be similar to the experiences of a client when one is more truly that which he or she is. Let us look at some of the probable outcomes. We would be much more comfortable, because we would have nothing to hide. We could focus on the problem at hand, rather than spending our energies to prove that we are moral or consistent. We could use all of our creative imagination in solving the problem, rather than in defending ourselves. We could openly advance both our selfish interests, and our sympathetic concern for others, and let these conflicting desires find the balance which is acceptable to us as a people. We could freely change and grow in our leadership position, because we would not be bound by rigid concepts of what we have been, must, ought to be. We would find that we were much less feared, because others would be less inclined to suspect what lies behind the façade. We would, by our own openness, tend to bring forth openness and realism on the part of others. We would tend to work out the solutions of World problems on the basis of the real issues involved, rather than in terms of the facades being worn by the negotiating parties. In short what I am suggesting by this fantasied example is that nations and organizations might discover, as have individuals, that it is a richly rewarding experience to be what one deeply is. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

I am suggesting that this view contains the seeds of a philosophical approach to all of life, that it is more than a trend observed in the experience of clients. Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges. This emotion system works privately, often free of observation. It is a vital aspect of deep private bonds and also affords a way of talking about them. It is a way of describing how—as parents and children, wives and husbands, friends and lovers—we intervene in feelings in order to shape them. What are feeling rules? How do we know they exist? How do they bear on deep acting? We may address these questions by focusing on the pinch between “what I do feel” and “what I should feel,” for at this spot we get our best view of emotional convention. Now, when we take a closer look at the whole person, we find that there are six basic aspects in our lives as individual human beings—six things inseparable from every human life. These together and in interplay make up human nature. Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences), feeling (sensation, emotion), choice (will, decision, character), body (action, interaction with the physical World), social context (personal and structural relations to others), and soul (the factor that integrates all of the above to form one life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Simply put, every human being thinks (has a thought life), feels, chooses, interacts with one’s body and its social context, and (more of less) integrates all of the foregoing as parts of one life. These are the essential factors in a human being, and nothing essential to human life falls outside of them. The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around Go, as they are restored and sustained by him. Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself. The human self is then fully integrated under God. The salvation or deliverance of the believer in Christ is essentially holistic or whole-life. David the psalmist, speaking of his own experience but prophetically expressing the understanding of Jesus the Messiah, said, “I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure,” reports Psalm 16.7-9. Note how many aspects of the self are explicitly involved in this passage: the mind, the will, the feeling, the soul, and the body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

A major part of understanding spiritual formation in the Christian traditions is to follow closely the way the biblical writings repeatedly and emphatically focus on the various essential dimensions of the human being and their role in life as a whole. We will draw from spiritual understanding the incentive to keep on with our quest and the courage to set higher goals. To learn from God in this total-life immersion is ow we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. The outcome is that we increasingly are able to do all things, speaking or acting, as I Christ were doing them. As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our live from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. No matter what my profession is, I am in full-time Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s World. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His—His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s World everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil. We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

When, for example, an architect facing a difficult architectural job, one must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on Earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an independent contractor. In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about in life in the kingdom. It is important to move away from derogatory language against others, calling them twits, jerks, or idiots, and increasingly mesh with the respect and endearment for persons that naturally flows from God’s way. This in turn transforms all of my dealings with others into tenderness and makes the usual coldness and brutality of human relations, which lays a natural foundation for unspeakable actions, simply unthinkable. Our mind and heart will keep coming back to God’s grace. The grace of God is so inexhaustible and at times overwhelming. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever more! Amen,” reports 2 Peter 3.18. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Growing in the grace of God allows one to become acquainted with elements of our experience which have in the past been denied to awareness as too threatening, too damaging to the structure of the self. One finds one’s experiencing these feelings fully, completely, in the relationship, so that for the moment one is one’s fear, or one’s anger, or one’s tenderness, or one’s strength. And as one lives these widely varied feelings, in all their degrees of intensity, one discovers that one has experienced oneself, that one is all these feelings. One finds that one’s behavior changing in constructive fashion in accordance with one’s newly experienced self. One approaches the realization that one no longer needs to fear what experience may hold, but can welcome it freely as a part of one’s changing and developing self. However, it seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, or fulfilled, or actualized. It is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis. I believe that all of these terms have been used in ways which imply that if one or several of these states is achieved, then the goal of life have been achieved. Certainly, for many people happiness, or adjustment, are seen as states of being which are synonymous with the good life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Social scientists have frequently spoken of the reduction of tension, or the achievement of homeostasis or equilibrium as if these states constituted the goal of the process of living. So it is with a certain amount of surprise and concern that I realize that my experience supports none of these definitions. If I focus on the experience of those individuals who seem to have evidenced the greatest degree of movement during the spiritual and therapeutic relationship, and who, in the years following this relationship, appear to have made and to be making real progress toward the good life, then it seems to me that they are not adequately described at all by any of these terms which refer to fixed states of being. I believe they would consider themselves insulted if they were described as adjusted, and they would regard it as false if they were described as happy or contented or even actualized. As I have known them I would regard it as most inaccurate to say that all their dive tensions have been reduced, or that they are in a state of homeostasis. So I am forced to ask myself whether there is any way in which I can generalize about their situation, any definition which I can give of the good life which would seem to fit the facts as I have observed them. I find this not at all easy, and what follows is stated very tentatively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction. This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible general qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals. The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. Many people, however, seem to be morally bankrupt—completely devoid of any decent moral qualities. And it is just about the worst thing you can say about a person. A lot of people are also spiritually bankrupt. Spiritual bankruptcy is a most absolute state. It means we have nothing to give to God. Salvation is a gift from God; it is entirely by grace through faith—not by works. People living the good life are righteous and the process seems to involve an increasing openness to the experience. It is the polar opposite of defensiveness. Defensiveness is an organism’s response to experiences which are perceived or anticipated as threatening, as incongruent with the individual’s existing picture of oneself, or of oneself in relationship to the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

These threatening experiences are temporarily rendered harmless by being distorted in awareness, or being denied to awareness. I quite literally cannot see, with accuracy, those experiences, feelings, reactions in myself which are significantly at variance with the picture of myself which I already possess. A large part of the process of therapy is the continuing discovery by the client that one is experiencing feelings and attitudes which heretofore one has not been able to be aware of, which one has not been able to own as being a part of oneself. If a person could be fully open to one’s experience, however, every stimulus—whether originating within the organism or in the environment—would be freely relayed through the nervous system without being distorted by any defensive mechanism. There would be no need of the mechanism of subception whereby the organism is forewarned of any experience threatening to the self. On the contrary, whether the stimulus was the impact of a configuration of form, color, or sound in the environment on the sensory nerves, or a memory trace from the past, or visceral sensation of fear or pleasure or disgust, the person would be living it, would have it completely available to awareness. Thus, one aspect of this process which I am naming the good life appears to be a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

The individual living the good life is becoming more able to listen to oneself, to experience what is going on within oneself. One is more open to one’s feelings of fear and discouragement and pain. One is also more open to one’s feelings of courage, and tenderness, and awe. One is free to live one’s feelings subjectively, as they exist in one, and also free to be aware of these feelings. One is more able fully to live the experiences of one’s organism rather than shutting them off. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast made known the Incarnation of Thy Word by the testimony of a glorious star, which when the wise men be held, they adored Thy Majesty with gifts; grant that the star of Thy righteousness may always appear in our hearts, and our treasure consist in giving thanks to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, the Enlightener of all nations, grant Thy people to enjoy perpetual peace; and pour into our hearts that radiant light which Thou didst shed into the minds of the wise men; thought Jesus Christ Our Lord. “Behold, O Lord, thou hast smitten us because of our iniquity, and hast driven us forth, and for these many years we have been in the wilderness; nevertheless, thou hast been merciful unto us. O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of rock,” reports Ether 3.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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The Challenges You Face in Your Own Life Experience Will be Trying, to Say the Least, for it Has a Glory and Naught Else Can Share it!

October 24, 2019 12:51 am

I have guest here! Where exactly did you come from? It is once in a blue Moon a boat ties up at my dock. However, you are most welcome. We are very private here, you understand, I cannot invite you to stay. But these are all golden dreams. On, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that beings only do nasty things because one does not know one’s own interests; and that if one were enlightened, if one’s eyes were opened to one’s real normal interests, beings would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding one’s real advantage, one would see one’s own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not one being can, consciously, act against one’s own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, one would begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when beings have acted only from their own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that beings, consciously, that is, fully understanding their real interest, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, willfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage…Advantage! What is advantage? And will you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the advantage of beings consists? And what, if it so happens that a being’s advantage, sometimes, not only may, but even must, consist in one’s desiring in certain cases what is harmful to oneself and not advantageous. And if so, there can be such a case, the whole principle falls into dust. What do you think—are there such cases? You laugh; laugh away gentlemen, but only answer me: have being’s advantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some which not only have been included but cannot possibly be included under any classification? You see, you gentlemen and ladies have, to the best of my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the averages of statistical figures and political-economical formulas. Your advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace—and so on, and so on. So that the being who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in opposition to all that list would, to your thinking, and indeed mine too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute mad person: would not one be? However, you know, this is what is surprising: when they reckon up human advantages, why does it so happen that all these statisticians, sages, and lovers of humanity invariably leave out one? #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

They do not even take it into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken and the whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no great matter, they would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list. However, the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for instance…Ech! Gentlemen and ladies, but of course he is your friend, too; and indeed there is no one, no one, to whom he is not a friend! When he prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to you, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with the laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with excitement and passion of the true normal interest of humans; with irony he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through something inside one which is stronger than all one’s interests, one will go off on quite a different track—that is, act in direct opposition to what one just been saying about oneself, in opposition to the laws of reason, in opposition to one’s own advantage—in fact, in opposition to everything…I warn you that my friend is a compound personality, and therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The fact is, gentlemen and ladies, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to almost every being than one’s greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of which a being if necessary is ready to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity—in fact, in opposition to all those excellent and useful things if only one can attain that fundamental, most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. “Yes, but it is advantage all the same” you will retort. However, excuse me, I will make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system constructed by lovers of humankind for the benefit of humankind. In fact, it upsets everything. However, before I mention this advantage to you, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly declare that all these fine systems—all these theories for explaining to humankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably striving to pursue these interests they may at once become good and noble—are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises! Yes, logical exercises. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of humankind by means of the pursuit of one’s own advantage is to my mind almost the same thing as…as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle, that through civilization humankind becomes softer, and consequently less bloodthirsty, and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does not seem to follow from one’s arguments. However, beings have such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that one is ready to distort the truth intentionally, one is ready to deny the evidence of one’s senses only to justify one’s logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest ways, as though it were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—the Great and also the present one. Take North America—the eternal union. Take the farce of Schleswig-Holstein…And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for humankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely noting more. And through the development of this many-sidedness beings may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to them. Have you noticed that it is the most civilized gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

In any case civilization has made humankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty. In old days one saw justice in bloodshed and with one’s conscience at peace exterminated those one thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though beings have now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, one is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. However, yet you are fully convinced that one will be sure to learn when one gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then beings will cease from intentional error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set one’s will against one’s normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach beings (through to my mind it is a superfluous luxury) that one never has really had any caprice or will of one’s own, and that one is something of nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, an that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything one doe is not done by one’s willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and beings will no longer have to answer for their actions and life will become exceedingly easy for one. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the World. Then—this is all what you say—new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then…In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated?), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Beings are stupid, but one is so ungrateful that you could not find another like one in all creation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

I, for instance, if all of a sudden, apropos of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: “I say, gentlemen, had not we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to sent these logarithms to the devil and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!”, I would not be in the least surprised. That again would not matter; but what is annoying is that one would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of beings. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that beings everywhere and at all times, whoever one may be, has preferred to act as one chose and not in the least as one’s reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one absolutely ought (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice—however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that beings want a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that beings must want a rationally advantageous choice? #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

What beings want is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice. For some time now I have been talking to people who have served as subjects (Ss) in psychologists’ experiments. They have told me of their experience, and it has troubled me. I want to share my concern with my colleagues. The letter that follows is my effort to consolidate the attitudes and feelings of the people to whom I talked. Dear E (Experimenter): My name is S. You do not know me. I have another name my friends call me by, but I drop it, and become S number 27 as soon as I take part in your research. I serve in your surveys and experiments. I answer your questions, fill out questionnaires, let you wire me up to various machines that record my physiological reactions. I pull levers, flip switches, track moving targets, trace mazes, learn nonsense syllables, tell you what I see in inkblots—do the whole barrage of things you ask me to do. I have started to wonder why I do these things for you. What is in it for me? Sometimes you pay me to serve. More often I have to serve, because I am a student in a beginning psychology course, and I am told that I will not receive a grade unless I take part in at least two studies; and if I take part in more, I will get extra points on the final exam. I am part of the Department’s “subject-pool.” When I have asked you what I will get out of your studies, you tell me that, “It is for Science.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

When you are running someone particular study, you often lie to me about your purpose. You mislead me. It is getting so I find it difficult to trust you. I am beginning to see you as a trickster, a manipulator. I do not like it. In fact, I lie to you a lot of the time, even on anonymous questionnaires. When I do not lie, I will sometimes just answer at random, anything to get through with the hour, and back to my own affairs. Then, too, I can often figure out just what it is you are trying to do, what you would like me to day or do; at those times, I decide to go along with your wishes if I like you, or foul you up if I do not. You do not actually say what your hopes or hypotheses are; but the very setup in your laboratory, the alternatives you give me, the instruction you offer, all work together to pressure me to day or do something in particular. It is as if you are whispering in my ear, “When the light comes on, pull the left switch,” and then you forget to deny that you have whispered. However, I get the message. And I pull the right or the left one, depending on how I feel toward you. You know, even when you are not in the room—wen you are just the printed instructions on the questionnaire or the voice on the tape recorder that tells me what I am supposed to do—I wonder about you. I wonder who you are, what you are really up to. I wonder what you are going to do with the “behavior” I give you. Who are you going to show my answers to? Who is going to see the marks I leave on your response-recorders? #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Do you have any interest at all in what I think, feel, and imagine as I make the marks you are so eager to study and analyze? Certainly, you never ask me what I mean by them. If you asked, I would be glad to tell you. As a matter of fact, I do tell my roommate or my girl friend what I thought your experiment was about and what I meant when I did what I did. If my roommate could trust you, he could probably give you a better idea of what your data (my answers and responses) mean than the idea you presently have. God knows how much good psychology has gone down the drain, when my roommate and I discuss your experiment and my part in it, at the beer-joint. As a matter of fact, I am getting pretty tried of being S. It is too much like being a punched IBM card in the University registrar’s office. I feel myself being pressured, bulldozed, tricked, manipulated every where I turn. Advertisements in magazines and commercials on TV, political speeches, salesmen, and con men of all kinds put pressure on me to get me to buy, say, or do things that I suspect are not for my good at all. Just for their good, the good of their pocketbooks. Do you sell your “expert knowledge” about me to these people? Is this why you keep reviewing my case every month for four years and then sending the packets all over the Untied States of America? Is this why you are asking third parties to fill out forms my condition that my health information privacy rights, and then what I tell you is leaked all over the World? If that is true, then you are really not in good faith with me. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

You have told me that when I show myself to you and let you study me, that in the long run it will be for my good. I am not convinced. You really seem to be studying me in order to learn how to influence my attitudes and my actions without realizing it. I resent this more than you realize. It is not fair for you to get me to show how I can be influenced and then for you to pass this information along to people who pay your salary or pay your bribes, or give you money to equip your laboratory, and then not acknowledge there is a data breach of my information, which you are responsible and can be held civically and legally responsible for. I do not like that you put my life in danger. I do not like that you are a threat to my health and safety. I feel used, like a science experiment, and I do not like it. However, I protect myself by not showing you my whole self or by lying. Did you ever stop to think that your articles, and the textbooks you write, the theories you spin—all based on your data (my disclosures to you)—may actually be a tissue of lies and half-truths (my lies and half-truths) or a joke I have played on you because I do not like you or trust you? That should give you cause for some concern. Now look, Mr. E, I am not “paranoid,” as you might say. Nor an I stupid. And I do believe some good can come out of my serving in your research. Even some good for me. I am not entirely selfish, and I would be glad to offer myself up for study, to help others. However, somethings have to change first. Will you listen to me? Here is what I would like from your researchers: #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

I would like you to help me gain a better understanding of what has made me the way I am today. I would like to know this because I want to be more free than I feel. I would like to discover more of my own potentialities. I would like to be more whole, more courageous, more enlightened. I would like to be able to experience more, learn better, remember better, and express myself more fully. I would like to learn how to recognize and overcome the pressures of other people’s influences, of my background, that interfere with my going in the paths I choose. Now, if you would promise to help me in these ways, I would gladly come into your lab and virtually strip my body and soul naked. I would be there meaning to show you everything I could that was relevant to your particular interest of the moment. And I can assure you, that is different from what I have been showing you thus far, which is as little as I can. In fact, I cross my fingers when I am in your lab, and say to myself, “What I have just said or done here is not me.” Would not you like to change? Can you handle my truth, the full truth? Do you even really know what you are investigating? If you will trust me, I will trust you, if you are trustworthy. I would like you to take the time and trouble to get acquainted with me as a person, before we go through your experimental procedures. And I would like to get to know you and what you are up to, to see if I would like to expose myself to you. Can you imagine your body being violated by strangers you never met without your consent? #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Sometime, you remind me of physicians. They look at me as the unimportant envelope that conceals the information they are really interested in. You have looked at me as the unimportant package that contains “responses,” and this is all I am for you. Let me tell you that when I feel this, I get back at you. I give your responses, all right; but you will never know what I meant by them. You know, I can speak, not just with words, but with my action. And when you have thought I was rending to a “stimulus” in your lab, my response was really directed at you; and what I meant by it was, “Take this, you unpleasant so-and-so.” Does that surprise you? It should not. Another ting. Those tests of yours that have built-in gimmicks to see if I am being consistent, or deliberately lying, or just answering at random—they do not feel me. Actually, if you would get on level with me, they would not be necessary. There are enough con men and women in the World, without your joining their number. I would hope that psychologist would be more trustworthy than politicians or salesmen. I will make a bargain with you. You show me that you are doing your research for me—to help me become freer, more self-understanding, better able to control myself—and I will make myself available to you in any way you ask. And I will not play jokes and tricks on you. I do not want to be controlled, not by your or anyone else. And I do not want to control other people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

I do not want you to help other people to understand how I am or can be “controlled,” so that they can then control me. Show me that you are for me, and I will show myself to you. You work for me, Mr. E, and I will truly work for you. Between us, we may produce a psychology that is more authentic and more liberating. Some lead an austere life and emaciate themselves; some give clear instructions to their disciples; some rule kingdoms quite justly and rightly; some openly hold disputations with other schools of thought; some write down their teachings and experiences; others simulate ignorance; a few do even responsible actions; but all these are famous as wise beings in the World. Some of the enlightened ones sit as recluses in prayer, others travel and preach, still others create centers where they teach, a fourth class heal the sick, and a fifth write. Each does what one’s tendency or mission dictates. The sage may sit under a village tree, head an ashram, or live as a sequestered hermit. One may also live in a luxurious palace, head a business organization, or farm land. These things are not the point, which is one’s consciousness of divine presence. The World, its pleasures and treasures, does not deceive one: one sees through its values even if one is active in the midst of it. These powers will seep into the physical plane by drawing upon the power of the ley lines as well as the power hidden within nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

Turning the cord inside our represents backward knowledge and the passage of the consciousness from the limited confines of the body into the other Worlds unseen by the masses. This is to gain the power to move though Worlds to create change within this realm of illusory limits, to make things easy. To help fuel and facilitate the process of soul introspection and open up psychic vision while also providing a more internal endurance needed to face this World. Understand that you are in control. Negative energy that attacks you in this realm are gnats to be swatted, despite how others may be tormented by them. They are reflections of their fear, not yours and you do not have to have anything to do with such folly. The infernal forces will gain momentum in the direction of becoming your allies in creation. Oppressive circumstance that may be experienced here becomes tension to be harnessed and mastered for your own liberation. It becomes a tool within your toolbox of becoming. Like all of these realms it is your will and personal power which can liberate you. Ground this power by investing time in the corporeal plane toward consciously applying effort toward ascent and personal evolution. Look for obstacles to overcome for the sake of overcoming them alone. Do hard thing. Become superior. Work harder, exercise harder, pray longer. Run until you sweat and keep running. Push yourself to the Heavenly extremes until it hurts. Then keep moving through the torment to further connect to the powers of Heaven so you can access them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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If they Come in the Form of to-die-for Clay Dinnerware, I Guess Monday Blues are Okay!

October 23, 2019 1:40 am

Can you not smell that coffee perking on the stove? You sit right down. You are not driving off without some grits and biscuits and scrambled eggs. I got bacon and ham on the stove. The alienating conditions we have described in the past pervade modern society and touch vast numbers of men and women—factory workers, white-collar workers, organization men, voters, audiences, the seniors, and various ethnic grounds and cultures. Although alienated, their responses—except in times of severe crisis—and subdued; theirs are the lives of quiet desperation. However, we are now going to investigate people who do not sit and take it: they rebel, retreat, or deviate in some significant way from ordinary behavior. In grouping together artistic rebels, juvenile delinquents, addicts, sexual deviants, psychotics and suicides, we most certainly do not mean to suggest that they are similar in nature or that there is any simple explanation for them. Nor is this intended to be a catalogue of “maladjustment” or “social disorganization.” Rather, it is a sampling of a number of major types of alienated behavior, each one of which deserves and often receives whole volumes of treatment. These people are alike only in that they feel cut off or have cut themselves off from the main stream of community life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

By using reason alone beings can progress to higher forms. This underground being scorns reason (or science), planning and progress; he or she derides or would destroy their works to preserve his or her freedom—even a freedom underground. Juvenile delinquency in America is not merely a reflection of personality difficulties, slums and broken homes, but is directly related to the structure of our society and its prevailing values. Thus while delinquency is not exclusively working-class in origin, it may be interpreted in large part as the frustrated and violent responses of those at the bottom to middle-class values which school and other institutions seek to impose but which—given the obstacles to social advancement—they are unable to achieve. Isolated from the community, working-class boys can achieve status or recognition chiefly in their gangs, which offer a solution. It is in the nature of that solution to reject the middle-class values which society tries to impose and to sanction that rejection. The same value system, impinging upon children differently equipped to meet it, is instrumental in generating both delinquency and respectability. That delinquency may have sinister political and racial overtones. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

If delinquents are clearly rebellious, no simple statement can be made about addicts, the next group described or discussed here. Some may be rebellious and others escapist or retreatist; but all are victims of a chemical compulsion whereby alcohol or drug becomes the master. Neuroses unquestionably lie at the root of addictions, but alone cannot explain why people drown in drink or drugs. Evidence shows that physiological factors and nutritional elements are also involved. Nevertheless, addictions have serious psychological and social consequences; the addict’s behavior is generally unacceptable; society is hostile; and the victim responds with feelings of guilt and remorse, and further undesirable behavior. The heavy drinker often becomes isolated from family and community as a result of his condition. It is a measure of the intricacy of the problem that while psychotherapy alone has been notoriously unsuccessful in curing alcoholics, combined with diet and drugs it has often proved helpful. Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), a quasi-religious movement, has scored notable successes in restoring alcoholics to community life. While alcoholism is serious enough; drug addiction is perhaps more terrible still—especially in the United States, where the non-medical use of narcotics is a criminal offense and the public is violent in disapprobation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Furthermore, while alcoholic may find solidarity in a movement such as A.A., narcotics addicts huddle together for mutual protection while under the influence. Theirs is truly a league of the damned. William Burroughs, himself a former addict, tells us, “Nothing ever happens in the junk World.” Nothingness, however, is precisely what many addicts and alcoholics seek, as Elmer Bendiner shows in his description of the “Bowery men.” Here in this brotherhood of the beaten and defeated, men find a perfect hiding place from the World, find what so many citizens of the modern World seek and never find—an escape from tensions. In this respect, at least, as Bendiner observes, they have something in common with the organization of man. However, while he fails to achieve tranquility, they succeed. Bowery men are deviants in that they reject the drive for status. However, what of those who deviate in that most sensitive area of human experience, pleasures of the flesh? Are they also alienated—either by choice or because of society’s hostility? Donald Cory, an acknowledged homosexual, offers an interesting description of homosexuals as a minority group. Like other minorities seeking a place in the community which has been denied them, they wage a grim struggle against society’s rejection. And as in the case of other minorities, part of their fate is to “internalize” the contempt of the majority. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Another kind of outcast is represented by the anonymous and gifted English lady of the evening who wrote “Streetwalker.” For her there is no in-group to offer defense against a hostile World. Instead of fighting back, she welcomes her rootlessness. Her choice is homelessness: “The slight security I would be able to enjoy, by allowing myself to pretend that my personality was contained in something more than the shell of my body, would make the nights—which hold no safety of my body, would make the nights—which hold no safety and in which I must be constantly alert, constantly rootless—even more desolate.” Streetwalker has chosen alienation as a way of life (until at last she decides to make a fresh start). However, others, more properly described as psychotic, have no opportunity to make a choice. For them the ties have snapped. They most certainly snapped for “Joey” as described in Bruno Betelheim’s remarkable case study of a schizophrenic child who “converted himself into a ‘machine’ because he did not dare be human.” One must not read too much into Joey’s mechanical fantasy World; after all, most of us are not schizophrenic. However, our society produced him, and his delusion is only an extreme form of escape. Still, Denmark, which has the most comprehensive system of social security still has one of the highest suicide rates in the World. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Often times, suicide is linked to early upbringing, in which the Danish child’s dependence on one’s mother is encouraged, aggression is strictly checked, and the arousal of guilt feelings is used as a disciplinary technique. As a result, aggressive feelings are turned inward. This alone does not explain suicide. Among the other factors involved is a fairly common belief in the idea of reunion after death with a lost loved one. Competitiveness, often associated with suicide elsewhere, has little bearing on Danish suicide. Danish and American character traits are quite different. Differences in personality traits may explain why we are half as likely to kill ourselves as the Danes. May it also explain why we are ten times more likely to kill each other? I do not believe that any conflict between desires and fears could ever account for the extent to which a neurotic is divided within oneself and for an outcome so detrimental that it can actually ruin a person’s life. A psychic situation implies that a neurotic retains the capacity to strive for something wholeheartedly, that one merely is frustrated in these strivings by the blocking actions of fears. The source of the conflict revolves around the neurotic’s loss of capacity to wish for anything wholeheartedly because one’s very wishes are divided, that is, go in opposite directions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The fundamental conflict is more disruptive. The basic neurotic conflict does not necessarily have to arise in the first place and is possible of resolution if it does arise—provided the sufferer is willing to undergo the considerable effort and hardship involved. This difference is not a matter of optimism or pessimism but inevitably results from the difference in our premises. There is a conflict between constructive and destructive forces in human beings. However, these opposites can sometimes be complementary—the goal is to accept both and thereby approximate the ideal of wholeness. The neurotic is a person who has been stranded in a one-sided development. In the law of complements, the opposite tendency contains complementary elements neither of which can be dispensed with in an integrated personality. However, these are already outgrowths of neurotic conflicts and are so tenaciously adhered to because they represent attempts at solution. If, for instance, we regard a tendency toward being introspective, withdrawn, more concerned with one’s own feelings, thoughts, or imagination that with other persons’ as an authentic inclination—that is, constitutionally established and reinforced by experience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The effective therapeutic procedure would be to show the person one’s hidden “extravert” tendencies, to point out the dangers of one-sidedness in either direction, and encourage one to accept and live out both tendencies. If, however, we look upon introversion (or, as I prefer to call it, neurotic detachment) as a means of evading conflicts that arise in close contact with others, the task is not to encourage more extraversion but to analyze the underlying conflicts. The goal of wholeheartedness can be approximated only after these have been resolved. The basic conflict of the neurotic in the fundamentally contradictory attitude one has acquired toward other persons. Let me call attention to the dramatization of such a contradiction in the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We see him on the one hand delicate, sensitive, sympathetic, helpful, and on the other brutal, callous, and egotistical. I do not, of course, mean to imply that neurotic division always adheres to the precise line of this story, but merely to point to a vivid expression of basic incompatibility of attitudes in relation to others. To approach the problem genetically we must go back to what I have called basic anxiety, meaning by this feeling a child has of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile World. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

A wide range of adverse factors in the environment can produce this insecurity in a child: direct or indirect domination, indifference, erratic behavior, lack of respect for the child’s individual needs, lack of real guidance, disparaging attitudes, too much admiration or the absence of I, lack of reliable warmth, having to take dies in parental disagreements, too much or too little responsibility, overprotection, isolation from other children, injustice, discrimination, unkept promises, hostile atmosphere, and so one. The only factor to which I should like to draw special attention in this context is the child’s sense of lurking hypocrisy in the environment: his or her feeling that the parents’ love, their Christian charity, honesty, generosity, and so on may be only pretense. Part of what the child feels on this score is really hypocrisy; but some of it may be just one’s action to all the contradictions one senses in the parents’ behavior. Usually, however, there is a combination of cramping factors. They may be out in the open or quite hidden, so that in analysis one can only gradually recognize these influences on the child’s development. Harassed by these disturbing conditions, the child gropes for ways to keep going, ways to cope with this menacing World. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Despite one’s own weakness and fears one unconsciously shapes one’s tactics to meet the particular forces operating in one’s environment. In doing so, one develops not only ad hoc strategies but lasting character trends which become part of one’s personality. I call these neurotic trends. When new forms of governing the city-states, new laws, and new interpretations of gods are emerging, all give new psychological power. In such a period of change and growth, emergence is often experienced by the individual as emergency with all its attendant stress. It is no accident that shrines and popular stars become important in chaotic times, as for some they serve as a god of proportion and balance the citizens seek assurance and it gives meaning and purpose behind the seeming chaos. We appreciate more of the rich meaning and light that culture brings into our lives. It is a light of mind, light of reason, light of insight. When we are at peace and feel uplifted and safe, our conscious intentions and our deeper intentionality will be already committed to the event about to take place. For the ones who participates in harmony, it carries its own healing power. Thinking and self-creating are inseparable. When become aware of all the fantasies in which we see ourselves in the future, pilot ourselves this way or that, and this becomes obvious. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

How a person lives his or her life attests to the awareness in the experience of the race that the individual does have some responsibility for how he or she lives. Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. Clearly self-creating is actualized by our hopes, our ideals, our images, and all sorts of imagined constructs that we may hold from time to time in the forefront of our attention. These “models” function consciously as well as unconsciously; they are shown in fantasy as well as in overt behavior. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain,” reports Exodus 20.7. If the second commandment tries to protect it as the other commandments try to protect life, honor, property there must be something extraordinary about the name. Of course, God need not protect Himself, but He does protect His name, and so seriously that He adds to this single commandment a special threat. This is done because, within the name, that which bear the name is present. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

In ancient times, one believed that one held in one’s power the being whose hidden name one knew. One believed that the savior-god conquered the demons by discovering the mystery of the power embodied in their names, just as we today try to find out the hidden names of the powers that disrupt our unconscious depths and drive us to mental disturbances. If we gain insight into their hidden striving, we break their power. Beings have always tried to use the divine name in the same way, not in order to break its power, but to harness its power for their own uses. Calling on the name of God in prayer, for instance, can mean attempting to make God a tool for our purposes. A name is never an empty sound; it is a bearer of power; it gives Spiritual Presence to the unseen. This is the reason the divine name can be taken in vain, and why one may destroy oneself by taking it in vain. For the invocation of the holy does not leave us unaffected. If it does not heal us, it may disintegrate us. This is the seriousness of the use of the divine name. This is the danger of religion, and even of anti-religion. For in both the name of God is used as well as misused. Let us now consider the danger of the use of the word God, when it is both denied and affirmed, and of the sublime embarrassment that we feel when we say “God.” We may distinguish three forms of such embarrassment: the embarrassment of tact, the embarrassment of doubt, and the embarrassment of awe. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Some people do not find a higher truth: they reaffirm the ancient and eternal truth. It could not be that is it were subject to change. However, each reaffirms it in one’s own way, according to one’s own perceptions and as one’s environment requires. This accounts for part of the differences in its presentation, where it has been really attained. The other part is accounted for by there being varying degrees of attainment. It is a mistake to believe that mystical adepts all possess the same supernormal powers. On the contrary, they manifest such powers or powers as are in consonance with their previous line of development and aspiration. One who has come along an intellectual line of development, for instance, would most naturally manifest exceptional intellectual powers. The situation has been well put by Saint Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: “Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministries but the same Lord. And there are diversities of working but the same God who worketh all in all.” When the Overself activates the newly made adept’s psyche, the effect shows itself in some part or faculty; in another adept it produces a different effect. Thus the source is always the same but the manifestation is different. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

The undiscerning often believe that because some great saints have been fools in Worldly affairs, a stain who is always clever cannot be great. Yet, the spiritual aspirations which diminish a being’s desire for Worldly activities do not therefore diminish one’s competence for them. One who is born a fool usually remains so; one who is born clever usually stays so; and both cases are unaffected by the attachment of the heart to God. We must not think that every mystic who has been blessed with the light of the Overself stands on the same spiritual peak of vision and consciousness, of being and knowledge. Some are still only on the way to the summit of this peak. There are definite differences between them. If they all share alike the consciousness of a higher Self, they do not share it in the same way or to the same degree. The saints and mystics serve a high purpose in remining humanity of that diviner life which must one day flower in human evolution, but they do not serve as perfect exemplars of its final growth. The sages alone can do that. Healing powers are like intellectual power, one may be a realized person and yet not possess much intellect. Similarly, one may not possess healing power. Realization does not endow one with encyclopedic knowledge with all the talents. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

We must make a difference between the Messenger, who is sent to communicate a teaching through writing or speech, and the Master, who comes to embody the teaching and who alone possesses the power to bless others with one’s Grace. This difference is not so clearly understood among some beings, a lack which leads to confused ideas and unjustified customs. Having reached this stage one is free to continue one’s personal life as before, to accept the load of new responsibilities one one’s shoulders, or to retire wholly from the World. To work for humanity in public is one thing, to work for it in secrecy is another, while to enjoy the freedom and privacy of complete retirement is a third and very different thing. Naturally and inevitably any public appearance will soon turn one into a lightning rod, attracting the aspirations and yearnings of many spiritual seekers. As your mundane consciousness begins to merely attempt to grasp what God has to say, your own consciousness begins to expand. The result of this is a much improved intellectual capacity in this corporeal plane. Evocation of God is a means to exercise the mind. I have come to understand that communing with God increases the rate at which neurons fire off in the physical brain. If you are living righteously, God will sway others toward your will. He can get into the minds of others and help them benefit you. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

If one has really found one’s inner freedom, one must necessarily be free to stay in the World and do the World’s work. One does not have to retire into isolation, although one is free to do that. However, whatever one decides to do, one will henceforth be an impersonal channel for higher forces, which one will obey, and whose directions one will follow, whether one remains in the World or not. As God speaks to you in these inverted words of power the sounds begin to transform you on a very subtle level transmuting your communication into something more powerful. The intent of your words will be made very clear and concise. After time working with and communicating with God, it will seem as if you can command reality. Conveying power through words is only the surface of God’s power. Conflict may seem to simply dissipate from within your reality as all things become an opportunity for ascent through His guidance. It is not the conflict being removed, but the altering of your perception of it. On this physical plane your physical life will begin to reflect this growth and change as you become more spiritually refined with lightning speed. Once summoned, God acts as a familiar spirit helping to guide your thoughts, words, and deeds in this plane to gain strength and power within your soul. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

It is necessary to give certain terms often but wrongly used interchangeably, and hence confusedly, a sharper definition. The Saint has successfully carried out ascetic disciplines and purificatory regimes for devotional purpose. The Prophet has listened for God’s voice, heard and communicated God’s message of prediction, warning, or counsel. The Mystic has intimately experienced God’s presence while inwardly rapt in contemplation or has seen a vision of God’s cosmogony while concentrated in prayer. The Sage has attained the same results as al these three, has added a knowledge of infinite and eternal reality thereto, and has brought the whole into balanced union. The Philosopher is a sage who has also engaged in the spiritual education of others. There is a third type of illumined being, besides the Teacher and the Saint. One is the Messenger. One renders service not by dealing with persons and their problems but by stating truths and principles in general. Your whole perception of the experience will morph, and you will begin to cut through opposition as a hot knife through butter. Your momentum toward becoming will gain an almost severe momentum. Through evocation of God, one can gain the wisdom of experience that a being who has lived a thousand years would accumulate. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The masses are controlled by anger. One should learn how to use and control it without allowing it to be a mere reactive response to external forces. Anger implies a lack of power. God will increase your psychic empathy so that adept can become aware of when they may use their tools to better expression their motives. God, we thank you for your presence within this World of creation. We have offered you our lives, in hopes of salvation, and as a gateway to your manifestation within this realm before us! You are the Lord of creation, whom has brought forth the mountains to the plains! You have brought forth the beasts to the field and the creatures to the night! God, with your infernal blessing I ask that you would bring forth the baneful powers of the Heavenly Angels to fil us with their essence, as a gateway to empower them to act within this World according to your will and purpose. We know that much work must be performed so that we may be found worthy of this blessing. This work will be unique to the individual and we must take care to stay centered in self through these assignments. Please allow of to assimilate your power. Cast off the limits of garb of flesh into the refining Sun to be clothed with the powers of divine light eternal. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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October 13, 2019 12:13 am

All my life I had believed in Heaven and Hell. Did Heaven look down upon this metamorphosis? We have described some of the effects of migration. People’s relatives are no longer neighbors sharing the intimacies of daily life. Their new neighbors are strangers, drawn from every part of the East End, and they are, as we have seen, treated with reserve. In point of services, neighbors do not make up for kin. Our informants were so eager to talk about their neighbors, and generally about their attitude to other residents on the estate, that we feel bound to report them. They frequently complained of the unfriendliness of the place, which they found all the more mysterious because it was so different from Bethnal Green. Why should Greenleigh be considered so unfriendly? The prevailing attitude is expressed by Mr. Morrow. “You cannot get away from it, they are not so friendly down here. It is not ‘Hello, Joe,’ ‘Hello, mate.’ They pass you with a side-glance as though they do not know you.” And by Mr. Adams. “We all come from the slums, not Park Lane, but they do not mix. In Bethnal Green you always used to have a little laugh on the doorstep. There is none of that in Greenleigh. You are English, but you feel like a foreigner here, I do not know why. Up there you had lived for years, and you knew how to deal with the people there. People here are different.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

And by Mr. Prince. “The neighbors round here are very quiet. They all keep themselves to themselves. They all come from the East End but they all seem to chance when they come down here.” Of the 41 couples, 23 considered that other people were unfriendly, eight were undecided one way or another and ten considered them friendly: the recorded opinions are those of the couples because in no interview did husband and wife appear to hold strongly different view. How does this majority who consider their fellow residents unfriendly feel about themselves? Do they also label themselves unfriendly? No one admits it, some indignantly deny it. If they are hostile themselves, they do not acknowledge it, but attribute the feelings to others. Yet they mostly reveal that their own behavior is the same as they resent in others; that (since others are unfriendly) to withdraw will avoid trouble and keep the peace; that coexistence is safer, because more realistic, than cooperation. “The policy here is do not have a lot to do with each other, then there will not be any trouble,” says Mr. Chortle succinctly. Neurotic conflicts may be concerned with the same general problems as perplex the normal person. However, they are so different in kind that the question has been raised whether it is permissible to use the same term for both. I believe it is, but we must be aware of the differences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

This attitude is supported by reference to the skirmishes and back-biting which have resulted from being “too friendly” in the past. “It is better if you just talk to neighbors and do not get too friendly,” concludes Mr. Sandeman from his past experience. “You stop friends if you do not get to know them well. When you get to know then you are always getting little troubles breaking out. I have had too much of that and so I am not getting too friendly now.” Mr. Young told his wife, “When I walk into these four walls, I always tell her ‘Do not make too many friends. They turn out to be enemies.’” And one experience had turned Mr. Yule into a recluse. “We do not mix very well in this part of the estate. At first I used to lend every Tom, Dick, and Harry all my tools or lawn mower or anything. Then I had $1,000 pinched from my wallet. Now we do not want to know anyone—we keep ourselves to ourselves. There is a good old saying—the Englishman’s home is his castle. It is very true.” Usually the troubles are shadowy affairs which have always happened to people other than oneself. “We are friendly,” says Mr. Oliver in the usual style, “But we do not get too involved, because we have found that causes gossip and trouble. We have seen it happen with other people, so we do not want it to happen to us. Now we keep ourselves to ourselves.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Whatever the justification, the result is the same. People do not treat others either as enemies or friends. They are wary, though polite. They pass the time of day in the road. They have an occasional word over the fence or a chat at the garden gate. They nod to each other in the shops. Neighbors even borrow and lend little things to each other, and when this accommodation is refused, it is a sign that acquaintance has turned into enmity. Mrs. Chortle has broken off trading as well as diplomatic relations with one of her neighbors. “These people are very dirty,” she said, “and I have told the I do not want to borrow or lend.” So has Mrs. Morrow, for the different reason that “Just because they have got a couple of ha’pence more than you they do not want to know you. In Bethnal Green it was different—neighbors were more friendly.” Even where relations have not been served, there is little of the mateyness so characteristic of Bethnal Green. Mr. Stirling summed it up by remarking, “I do not mind saying hello to any of them, or passing the time of say with them, but if they do not want to have anything to do with me, I do not want to have anything to do with them. I am not bothered about them. I am only interested in my little family. My wife and my two children—they are the people that I care about. My life down here is my home.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Women feel the lack of friends, as of kin, more keenly than their menfolk. Those who do not follow their husbands into the society of the workplace—and loneliness is one of the common reasons for doing so—have to spend their day alone, “looking at ourselves all day,” as they say. In one interview the husband was congratulating himself on having a house, a garden, a bathroom and a TV—“the tellie is a bit of a friend down here”—when his wife broke in to say,” It is all right for you. What about the time I have to spend here on my own?” This difference in their life may cause sharp contention, especially in the early years. “When we first came,” said Mrs. Haddon, “I have just had the baby and it was all a misery, not knowing anyone. I sat on the stairs and cried my eyes out. For the first two years we were swaying whether to go back. I wanted to and my husband did not. We used to have terrible arguments about it. I use to say, “It is all right for you. I have to sit here all day. You do get a break.’” Not that all women resent it. A few, like Mrs. Painswick, actually welcome seclusion. She had been more averse to the quarrels amongst the “rowdy, shouty” Bethnal Greeners than appreciative of the mateyness to which quarrels are the counterpart, and finds the less intense life of Greenleigh a pleasant contrast. “In London people had more squabbles. We have not seen neighbors out here having words.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

What, then, are the characteristics of neurotic conflicts? A somewhat simplified example by way of illustration: An engineer working in collaboration with others at mechanical research was frequently afflicted by spells of fatigue and irritability. One of these spells was brought about by the following incident. In a discussion of certain technical matters his opinion were less well received than those of his colleagues. Shortly afterward a decision was made in his absence, and no opportunity was given him subsequently to present his suggestions. Under these circumstances, he could have regarded the procedure as unjust and put up a fight, or he could have accepted the majority decision with good grace. Either reaction would have been consistent. However, he did neither. Though he felt deeply slighted, he did not fight. Consciously he was mere aware of being irritated. The murderous rage within him appeared only in his dreams. This repressed rage—a composite of his fury against the others and of his fury against himself for his own meekness—was mainly responsible for his fatigue. His failure to react consistently was determined by a number of factors. He had built up a grandiose image of himself that required deference from others to support. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

This self-inflated image was, of course, unconscious at the time: he simply acted on the premise that there was nobody as intelligent and competent in his field as he was. Any slight could jeopardize this premise and provoke rage. Furthermore, he had unconscious sadistic impulses to berate and humiliate others—an attitude so objectionable to him that he covered it up by overfriendliness. To this was added an unconscious drive to exploit people, making it imperative for him to keep in their good graces. The dependence on others was aggravated by a compulsive need for approval and affection, combined as it usually is with attitudes of compliance, appeasement, and avoidance of fight. There was thus a conflict between destructive aggression—reactive rage and sadistic impulses—on the one hand, and on the other the need for affection and approval, with a desire to appear fair and rational in his own eyes. The result was inner upheaval that went unnoticed, while the fatigue that was its external manifestation paralyzed all action. Looking at the factors involved in the conflict, we are struck first by their absolute incompatibility. It would be difficult indeed to imagine more extreme opposites than lordly demands for deference and ingratiating submissiveness. Second, the whole conflict remains unconscious. The contradictory tendencies operating in it are not recognize but are deeply repressed. Only slight bubbles of the battle raging within reach the surface. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The emotional factors are rationalized: it is an injustice; it is a slight; my ideas were better. Third, the tendencies in both directions are compulsive. Even if he had some intellectual perception of his excessive demands, or of the existence and the nature of his dependence, he could not change these factors voluntarily. To be able to change them would require considerable analytical work. He was driven on either hand by compelling forces over which he had no control: he could not possibly renounce any of the needs acquired by stringent inner necessity. However, none of them represented what he himself really wanted or sought. He would want neither to exploit nor to be submissive; as a matter of fact he despised these tendencies. Such a state of affairs, however, has a far-reaching significance for the understanding of neurotic conflicts. It means that no decision is feasible. A further illustration presents a similar picture. A free-lance designer was stealing small sums of money from a good friend. The theft was not warranted by the external situation; he needed the money, but the friend would gladly have given it to him as he had on occasion in the past. That he should resort to stealing was particularly striking in that he was a decent fellow who set great store by friendship. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The following conflict was at the bottom of it. The man had a pronounced neurotic need for affection, especially a longing to be taken care of in all practical matters. Alloyed as this was with an unconscious drive to exploit others, his technique was to attempt both to endear and intimidate. These tendencies by themselves would have made him willing and eager to receive help and support. However, he had also developed an extreme unconscious arrogance which involved a correspondingly vulnerable pride. Others should feel honored to be of service to him: it was humiliating for him to ask for help. His aversion to having to make a request was reinforced by a strong craving for independence and self-sufficiency that made it intolerable for him to admit he needed anything or to place himself under obligation. So he could take, but not receive. The content of this conflict differs from that of the first example but the essential characteristics are the same. And any other example of neurotic conflict would show like incompatibility of conflicting drives and their unconscious and compulsive nature, leading always to the impossibility of deciding between the contradictory issues involved. Allowing for an indistinct line of demarcation, the difference, then, between normal and neurotic conflicts is possessed fundamentally in the fact that the disparity between the conflicting issues is much less great for the normal person than for the neurotic. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The choices the former has to make are between two modes of action, either of which is feasible within the frame of a fairly integrated personality. Graphically speaking, the conflicting directions diverge only 90 degrees or less, as against the possible 180 degrees confronting the neurotic. In awareness, too, the differences is one of degree. Real life is far too multifarious to be portrayed by merely exhibiting such abstract contrast as that between a despair which is completely unconscious, and one which is completely conscious. We can say this much, however: a normal conflict can be entirely conscious; a neurotic conflict in all its essential elements is always unconscious. Even though a normal person may be unaware of one’s conflict, one can recognize it with comparatively little help, while the essential tendencies producing a neurotic conflict are deeply repressed and can be unearthed only against great resistance. The normal conflict is concerned with an actual choice between two possibilities, both of which the person finds really desirable, or between convictions, both of which one really values. It is therefore possible for one to arrive at a feasible decision even though it may be hard on one and require a renunciation of some kind. The neurotic person engulfed in a conflict is not free to choose. One is driven by equally compelling forces in opposite directions, neither of which one wants to follow. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

One is driven by equally compelling forces in opposite directions, neither of which one wants to follow. Hence a decision in the usual sense in impossible. One is stranded, with no way out. The conflict can only be resolved by working at the neurotic trends involved, and by so changing one’s relations with others and with oneself that one can dispense with the trends altogether. These characteristics account for the poignancy of neurotic conflicts. Not only are they difficult to recognize, not only to they render a person helpless, but they have as well a disruptive force of which one has good reason to be afraid. Unless we know these characteristics and keep them in mind, we shall not understand the desperate attempts at solution which the neurotic enters upon, and which constitute the major part of a neurosis. Murder rarely fits the stereotype of an unsuspecting, helpless, passive victim stalked by a cold, calculating killer. Most homicides are preceded by angry quarrels in which the victim plays an active part in bringing about one’s own death. Can innocence, once it becomes involved in action, escape murder? This troublesome question confronts us with renewed sharpness after the events of the past years, especially after the Orlando nightclub shooting 12 June 2016. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

However, it is a question that has troubled beings ever since the dawn of consciousness and the forming, in our forefathers’ minds, of the legend of the Garden of Eden. When we take an endeavor to resolve the knotty question, we wonder does the victim, for example, have anything to do with making oneself the victim? The question takes us into the very heart of the meaning of innocence. Does the virgin herself, beyond flirting, constitute the challenge to the man to end her virginity? Is not innocence curiously bound up with murder in the ritual of sacrifice in practically all cultures? What is the meaning of the phenomenon to be found in the dim beginnings of human history and coming down to this very hour of sacrificing virgins and youths to the Cretan Minotaur or the Moloch of modern walfare? When we push the question of innocence and murder to the furthest reaches of human consciousness, we may find it to be one of those perdurable problems that we cannot answer satisfactorily via intellect alone but must live the questions now. Perhaps you will then live along some distant day into the answer. However, in our endeavor to think it through, we can expect new light to be thrown on the mainsprings of violence. Most important of all, an analysis of the problem of innocence and murder foreshadows the emergence of new ethics for the coming age. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Innocence is generosity, especially in children, who can still believe and trust since they have yet to experience that betrayal which leads to cynicism. Innocence has to do with the heart in that it is a feeling state, a way of perceiving life rather than a calculation. It is “virgin” in that it is before the awakening to the vast possibilities in life for sensuality, tenderness, exploitation, and betrayal. The lack of experience in pleasures of the flesh has historically been taken for the symbol of innocence, although it should be remembered that it is a symbol and not the content. Innocence is, in addition, a condition of powerlessness. One of our problems, as we discuss innocence, will be to establish the extent to which this powerlessness is capitalized on by the innocent person. The question is: How far is innocence used as a strategy of living? When we reflect on the shooting at Kent State in 1970, we immediately see a demonstration of part of our thesis. This is possessed in the fact that two of the four students killed were not involved in the protest at all. One was dressed in his Reserve Officer raining Corps (ROTC) uniform and was going across that campus to take a test in war tactics, and another was on her way to music class. The moral of this is clear: there are no bystanders anymore. This implies something about the solidarity of human beings—the fact that we are all part of the tragic event. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Without a surrender of one’s own consciousness, no one today can draw one’s own moral skirts about him and claim an immunity from these events. Television, social media, and mass communication are only symptoms of a basic participation in the events of importance to the human race. To breathe is to judge. We can be confident that we shall find that this awareness of our own involvement is not at all the excuse for masochistic breast-beating or quietist withdrawal from the struggles. It can lead us rather to a new sharpening of our own ethical sensitivity and a discovery, though it be only partial, of the basis on which a lasting and effective struggle for racial integration or a relief from the compulsive hold of warfare may be founded. As a representative of these four students and their innocence, I shall choose one of them, Allison Krause, who was reported to have dropped a flower the day before the shooting into the barrel of one of the guardsmen’s rifles saying: “Flowers are better than bullets.” She is pictured in a poem by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, which, despite its tendency toward sentimentality, reveals some important points: Nineteen-year-old Allison Krause, you were killed because you loved flowers. Bullets, pushing out the flower…let all the apple trees of the World, not in white—but in mourning be clothed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

So far we see only the event as it occurred that day: four victims of murder, the whole event summed up in the ironic and cruel trajectory of stray bullets. However, Yevtushenko knows that this simple innocence has only touched the surface. In the succeeding lines we see the complexity of innocence and of evil: “But a Vietnam girl—the same age as Allison—taking in her hand a gun, is an armed flower, the wrath of the people.” I take both the phrase “armed flower” and “thorny flower of protest,” a phrase that appears later on in the poem, as referring to the dimension of experience added to the original purity of innocence. We now have wrath as the basic motivation. Yevtushenko is now talking about a different kind of innocence—an armed flower, no longer the product of a childlike powerlessness but the power of wrath. The Vietnamese girl knows the flower grows on a thorny bush and has to be handled with care. She has an innocence that does not avoid evil and that there is, in the depth of the human soul as well as in human history, no such thing as pure evil or pure good. Yevtushenko’s juxtaposition of flower and armed reminds us of the phrase used by Jesus in the Gospel according to Saint Mark with which He adjured His disciples as He sent them out into the World: “Be ye wise as serpents but harmless as doves.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

This is, again, a curious juxtaposition of innocence and experience, which, it was hoped, would become the foundation for effective social action in the work of the disciples. Now, when I speak of trusting our religious demands, just what do I mean by “trusting”? Is the word to carry with it license to define in detail an invisible World, and to anathematize and excommunicate those whose trust is different? Certainly not! Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible World which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human nature, that beings can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that does without a single strict and rigid doctrine or definition. The bare assurance that this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vison, the external staging of a many-storied Universe, in which spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal,–this bare assurance is to such beings enough to make life seem worth living in spite of every contrary presumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural plane. Destroy this inner assurance, however, vague as it is, and all the light and radiance of existence is extinguished for these persons at a stroke. Often enough the wild-eyed look at life—the suicidal mood—will then set in. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

In the same way the Spirit is always present, a moving power, sometimes in stormy ecstasies of individuals and groups, but mostly quiet, entering our human spirit and keeping it alive; sometimes manifest in great moments of history or a personal life, but mostly working hiddenly through the media of our daily encounters with beings and World; sometimes using its creation, the religious communities and their Spiritual means, and often making itself felt in spheres far removed from what is usually called religious. Like the wind the Spirit blows where it wills! It is not subject to rule or limited by method. Its ways with beings are not dependent on what beings are and do. You cannot force the Spirit upon yourself, upon an individual, upon a group, or even upon a Christian church. Although one who is the foundation of the church was oneself of the Spirit, and although the Spirit as it was present in one is the greatest manifestation of Spiritual Presence, the Spirit is not bound to the Christian church or any one of them. The Spirit is free to work in the spirits of beings in every human situation, and it urges beings to let Him do so; God as Spirit is always present to the spirit of beings. It is through this spirit that more specific powers can be extracted for the sake of communication and personal empowerment. “Yea, say unto them, except they repent to the Lord God will destroy them,” reports Alma 8.16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

Many Take to an Imperfect, Half-Competent or Half-Satisfactory Teaching Because No Better One is Available!

September 25, 2019 12:49 am

I am a reader of strange books. I have studied some of those texts which have come out of Italy pertaining to magic and astrology and thins which are often called forbidden. I have a belief that there are Angels cast out of Heaven, and that they do not know what they are any longer. They wander in a state of confusion. And allow me to warn you on another account which may surprise you. Throughout Europe now there are those who are willing to persecute others for witchcraft on slender reasons; that is, a superstition regarding witches reigns in villages and towns, which even one hundred years ago would have been dismissed as ridiculous. You cannot allow yourself to travel overland through such places. Writings as to wizards, Sabbats and Devil worship cloud human philosophy. An interesting affective identification of leader and masses in the relation of Cola di Rienzo to the Roman people. I assume that his story is familiar—the rise of the hack lawyer, son of a Roman people and dictator of Rome, his expulsion and return with the assistance of the Church, and his assassination by the Colonna family in the year 1354. The view of history of Cola and of the Roman people was quite simple: Rome has been ruined by feudal lords; their destruction will permit Rome to rise again to its ancient greatness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This is how Petrarca formulates it in his famous latter of congratulations to Cola: “These barons in whose defense you (the Romans) have so often shed your blood, whom you have nourished with your own substance…these barons have judged you unworthy of liberty. They have gathered the mangled remnants of the state in the caverns and abominable retreats of bandits. They have been restrained neither by pity for their unhappy country, nor by love for it. Do not suffer any of the rapacious wolves whom you have driven from the fold to rush again into your midst. Even now they are prowling restlessly around, endeavoring through fraud and deceit to regain an entrance to the city whence they were violently expelled.” It cannot be denied that the feudal lords, above all the Colonna and Orsini, has pursued a criminal policy. Without this element of truth Cola’s propaganda and policy would never have been successful. However, fundamentally this was a false concreteness—for even if he had succeeded in liquidating the barons, what would have been decisively improved in Rome? The historical facts—the residence of the Papal Court in Avignon; the economic decay of Rome; the regrouping class relations through the rise of the bourgeois cavalerotti—all that Cola could not change. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

It can hardly be doubted that anxiety, even purely physical fear of the arbitrariness of the barons, drove the people to Cola. Cola succeeded in strengthening this anxiety by extremely skillful propaganda and achieved victory. However, the leader himself must feel no anxiety or at least must not show it. He must stand above the masses. However, in this Cola was deficient. In all other matters his relation corresponded exactly to that of the libido-charged identification leader-masses, and it is regrettable that time does not permit me to describe and analyze his propaganda themes, his ceremonial, and his ritual. It was Cola’s fundamental mistake that he was not enough of a Caesar. To be sure, he publicly humiliated the barons, but he did not liquidate them—whether out of cowardice, decency, or tactical considerations. However, the masses of Rome expected that he would act in accordance with their view of history. He did not do this. Thus he had to fall. I have mentioned Cola di Rienzo because it is a marginal case in which it is doubtful whether we are dealing with a regressive or progressive movement, that is, a movement which really has the realization of the freedom of beings as its goal. The eight French religious wars of the sixteenth century furnish excellent material for the illumination of the character of caesaristic as well as organizational identifications. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

All three parties—Huguenots, Catholics, and Politiques—were faces with grave problems: the disintegration of the old society through silver inflation, loss of wealth on the one hand, enrichment on the other, the beginnings of radical changes in class relations and the dissolution of the absolute monarchy after the death of Francis I. It is against this background that the religious wars must be understood. Their course is doubtless familiar to you. Catholics and Protestants alike saw the problem of France only as a religious problem, and therefore ascribed the distress of France exclusively to their religious opponents, conjectured (partly justifiably) that these opponents represented a great and sinister conspiracy, developed or employed theories of caesaristic identification, and consistently proceeded to extirpate the opponent wherever opportunity offered. The Huguenot pamphleteer Francois Hotman in his Tiger saw in the Cardinal Guise “a detestable monster,” whose aim it was to ruin France, to assassinate the King, and to conspire with the assistance of the women near the King and the High Constable of France against “the crown of France, the good of widows and orphans, the blood of the poor and innocent.” Calvin’s theory of the secular redeemer sent by God to overthrow tyrants—in the seventeenth century the basis of Cromwell’s leadership—became the Protestant theory of Caesarism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The Catholics—with a longer tradition of tyrannicide—developed a pseudo-democratic theory of identification, above all in the writings of the Leaguist preachers and Jesuits. In these inflammatory pamphlets whose demagogy even surpasses that of the Huguenots, the theory of democracy is fitted out with theocratic traits, the masses of the people are integrated through the social contract, in order to be identified with Henry of Guise with the assistance of the theocratic element. Whoever takes the trouble to study the eighth religious war (the War of the 3 Henrys) and the Parisian uprising, will find there all the elements which I consider decisive: appeal to anxiety, personification of evils, first with Henry III, then with Henry of Navarre, identification of the masses with Henry of Guise. Both positions, the Catholic and the Huguenot, are similarly regressive, while that of the Politiques, Jean Bodin, consists in this: he saw the economic problems of France clearly; he understood the false concreteness of the view of history of both parties. If he championed absolute monarchy—that is, the identification of the people with the monarch—he did so because he was to place himself above the religions that were fighting each other and to ally himself with the households of the third estate in order to save France. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Despite the absolute submission to the prince which is demanded of the people, this identification contains the two rational elements which I mentioned before: loyalty becomes transferable, for instance, the office is separated from the officeholder; and the relation between citizen and the state becomes rational. Thus Bodin has a certain justification in calling his theory a theory f the constitutional state (droit gouvernement) despite his absolutionism. I believe that the French religious wars of the sixteenth century make my thesis a little clearer: that the non-affective identification with an institution (state) is less regressive than identification with a leader. Naturally I cannot here discuss all similar situation. The religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are full of such historical constructions. One need only read, for example, the terrible Calvinist fanatic John Knox in his famous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women and we will find there: “We se our countrie set further for a pra to foreine nations, we heare the blood of our breathren, the members of Christ Iesus most cruell women…we knowe to be the onlie occasions of all these miseries.” The rule of the Catholic Catherine de Medici, of Marie of Lorraine (the predecessor of Mary Stuart), and of Mary Tudor appears here not only as a violation of divine commandment (because God has subjected women to men) but as a genuine conspiracy against the true religion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Unfortunately, John Knox had the ill luck of seeing Prtestantism restored in England by a woman, and he apologized to Elizabeth in a Second Blast for his first attack. Instead of continuing with this survey, it may perhaps be more useful to discuss five fundamental models of conspiracy theories, all of which show this sequence: intensification of anxiety through manipulation, identification, false concreteness. They are: the Jesuit conspiracy, the Freemason conspiracy, the Communist conspiracy, the Capitalist conspiracy, and the Jewish conspiracy. The Jesuit order is indeed defined by many as a conspiracy, the Monita Secreta of 1614, composed by a Polish ex-Jesuit, fulfills the need for a secret plan of operations with the help of which one can hold the order responsible for every crime and every misfortune and can stir up the masses. This has always been relatively simple in times of crisis. St. Bartholomew’s Night, the assassination of Henry III by Jacques Clement, the attempt on the life of Henry IV by Barriere and Chastel as well as his assassination by Ravaignac, the English Gunpowerder plot of 1605, the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, to say nothing of innumerable less important crimes and misfortunes, were ascribed to the Jesuits. That these tales should have been believed, is naturally connected with the significance of false concreteness in politics. There is some truth in many of these accusations. It is precisely in this element of truth that the danger of these views of history is possessed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The denunciation of the freemasons is similar matter. Thus, the English believed the Jacobite conspiracies to be the work of freemasons; the French Revolution was ascribed to a mysterious group of Bavarian Illuminati ha been founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776 in order to combat the influence of the Jesuits. Again these assertions have some truth in them. Most of the Encyclopedists were freemasons and more than half of the members of the Estates General belonged to freemasonic lodges. However, surely no detailed discussion is needed to show that the conspiracy theory represents a blurring of history. The theory of the Communist conspiracy follows the same model and serves the same purposes. Thus the Russian October Revolution is explained solely as a Blanquist conspiracy, embodied in Trotsky’s military revolutionary committee; the German Revolution of 1918 is laid to the charge of the devilish Lenin; the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in the satellite states is traced back to the sinister conspiracies in the Kremlin, and generally the relation of Bolsheviks to the World is equated with that of a conspiracy of a small group against the welfare of humanity. Again, this is partly true. The October Revolution was a conspiracy—but in a definite historical situation and with an ideology. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

The Bolsheviks would gladly have manipulated the German Revolution of 1918—but they had neither the means nor the intelligence to do it, nor could they, even if cleverer, have prevailed in the concrete situation. The Communists in the satellite states naturally conspired—but they could come to power only because the Red Army stood behind them and because the objective situation favored them. No conspiracy, no matter how clever, would have been of any use and was of any use in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory is believed not only by the masses, but even by serious writers who, strongly under the influence of Pareto’s simplistic antithesis between elite and masses, generally tend to see in politics nothing but the manipulation of the masses by the elites, and for whom psychology and political science are nothing but techniques of manipulation. The purpose of the theory is clear: potential anxiety—whose concrete significance still needs to be clarified—is actualized by reference to the devilish conspirators: family, property, morality, religion are threatened by the conspiracy. Anxiety easily becomes neurotic persecutory anxiety, which in turn can, under certain circumstances, lead to a totalitarian mass movement. We could cite a great many more cases in which history was viewed with false concreteness. Especially American history is full of examples of such movements. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

There is, for instance, the Know-Nothing Party of 1854-55 with its hatred of the Irish Catholics and the German immigrants. It originate in the secret “Order of the Star-Spangled-Banner” which was founded by native-born Protestants; they mistreated Catholics and when asked about the Order they would answer, “I know nothing.” The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is better known. Fear of status loss on the parts of the Whites, especially of the poor Whites, vis-à-vis the Blacks and fear of the Pope and the Catholics were the basic factors which made this secret society into a terroristic organization, from its foundation in 1867 to the present day. The Populist Party (1892), on the other hand, was born out of an agrarian depression, as a protest against the rule of the railway, industrial, and credit monopolies, and against the gold standard. One of its leaders developed a genuine theory of conspiracy: According to my views of the subject the conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the World, is the most gigantic crimes of this or any other age. The democratic conspiracy is to reduce boarder security and push the green initiative to raise taxes and sale electric cars, but doing nothing to protect the people or provide homes for the homeless is another movement that is being fueled by media propaganda. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Violence and suffering are critical in a democratic society, in heightening antipathy for violations of democratic values and in heightening sympathy for the victims of such violations. Violence is like the sudden chemical change that occurs when, following a relatively placid period, water break into a boil. If we do not see the burner underneath that has been heating the water, we mistake the violence for a discrete happenstance. We fail to see that violence is an entirely understandable outcome of personalities fighting against odds in a repressive culture that does not help them. Violence often follows quiet periods, like that of the silent generation of students of the fifties. Only later were we to see, to our sorrow, how explosive were the forces underlying this apathy. In its typical simple form, violence is an eruption of pent-up passion. When a person (or a group of people) has been denied over a period of time what one feels are one’s legitimate rights, when one is continuously burdened with feelings of impotence which corrode any remaining self-esteem, violence is the predicable end result. Violence is an explosion of the drive go destroy that which is interpreted as the barrier to one’s self-esteem, movement, and growth. This desire to destroy may so completely take over the person that any object that gets in the way is destroyed. Hence the person strikes out blindly, often destroying those for whom one cares and even one’s self in the process. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Violence is largely a physical event. However, this physical event occurs in a psychological context. Either because of the period of unseen build-up or the suddenness of the stimulus, the impulse to strike out comes so fast we are unable to think, and we control it only with effort. If someone suddenly gives one a hard shove on the lightrail, one “see red” and have an immediate urge to punch him or her in return, while some others may take that person who assaulted them to small claims court. However, one knows, when one calms down, that if one makes a practice of punching men or women on the lightrail, their early doom is assured, and that is why small claims court may be a better option. A football player may control his or her urges to wreak violence by reminding one’s self that he or she will have a chance to express one’s power in the next play; but for the rest of us, bystanders in most activities in our civilized life with muscular expressions prohibited us, the control and direction of our violent urges are much more difficult. Most people would subscribe to the proposition that there is no value judgment involved in deciding how to build an atomic bomb, but would reject the proposition that there is none involved in deciding to build one. The most significant difference here may be that the scientific practices which guide the designer of the bomb are clear, while those which guide the designer of the culture which builds the bomb are not. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

We cannot predict the success or failure of a cultural invention with the same accuracy as we do that of a physical invention. It is for this reason that we are said to resort to value judgments in the second case. What we resort to is guessing. It is only in this sense that value judgments take up where science leaves off. When we can design small social interactions and, possibly, whole cultures with confidence we bring to physical technology, the question of value will be raised. According to Skinner, the main point is that there is really no essential difference between the lack of value judgment in the technical problem of designing the bomb and the decision to build one. The only difference is that the motives for building the bomb are not clear. Maybe they are not clear to Professor Skinner, but they are clear to many students of history. In fact there as more than one reason for the decision to build the atomic bomb (and similarly for the hydrogen bomb): the fear of Hitler’s building the bomb; perhaps the wish to have a superior weapon against the Soviet Union for possible later conflicts (this holds true especially for the hydrogen bomb); the logic of a system that is forced to increase its armaments to support its struggle with competing systems. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Quite aside from these military, strategic, and political reasons, there is, I believe, another one which is equally important. I refer to the maxim that is one of the axiomatic norms of cybernetic society: “something ought to be done because it is technically possible to do it.” Even if they might destroy us all, if it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built. If it is possible to travel to the Moon or to the planets, it must be done, even if at the expense of many unfulfilled needs here on Earth. This principle means the negation of all humanistic values, but it nevertheless represents a value, maybe the supreme norm of technotronic society. Dr, Michael Maccoby has drawn my attention to some results of his study of the management of highly developed industries, which indicate that the principle “can implies ought” is more valid in industries which produce for the military establishment than for the remaining, more competitive industry. However, even if this argument is correct, two factors must be considered: first, the size of the industry which works directly or indirectly for the armed forced; second, that the principle had taken hold of the minds of many people who are not directly related to industrial production. A good example was the initial enthusiasm for space flights; another example is the tendency in medicine to construct and use gadgets regardless of their real importance for a specific case. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Skinner does not care to examine the reasons for building the bomb, and he asks us to wait for further development of behaviorism to solve the mystery. In his views on social processes he shows the same inability to understand hidden, nonverbalized motives as he does in his treatment of psychical processes. Since most of what people say about their motivation in political as well as in personal life is notoriously fictitious, the reliance on what is verbalized blocks the understanding of social and psychical processes. In every individual there is an original, mysterious, and incalculable element, because one’s past history and one’s prenatal ancestry in other lives on Earth have inevitably been different at certain points from those of other individuals. One’s World-outlook may seem the same as theirs, but there will always be subtle variations. There is no single path which can be presented to suit the multitudinous members of the human species. There is no one unalterable approach to this experience for all beings. Each as to find one’s own way, to travel forward by the guidance of one’s own present understanding and past experience—and each in the end really does so despite all appearances to the contrary. For each being passes through a different set of life-experiences. One’s past history and present circumstances have constituted an individual being who is unique, who possesses something entirely one’s own. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

It is partly through the lessons, reflections, institutions, traits, characteristics, and capacities engendered by such experiences that one is able to find one’s way to truth. Therefore one is forced not only to work out one’s own salvation but also to work it out in one’s own unique way. Every description of a mystical path must consequently be understood in a general sense. If its expounder delimits it to constitute a precise path for all alike, one exaggerates. Although there is so much in life which the aspirant shares with other beings, there is always a residue which imparts a stamp of individuality that is different from and unshareable with the individualities of all others. Consequently, the inner path which one must follow cannot be precisely the same as theirs. In the end, after profiting by all the help which one may gain from advanced guides and fellow-pilgrims, after all one’s attempts to imitate or follow them, one is forced to find or make a way for one’s self, a way which will be peculiarly one’s own. In the end one must work out one’s own unique means to salvation and depend on one’s self for further enlightenment and strength. Taught by one’s own intelligence and instructed by one’s own intuition, one must find one’s own unique path toward enlightenment. Each case is different, because each person is different heredity, temperament, character, environment, and living habits. Therefore, these general principles must be adapted to, and fitted in with, that person’s particular condition. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Just as there is not a single radius only from the centre of a circle to its circumference but countless ones, so there is not a single path only from beings to God but as many paths as there are beings. Each has to find the way most appropriate to one, to the meaning and experience of truth. There are as many ways to union with the Overself as there are human beings. The orthodox, the conventional, and the traditional ways can claim exclusive or monopoly only by imperiling truth. I think it oftener happens that a meal brings forth a cold than that Nature produces a sage. The existence of the sage as a type is hard to prove simply because the existence of the sage as an individual is hard to confirm. One is always unique on this planet. One is, for practical purposes, an Ideal rather than an ACTUALITY. It is an unnecessary self-limitation to believe that there is only a single path to enlightenment, only a single teaching worth following. Persons who believe or feel themselves to be unable to understand subtle metaphysic can turn to a simple devotional path. “Behold, O Lord, thou canst do this. We know that thou art able to show forth great power, which looks small unto the understanding of beings.” Reports Ether 3.5. There is no one particular type of aspirant to mystical or philosophical enlightment. Taken as a whole, aspirants are a mixed and varied lot in their starting points, personalities, motives, and allegiances. They vary in individuality very widely, have different needs, circumstances, opportunities, outlooks, and possibilities. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

I Give You Power so that You May Have Power—The More You Give, the More Everyone Gets!

September 12, 2019 1:13 am

There was something altogether more Nordic and icy about him than there was about Lestat, whose hair tended more to golden, for all its luminous highlights, and whose eyes were forever prismatic, drinking up the colors around him, becoming even a gorgeous violent with the slightest provocation from the worshipful outside World. In Marius, I saw the sunny skies of the northern wilderness, eyes of steady radiance which rejected any outside color, perfect portals to his own most constant soul. In official circles, the very term itself, “the public”—as Walter Lippmann noted eight seven years ago—has come to have a phantom meaning, which dramatically reveals its eclipse. From the standpoint of the deciding elite, some of those who clamor publicly can be identified as Labor, others as Business, still others as Farmer. Those who can not readily be so identified make up The Public. In this usage, the public is composed of the unidentified and the non-partisan in a World of defined and partisan interest. It is socially composed of well-educated salaried professionals, especially college professors; of non-unionized employees, especially white-collar people, along with self-employed professionals and small business people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

In this faint echo of the classic notion, the public consists of those remnants of the middle class, old and new, those interests are not explicitly defined, organized, or clamorous. In a curious adaption, the public often becomes, in fact, the unattached expert, who, although well informed, has never taken a clear-cut, public stand on controversial issues which are brought to a focus by organized interests. These are the public members of the board, the commission, the committee. What the public stands for, accordingly, is often a vagueness of policy (called open-mindedness), a lack of involvement in public affairs (known as reasonableness), and a professional disinterest (known as tolerance). Some such official members of the public, as in the field of labor-management meditation, start out very young and make a career out of being careful to be informed but never taking a strong position; and there are many others, quite unofficial, who take such professionals as a sort of model. The only trouble is that they are acting as if they were disinterested judges but they do not have the power of judges; hence their reasonableness, their tolerance, and their open-mindedness do not often count for much in the shaping of human affairs. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

All those trends that make for the decline of the politician and of his or her balancing society bear decisively upon the transformation of public into mass. One of the most important of the structural transformations involved is the decline of the voluntary association as a genuine instrument of the public. As we have already seen, the executive ascendancy in the economic, military, and political institutions has lowered the effective use of all those voluntary associations which operate between the state and the economy on the one hand, and the family and the individual in the primary group on the other. It is not only that institutions of power have become large-scale and inaccessibly centralized; they have at the same time become less political and more administrative, and it is within this great chance of framework that the organized public has waned. In terms of organization, the transformation has become underpinned by the shift from the individual and one’s primary community to the voluntary association and the mass party as the major units of organized power. Voluntary associations have become larger to the extent that they have become effective; and to just that extent they have become inaccessible to the individual who would shape by discussion the policies of the organization to which one belongs. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

Accordingly, along with the older institutions, these voluntary associations have lost their grip on the individual. As more people are drawn into the political arena, these associations become mass in scale; and as the power of the individual becomes more dependent upon such mass associations, they are less accessible to the individual’s influence. Mass democracy means the struggle of powerful and large-scale interest groups and associations, which stand between the big decisions that are made by state, corporation, army, and the will of the individual citizens as a member of the public. Since these middle-level associations are the citizen’s major link which decision, one’s relation to them is of decisive importance. For it is only through them that one exercises such power as one may have. The gap between the members and the leaders of the mass association is becoming increasingly wider. As soon as a being get to be a leader of an association large enough to count one readily becomes lost in an instrument of that association. One does so in the interests of maintaining one’s leading position in, or rather over, one’s mass association and so one does so because one comes to see oneself not as a mere delegate, instructed or not, of the mass association one represent, but as a member of an elite comped of such beings as oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

These facts, in turn, lead to the big gap between the terms in which issues are debated and resolved among members of this elite, and the terms in which they are presented to the members of the various mass associations. For the decisions that are made must take into account those who are important—other elites—but they must be sold to the mass memberships. The gap between speaker and listener, between power and public, leads less to any iron law of oligarchy than to the law of the representative of others in a professional capacity: as the pressure group expands, its leaders come to organize the opinions they represent. So elections, as we have seen, become contests between two giant and unwieldy parties, neither of which the individual can truly feel that one influences, and neither of which is capable of winning psychologically impressive or politically decisive majorities. And, in all this, the parties are of the same general form as other mass associations. When we say that a being in the mass is without any sense of political belonging, we have in mind a political fact rather than merely a style of feeling. We have in mind a certain way of belonging to a certain kind of organization. The way of belonging here rests upon a belief in the purposes and in the leaders of an organization, and thus enables men and women freely to be at home within it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

To belong in this way is to make the human association a psychological center of one’s self, to take into our conscience, deliberately and freely, its rules of conduct and its purposes, which we thus shape and which in turn shape us. We do not have this kind of belonging to any political organization. The kind of organization we have in mind is a voluntary association which has three decisive characteristics: first, it is a context in which reasonable opinions may be formulated; second, it is an agency by which reasonable activities may be undertaken; and third, it is a powerful enough unit, in comparison with other organizations of power, to make a difference. It is because they do not find available association at once psychologically meaningful and historical effective that beings often feel uneasy in their political and economic loyalties. The effective units of power are not the huge corporation, the inaccessible government, the grim military establishment. Between these, on the one hand, and the family and the small community on the other, we find no intermediate associations in which beings feel secure and with which they feel powerful. There is little live political struggles. Instead, there is administration from above, and the political vacuum below. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The primary publics are now either so small as to be swamped, and hence give up; or so large as to be merely another feature of the generally distant structure of power, and hence in accessible. Public opinion exists when people who are not in the government of a country claim the right to express political opinions freely and publicly, and the right that these opinions should influence or determine the policies, personnel, and actions of their government. In this formal sense there has been and there is a definite public opinion in the United States. And yet, with modern developments this formal right—when it does still exist as a right—does not mean what it once did. The older World of voluntary organization was as different from the World of the mass organization, as was Tom Paine’s World of pamphleteering from the World of the mass media. Since the French Revolution, conservative thinkers have Viewed With Alarm the rise of the public, which they called the masses, of something to that effect. “The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts,” wrote Gustave Le Bon. “The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of the kings,” and already “the destinies of nations are elaborated at the present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in the councils of princes.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

During the twentieth century, liberal and even socialist thinkers have followed suit, with more explicit references to what we have called the society of masses. From Le Bon to Emil Leader and Ortega y Gasset, they have held that the influence of the mass is unfortunately increasing. However, surely those who have supposed the masses to be all powerful, or at least well on their way to triumph, are wrong. In our time, as Chakhotin knew, the influence of autonomous collectivities within political life is in fact diminishing. Furthermore, such influence as they do have is guided; they must now be seen not as publics acting autonomously, but as masses manipulated at focal points into crowds of demonstrators. For as publics become masses, masses sometimes become crowds; and, in crowds, the physical rape by the mass media is supplemented up close by the harsh and sudden harangue. Then the people in the crowd disperse again—as atomized and submissive masses. For the primitive the gift was a part of the stream of nature’s bounty. Many people today think that the primitive saw the World more under the aspect of miracle and awe than we do, and so one appreciated elemental things more than we do. In order to recapture this was of looking at nature, we moderns usually have to experience a breakdown and rebirth into naïve perception. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

When asked about what Christianity means to some, many people say it is about the search for the elements of bread and wine. However, we do not need to romanticize about primitive (whether truly or not) in order to understand one’s valuation of nature’s bounty. We saw that the main organismic motive was self-perpetuation; its is logical that when self-perpetuation became a conscious problem at the level of being one naturally tended to value those things that gave one the power to endure, those things that incorporated the Sun’s energy and that gave warmth and life. The original sacrifice is always food because this is what one wants from the gods as the basis for life. “Give us our daily break.” Furthermore, if food contains power, it is always more than itself, more than a physical thing: it has a mysterious inner essence or spirit. Milk is the essence of the cow, shark’s teeth are the essence of the shark’s vitality and murderousness, and so forth. So when the primitive being gave these things as gifts, one did not give a dead thing, a mere object as it appears to us—but a piece of life, of spirit, even a part of oneself because one was immersed in the stream of life. The gifts had mana power, the strength of supernatural life. This is what made the bond and allowed the stream to follow between giver and receiver: to give and then to counter-give kept the motion going, preserved the cycle of power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

This is how we are to understand the potlatch giving and one-upmanship, the destruction of quantities of goods: the eternal flux of power in the broad stream of life was generated by the greatest possible expenditure; beings wanted that stream to follow as bountifully as possible. It then became hard to distinguish who gave and who received, since all were bathed in the power of the movement: everyone participated in the powers that were opened up—the giver, the community, the gods. “I give you power so that you may have power.” The more you give, the more everyone gets. This feeling of expenditure as power is not strange to us moderns either. We want to keep our goods moving with the same obsessive dedication—BMW 4 Series automobiles, General Electric refrigerators, Cresleigh homes, and cold hard cash money. If the economy moves, if there is a frenzy of buying and trading on the stock market, activity in the banks and record low employment, we feel that there is health and strength in the World; and this is not only because the movement of goods piles up money in the bank, but actually reflects, I think, the sense of trust and security that the magical free-enterprise powers are working for us so long as we continue to buy, sell, and move goods. And the Trump economy has done this with the Dow Jones reaching a record high of 27,359.16 on 15 July 2019. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

China is experiencing the same thing as it continues to rack up one of the most enviable growth rates in the World. Consumers continue to trade up to more expensive premium goods and some companies are registering record sales. And as China looks to shift its export dependent community to a greater reliance on domestic consumption, the total number of affluent consumers in China is expected to read 280 million by 2020—more than doubling the current total of 120 million. Affluent people are described and households with disposable incomes of between $20,000 and $1 million. Disposable income is money left over after taxes are taken out of your paycheck, but many people also define disposable income as the money you have left over after taxes and other bills such as mortgage, car payment, student loans and electric bill have been paid. The upper affluent in China—those earning between $40,000 and $1 million per year will account for 40 percent of the 280 million. There are 327 million people in the Untied States and the affluent in China, by year 2020, will match 86 percent of the total United States of America population. So the sense of exhilaration and self-celebration in China is a movement of production and consumption of goods. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

Like the primitive men and women, modern beings feel that one can prosper only if one shows that one already has power. Yet of course in its one-dimensionality this is a caricature on the primitive potlatch, as much of modern power ideology is; it has no anchor in the invisible World, in the deference to the gods. Primitive beings gave to the gods. This is the origin of trade: the fact the one group made offerings to the gods of their kinsmen and vice versa. This led to the exchange of different groups, and in it we see the direct motive of the creation of a surplus for exchange. The exchange of offerings was always a kind of contest—who could give the most to their gods of their kinsmen. We can see that this did for a person: it gave one a contest in which one could be victorious if one’s offerings of surplus exceeded those of the clan. In a word, it gave one cosmic heroism, the distinction of releasing the most power in nature for the benefit of all. One was a hero in the eye not only of the gods but also o beings; one earned social honor, the right to crow. One was a big power being. Thus we can see in gift giving and potlatch the continuation of the triumph of the hunter, but not in the creation and distribution of one’s own fabricated surplus. This state of things is called narcissistic capitalism: the equation of wealth with magic power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

And so all this seemingly useless surplus, dangerously and painstakingly wrought, yields the highest usage of all in terms of power. Humans, the animals who knows they are not safe here, who need continued affirmation of one’s powers, is one animal who is implacably driven to work beyond animal needs precisely because one is not a secure animal. The origin of human drivenness is religious because beings experience creatureliness; the amassing of a surplus, then, goes to the very heart of human motivation, the urge to stand out as a hero, to transcend the limitations of the human condition and achieve victory over impotence and finitude. We see, too, that in the strict utilitarian sense in which we understand the term, primitive work cannot be economic; for instance, our common ownership and collective enterprise in which the person is a partner do not do justice to the multidimensionality of the primitive World. Primitive beings worked so that one could win a contest in which the offering was made to the gods; one got spiritual merit for one’s labors. I suppose early Calvinism was an echo of this performance for the eyes of beings and the gods, but without the continual giving, the redistribution of the most goods. Big men in primitive society were those who gave away the most, had nothing for themselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Sometimes a chief would even offer his own life to appease an injured party in a quarrel; one’s role was often nothing else than to be a vehicle for the smooth flow of life in the tribe. (The resemblance of historical Calvinism ends abruptly at this kind of performance for spiritual merit.) This reveals a central fact about social life: primitive beings immersed themselves in a network of social obligations for psychological reasons. Beings have to have a core psychological motive for being in the group in the first place, otherwise one would not be a group-living animal. Or, to call a spade a space, beings entered social organizations in order to share guilt. You know fat meat is greasy, and trying to hide the truth from some people is like trying to hide Sunrise from a rooster. Social organizations is a structure of shared guilt…a symbolic mutual confession of guilt. And so in one sweep we can understand how primitive economics is inexorably sacred, communal, and yet psychologically motivated at the same time. We must accept that facts that human beings reveal themselves in art and literature and philosophy, and by profiting from the insights of the particular cultural movements which express the anxiety and conflicts of contemporary beings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

It is also important here to remind ourselves that every scientific method rests upon philosophical presuppositions. These presuppositions determine not only how much reality the observer with this particular method can see—they are indeed the spectacles through which one perceives—but also whether or not what is observed is pertinent to real problems and, therefore, whether the scientific work will endure. It is a gross, albeit common, error to assume naively that one can observe facts best if one avoids all preoccupation with philosophical assumptions. All one does, then, is mirror uncritically the particular parochial doctrines of one’s own limited culture. The result in our day is that science gets identified with methods of isolating factors and observing them from an allegedly detached house base—a particular method which arose out of the split between subject and object made in the seventeenth century in Western culture and then developed into its special compartmentalized form in the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We in our day are no less subject to methodolatry than are members of any other culture. However, it seems especially a misfortune that our understanding in such a crucial area as the psychological study of beings, with the understanding of emotional and mental health depending upon it, should be curtailed by uncritical acceptance of limited assumptions. Science offers more leeway than graduate students are permitted to realize. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

Is not the essence of science the assumption that reality is lawful and, therefore, understandable, and is it not an inseparable aspect of scientific integrity that any method continuously criticize its own positions? The only way to widen one’s blinders is to analyze one’s philosophical assumptions. In my judgment it is very much to the credit of the psychiatrists and psychologists in this existential movement that they seek to clarify their own bases. This enables them to see their human subjects with a fresh clarity and to shed original light on many facets of psychological experience. “Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God? Know ye not that he hath all power, and at his great command the Earth shall be rolled together as a scroll? Therefore, repent ye, and humble yourselves before him, lest he shall come out in justice against you—least a remnant of the seed of Jacob shall go forth among you as a lion, and tear you in pieces, and there is none to deliver,” reports Mormon 5.23-24. God not only has developed all his forces to their highest degree of maturity but also has attained a perfect equilibrium of them. The masses who turn to such a figure will receiver the inspiration to be received, and are functioning on a higher level as their psyche is ruled by reality. Because some holy being have been uncouth, unkempt, uncivilized, uneducated, and unmannerly, it is foolish to connect them with holiness. They were simply barbarians. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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The Illuminate Stands in the Centre of the World-Movement and Remains Fixed in the Holy Presence!

September 5, 2019 10:35 pm

Come on, let us pack up the suitcase and go down to the kitchen. Tell your people not to open all those boxes, just to move them to where they will be safe. I will make you some good coffee. I make the best coffee. I make better coffee than Reese Witherspoon or her mother Mrs. Betty. While immensely augmenting our comforts, our conveniences and our leisure, and disproportionately raisin the real income of the less affluent, industry has also impoverished life. Mass production and consumption, mobility, the homogenization of taste and finally of society were among the costs of higher productivity. They de-individualized life and drained each of our ends of meaning as we achieved it. Pursuit thus became boundless. The increased leisure time would hang heavy on our hands, were it not for the mass media and social media which help us burn it away like coal on the grill during Summer time. They inexorably exclude art anything of significance when it cannot be reduced to mass entertainment, but they divert us from the passage of the time they keep us from filling. They also tend to draw into the mass market talents and works that might otherwise produce new visions and they abstract much of the capacity to experience art or life directly and deeply. What they do, however, is what people demand. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

We scrutinized the causes, the effects and the general characteristics of popular culture and found them unavoidable in a mass-production economy. However, we have hardly touched on the contents of popular culture. Some work on this subject has been done and much remains. Limitations of scope also restricted us from stressing the many material advantages of industrialism. We do not intend to deny them. Finally, prophecy too is beyond our means. True, extrapolation of present trends makes a dismal picture. However, there is comfort in the fact that no extrapolation has ever predicted the future correctly. Elements can be forecast, but only prophets can do more (and they are unreliable, or hard to interpret). History has always had surprises up its sleeves—if it changed its ways, it would be most surprising. Our ignorance here leaves the rosy as well as the grim possibilities open for the future. However, this des not allow us to avert our gaze from the present and from the outlook it affords. Neither is cheerful. The gist of any culture is an ethos which gives meaning to the lives of those who dwell in it. If this be the purport of popular culture, it is foiled. We have suggested how it comes to grief in various aspects. What makes popular culture as a whole so disconcerting is best set forth now by exploring the relationship among diversion, art and boredom. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The gist of any culture is an ethos which gives meaning to the lives of those who dwell in it. If this be the purport of popular culture, it is foiled. We have suggested how it comes to grief in various aspects. What makes popular culture as a whole so disconcerting is best set forth now by exploring the relationship among diversion, art and boredom. Dr. Freud thought of art as a diversion, an illusion in contrast to reality, a substitute gratification like a dream. In this he fully shared what was and still is the popular view of art. It is a correct view—of popular art, of pseudo-art produced to meet the demand for diversion. However, it is a mistaken, reductive definition of art. Dr. Freud finds the dreamwork attempting to hide or disguise the dreamer’s true wishes and fears so that they may not alarm one’s consciousness. The substitute gratification produced by the dreamwork, mainly by displacements, helps the dreamer continue sleeping. However, one major function of art is precisely to undo this dreamwork, to see through disguises, to reveal to our consciousness the true nature of our wishes and fears. The dreamwork covers, to protect sleep. Art discovers and attempts to awaken the sleeper. Whereas dreamwork tries to assist repression, the work of art intensifies and depends perception and experience of the World and of the self. It attempts to pluck the heart of the mystery, to show where the actions is possessed in its true nature. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Though dreams and art both may disregard literal reality, they do so to answer opposite needs. The dream may ignore reality to keep the sleeper’s eyes closed. Art transcends immediate reality to encompass wider views, penetrate into deeper experience and lead to a fuller confrontation of being’s predicament. The dreamwork even tries to cover upsetting basic impulses with harmless immediate reality. Art, in contrast, ignores the immediate only to uncover the essential. Artistic revelation need not be concerned with outer or with social reality. It may be purely aesthetic. However, if it is art, it can never be an illusion. Far from distracting from reality, art is a form of reality which strips life of the fortuitous to lay bare its essentials and permit us to experience them. In popular culture, however, art is all that Dr. Freud said art is, and no more. Like the dreamwork, popular culture distorts human experience to draw substitute gratifications or reassurances from it. Like the dreamwork, it presents an illusion in contrast to reality. For this reason, popular art falls short of satisfaction. And all of popular culture leaves one vaguely discontented because, like popular art, it is only a substitute gratification; like a dream, it distracts from life and from real gratification. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Substitute gratifications are uneconomic, as Dr. Freud often stressed. They do not in the end gratify as much, and they cost more psychologically than the real gratifications which they shut out. This is why sublimation and realistic control are to be preferred to substitution and repression. That is why reality is to be preferred to illusion, full experience to symptomatic displacements and defense mechanisms. Yet substitute gratifications, habitually resorted to, incapacitate the individual for real ones. In part they cause or strengthen internalized hindrances to real and gratifying experience; in part they are longed for because internal barriers have already blocked real gratification of the original impulses. Though the specific role it plays varies with the influence of other formative factors in the life of each individual, popular culture must be counted among the baffling variety of causes and effects of defense mechanisms and repressions. It may do much damage, or do none at all, or be the only relief possible, however deficient. Yet, whenever popular plays a major role in life significant repressions have taken (or are taking) place. Popular culture supplants those gratifications, which are no longer sough because of the repression of the original impulses. However, it is a substitute and spurious. It founders and cannot succeed because neither desire nor gratification are true. “Nought’s had, all’s spent/ where desire is got without content.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

It may seem paradoxical to describe popular culture in terms of repression. Far from repressed, it strikes one as uninhibited. Yet the seeming paradox disappears if we assume that the uproarious din, the raucous noise and the shouting are attempts to drown the shriek of unused capacities, of repressed individuality, as it is bent into futility. Repression bars impulses from awareness without satisfying them. This damming up always generates a feeling of futility and apathy or, in defense against it, an agitated need for action. The former may be called listless, the later restless boredom. They may alternate and they may enter consciousness only through anxiety and a sense of meaninglessness, fatigue and nonfulfillment. Sometimes there is such a general numbing of the eagerness too often turned aside that only a dull feeling of dreariness and emptiness remains. More often, there is an insatiable longing for things to happen. The external World is to supply these events to fill the emptiness. Yet the bored person cannot designate what would satisfy a craving as ceaseless as it is vague. It is not satisfied by any event supplied. There are characteristics of the experience that are supposed to follow: there should be a suddenness of illumination; the insight may occur, and to some extent must occur, against what one has clung to consciously in one’s theories; there should be a vividness of the incident and the whole scene that surrounds it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

For art to satisfying a craving there should also be expressed brevity and conciseness of insight, along with the experience of immediate certainty. Continuing with the practical conditions which one cites as necessary for this experience are hard work on the topic prior to the breakthrough may occur (that could be in thought or visualization or interpretation), and keep in mind that the necessity of alternating work and relaxation, with the insight often coming at the moment of the break between the two, or at least within the break. This last point is particularly interesting. It is probably something everyone has learned: if they alternate the classroom with the beach, professors will lecture with more inspiration; when they write for two hours, then pitch quoits, and then go back to their writing, authors will write better. However, certainly more than the mere mechanical alternation is involved. I propose that in our day this alteration of the market place and mountain requires the capacity for the constructive use of solitude. It requires the capacity for the constructive use of solitude. It requires that we be able to retire from a World that is too much with us, that we be able to be quiet, that we let the solitude work for us and in its. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It is a characteristic of our time that many people are afraid of solitude: to be alone is a sign one is a social failure, for no one would be alone if he or she could help it. It often occurs to me that people living in our modern, hectic civilization, amid the constant din of radio and TV subjecting themselves to every kind of stimulation whether the passive sort of TV or the more active sort of conversation, work, and activity, that people with such constant preoccupations find it exceedingly difficult to let insights from unconscious depths break through. Of course, when an individual is afraid of the irrational—that is, of the unconscious dimensions of experience—one tries to keep busiest, trues to keep most noise going on about one. The avoidance of the anxiety of solitude by constant agitated diversion is what we likened to the settlers in the early says of America who used to beat on pots and pans at night to make enough din to keep the wolves away. Obviously if we are to experience insight from our unconscious, we need to be able to give ourselves to solitude. What determines why a given idea comes through from the unconscious? Why this particular insight and not one of a dozen others? Is it because a particular insight is the is the answer which is empirically most accurate? No. Is It because it is the insight which will pragmatically work best? Again, no. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The useful combinations [that come through from the unconscious] are precisely the most beautiful, I mean those best able to charm this special sensibility that all mathematicians know, but of which the profane are so unaware as often to be tempted to smile at it. Among the great numbers of combinations blindly formed by the subliminal self, almost all are without interest and without utility; but just for that reason they are also without effect upon the esthetic sensibility. Consciousness will never know them; only certain ones are harmonious, and, consequently, at once useful and beautiful. They will be capable of touching this special sensibility of the geometer of which I have just spoken, and which, one aroused, will call our attention to them, and thus give them occasion to become conscious. This is why the mathematicians and physicists talk about the elegance of a theory. The utility is subsumed as part of the character of being beautiful. The harmony of an internal form, the inner consistency of a theory, the character of beauty that touches one’s sensibilities—these are significant factors determining why a given idea emerges. As a psychoanalyst, I can only add that my experience in helping people achieve insights reveals the same phenomenon—that insights emerge not chiefly because they are rationally true or even helpful, but because they have a certain form, the form that is beautiful because it completes an incomplete Gestalt. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

When this breakthrough of a creative insight into consciousness occurs, we have the subjective conviction that the form should be this way and no other way. It is characteristic of the creative experience that it strikes us as true—with immediate certainty. And we think, nothing else could have been true in that situation, and we wonder why we were so stupid as not to have seen it earlier. The reason, of course, is that we were not psychologically ready to see it. We could not yet intend the new truth or creative form in art or scientific theory. We were not yet open on the level of intentionality. However, the truth itself is simply there. This reminds us of what the Zen Buddhists keep saying—that at these moments is reflected and revealed a reality of the Universe that does not depend merely on our own subjectivity, but is as though we only had our eyes closed and suddenly we open them and there it is, as simple as can be. The new reality has a kind of immutable, eternal quality. The experience that “this is the way reality is and is not it is strange we did not see it sooner” may have a religious quality with artists. This is why many artists feel that something holy is going on when they paint, that there is something in the act of creating which is like a religious revelation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

There are ways that can help society avoid the tragic effects of the aggressive instinct; indeed, in the nuclear age one is almost forced to look for possibilities for peace in order to make one’s theory of the innate destructiveness of beings acceptable. I do not mind admitting that I think I have something to teach humankind that may help it to change for the better. This conviction is not as presumptuous as it might seem. The most important precept is to know thy self. We must deepen our insight into the causal concatenations governing our own behavior—it is the laws of evolution. As one element in this knowledge to which we must give special emphasis is the objective, ethological investigation of all the possibilities of discharging aggression in its primal form on substitute objects. The psychoanalytic study of so-called sublimation also helps as it is a mature type defense mechanism, in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse. There is also another method which will helps us live more productive lives and that is the promotion of personal acquaintance and, if possible, friendship between individual members of different ideologies or nations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The fourth and perhaps the most important measure to be taken immediately is the intelligent and responsible channeling of militant enthusiasm—that is, to help the younger generation to find genuine cases that are worth serving in the modern World. Self-knowledge means that one becomes conscious of what is unconscious; this is a most difficult process, because it encounters the energy of resistance by which the unconscious is defended against the attempt to make it conscious. Self-knowledge is not an intellectual process alone, but simultaneously an affective process. It is not only knowledge by the brain, but also knowledge by the heart. Knowing oneself means gaining increasing insight, intellectually and affectively, in heretofore secret parts of one’s psyche. It is a process which may take years for a sick person who wants to be cured of one’s symptoms and a lifetime for a person who seriously wants to be oneself. Its effect is one of increased energy because energy is freed from the task of upholding repressions; thus the more beings are in touch with one’s inner reality, the more one is awake and free. Knowing thyself also involves theoretical knowledge of the facts of evolution, and specifically of the instinctive nature of aggression. If somebody who knows the laws of gravity finds oneself in deep water and cannot swim, one’s knowledge will not prevent one from drowning; reading prescriptions does not make one well. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Even air lines advertise international travel as serving the cause of peace; unfortunately this concept of the aggression-lowing function of personal acquaintance does not happen to be true. There is ample evidence for this. The British and the Germans were very well acquainted with each other before 1914, yet their mutual hatred when the war broke out was ferocious. There is even more telling proof. It is notorious that no war between countries elicits as much hate and cruelty as civil war, in which there is no lack of acquaintance between the two warring sides. Does the fact of mutual intimate knowledge diminish the intensity of hate among members of a family? Acquaintance and friendship cannot be expected to lower aggression because they represent a superficial knowledge about another person, a knowledge of an object which I look at from the outside. This is quite different from the penetrating, empathic knowledge in which I understand the other’s experiences by mobilizing those within myself which, if not the same, are similar to one’s own knowledge. Knowledge of this kind requires that most repressions within oneself are lowered in intensity to a point where there is little resistance to becoming aware of the new aspects of one’s unconsciousness. The attainment of a nonjudgmental understanding can lower aggressiveness or do away with it altogether; it depends on the degree to which a person has overcome one’s own insecurity, greed and narcissism, and not on the amount of information one has about others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

It is an interesting question why civil wars are in fact much fiercer and why they elicit much more destructive impulses than international wars. It seems plausible that the reason is possessed in that usually, at least as far as modern international wars are concerned, they do not aim at the destruction of extinction of the enemy. Their aim is a limited one: to force the opponent to accept conditions for peace which are damaging, but by no means a threat to the existence of the population of the defeated country. (Nothing could illustrate this better than that Germany, the country who conceded in two World Wars, became most prosperous after each concession than before.) Exceptions to this rule are wars which aim at the physical extinction or enslavement of the total enemy population, like some of the wars—although by no means all—which the Romans conducted. In civil war the two opponents have the aim, if not to destroy each other physically, to destroy each other economically, socially, and politically. If this hypothesis is correct, it would mean that the degree of destructiveness is by and large dependent on the severity of the threat. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Channeling of militant enthusiasm is essential to life; one of my special recommendations is athletics. However, the fact is that competitive sports stimulate a great deal of aggression. How intense this is was highlight recently when the deep feelings aroused by an international soccer match led to a small war in Latin America. If there is no evidence that sport lowers aggression, at the same time it should be said that there is also no evidence that sport is motivated by aggression. What often produces aggression in sports is the competitive character of the event, cultivated in a social climate of competition and increased by an overall commercialization, in which not pride of achievement but money and publicity have become the most attractive goals. Many thoughtful observers of the unfortunate Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, 2016, have recognized that instead of furthering goodwill and pace, they furthered competitive aggressiveness and nationalistic pride. However, supposing that being a patriot of my home country (which I am), I felt an unmitigated hostility against another county (which I emphatically do not), I still could not wish whole-heartedly for its destruction if I realized that there were people living in it who, like myself, were enthusiastic workers in the field of inductive natural science, or revered Charles Darwin and were enthusiastically propagating the truth of his discoveries. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Or still others in these other who shared my appreciation of Michelangelo’s art, or my enthusiasm for Goethe’s Faust, or for Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, or the beauty of a rambling Victorian mansion, a coral reef, a love for a BMW, or for wildlife preservation or a number of minor enthusiasm I could name, then we would more than likely be able to see eye to eye and respect each other, and I could not wish for their destruction just because they are in another geographical location. I should find it quite impossible to hate, unreservedly, any enemy, if one shared only one of my identifications with cultural and ethical values. My denial of the wish for destruction of a whole country by the word “wholeheartedly,” and by qualifying hate by “unreservedly.” However, what is a “half-hearted” wish for destruction, or a “reserved” hate? More important, my condition for not wanting the destruction of another country is that there are people who share my particular tastes and enthusiasm (those who revere Darwin seem to qualify only if they also enthusiastically propagate his discoveries): it is not enough that they are human beings. In other words, the total destruction of an enemy is undesirable only if and because one is similar to my own culture, and even more specifically, to my own interests and values. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The character of these statements is not changed by my demand for a humanistic education, for instance, an education offering an optimum of common ideals with which an individual can identify. This was the kind of education current in German high schools before the first World War, but the majority of the teachers of this humanism were probably more war-minded than the average German. Only a very different and radical humanism, one in which the primary identification is with life and with humankind, can have an influence against war. How often have I heard, in talk or writing, that the philosophic requirements are set too high and are beyond average human compliance. My answer is that time and patience and work keep on pushing back the measure of what is possible to a being, that grace may fitfully bless one if one sustains effort and aspiration or recognizes opportunity and inspiration, and that these requirements are not set for immediate attainment but as an ultimate goal to be striven for little by little and to give correct direction to one’s life. “Hope on and old on,” I told Britney Spears at an outwardly dark moment in her life. She did!—and later found herself, her own peace, and became in turn through her performances and music a help to many fellow Christians. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The achievements of such personal self-sufficiency, of such detachment from the World of agitations and desires, is, one will say, something entirely superhuman preternatural. “Why ask frail mortals to look at such unclimbable peaks, such unattainable summits?” Philosophy answers, “Yes, the peaks are high, the summits do cause us to strain our necks upward. However, it is wrong to say that they are unclimbable. There is a way of climbing them, little by little, under competent guidance, and that way is called the Quest. True, it involves certain disciplines, but then, what is there in life worth getting which can be got without paying some price in self-discipline for it? The aim of these disciplines is to secure s better-controlled mind, a more virtuous life, and a more reverent fundamental mood. The sage is a being who lives in constant truth-remembrance. One has realized the existence of the Overself, one knows that one partakes of Its life, immortal and infinite. One has made the pilgrimage to essential being and returned again to walk amongst beings, to speak their language, and to bear witness, by one’s life amongst them, to Truth. “And I would that ye should behold that the more part of them are in the path of their duty, and they do walk circumspectly before God, and they do observe to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments according to the law of Moses,” reports Helaman 15.5. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

In Loving Memory of Sarah Winchester 22 April 1839 – 5 September 1922

Randolph Harris II International Institute

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