I am an engineer, I am a conservationist, and I am a scientist, and environmentalist. I am a nuclear physicist, I am an outdoorsman, I am a Christian, and I do not see any conflict among these things. I have never claimed to be better or wiser than any other person. I think my greatest strength is that I am an ordinary man. We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon. As serial marriages become more common, we shall begin to characterize people not in terms of their present marital status, but in terms of their marriage career or “trajectory.” This trajectory will be formed by the decisions they make at certain vital turning points in their lives. For most people, the first such juncture will arrive in youth, when they enter into “trial marriage.” Even now the young people in the United States of America and Europe are engaged in a mass experiment with probationary marriage, with or without benefit of ceremony. The staidest of United States universities are beginning to wink at the practice of co-ed housekeeping among their students. Acceptance of trial marriage is even growing among certain religious philosophers. Thus we hear the German theologian Siegfried Keil of Marburg University urge what he terms “recognized premarriage.” In Canada, Father Jacques Lazure has publicly proposed “probationary marriages” of three to eighteen months. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

In the past, social pressures and lack of money restricted experimentation with trial marriage to a handful. In the future, both these limiting forces will evaporate. Trial marriage will be the first step in the serial marriage “careers” that millions will pursue. A second critical life juncture for the people of the future will occur when the trial marriage ends. At this point, couple make choose to formalize their relationship and stay together into the next stage. Or they may terminate it and seek out new partners. In either case, they will then face several options. They may prefer to go childless. They may choose to have, adopt or “buy” one or more children. They may decide to raise these children themselves or to farm them out to professional parents. Such decisions will be made, by and large, in the early twenties—by which time many young adults will already be well into their second marriages. A third significant turning point in the martial career will come, as it does today, when the children finally leave home. The end of parenthood proves excruciating for many, particularly women who, once the children are gone, find themselves without a raison d’etre. Even today divorces result from the failure of the couple to adapt to this traumatic break in continuity. Feeling is as much a part of true insight into the Real as knowing. It gives life to the end result. It is evoked by enlightened writing and inspired art works. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Thinking may not rightly claim overlordship here, but intuition, the silent voice of the Overself, may do so. Among the more conventional couples of tomorrow who choose to raise their own children in the time-honoured fashion, this will continue to be a particularly painful time. It will, however, strike earlier. Young people today already leave home sooner than their counterparts a generation ago. They will probably depart even earlier tomorrow. Masses of youngsters will move off, whether into trial marriage or not, after the age of eighteen. Thus we may anticipate that the middle and late thirties will be another important breakpoint in the marital careers of millions. Many at that juncture will enter into their third marriage. This third marriage will bring together two people for what could well turn out to be the longest uninterrupted stretch of matrimony in their lives—from, say, the late thirties until one of the partners dies. This may, in fact, turn out to be the only “real” marriage, the basis of the only truly durable material relationship. During this time two mature people, presumably with well-matched interests and complementary psychological needs, and with a sense of being at comparable stages of personality development, will be able to look forward to a relationship with a decent statistical probability of enduring. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Here, just on the very frontiers of wakeful consciousness, amidst daydreams and intuitions, thoughts and premonitions, lies hidden treasure. It is precisely in this inward region which ordinary humans dismiss as worthless, unreal, and false that the mystic finds worth, reality, and truth. Not all these marriages will survive until death, however, for the family will still face a fourth crisis point. This will come, as it does now for so many, when one or both of the partners retires from work. The abrupt change in daily routine brought about by this development places great strain on the couple. Some couples will go to the path of the post-retirement family, choosing this moment to begin the task of raising children. This may overcome for them the vacuum that so many couples now face after reaching the end of their occupational live. (Today, when they finish raising children, many women go to work; tomorrow many will reverse that pattern, working first and childrearing next.) Other couples will overcome the crisis of retirement in other ways, fashioning both together a new set of habits, interests and activities. Still others will find the transition too difficult, and will simply sever their ties and enter the pool of “in-betweens”—the floating reserve of temporarily unmarried persons. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Of course, there will be some who, through luck, interpersonal skill and high intelligence, will find it possible to make long-lasting monogamous marriages work. Some will succeed, as they do today, in marrying for life and finding durable love and affection. However, others will fail to make even sequential marriages endure for long. Thus some will try two or even three partners within, say, the final stage of marriage per capita will rise—slowly but relentlessly. Most people will probably move forward along this progression, engaging in one “conventional” temporary marriage after another. However, with widespread familial experimentation in the society, the more daring or desperate will make side forays into the less conventional arrangements as well, perhaps experimenting with communal life at some point, or going it alone with a child. The net result will be a rich variation in the types of marital trajectories that people will trace, a wider choice of life-patterns, an endless opportunity for novelty of experience. Certain patterns will be more common than others. However, temporary marriage will be a standard feature, perhaps the dominant feature, of family life in the future. There is an inner light in all people which could, with time, convert their perplexed questionings into solid certitudes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

There is this remarkable fact that hard problems which the unassisted intellect cannot solve, gnawing anxieties upon which our past experiences throw no helpful light, may become illumined and solved with ease if we adopt this practical method of applying intuition to them. Among all the varied powers of the mind, a properly unfolded intuition is indeed one of the most priceless anyone could have. It always warns against wrong courses and often counsels the right ones. I sometimes have a feeling, in fact I have it very strongly, a feeling of interference…that some guiding hand has interfered. On the other hand, intuition may help us and allay our fear where reason alone merely increases them. The intuitively governed mind is the undivided mind. It does not have to choose between contrasts or to accept one of two alternatives. It does not have to choose between contrasts or accept one of two alternatives. It does not suffer from the double-facedness of being swayed this way or that by conflicting evidence, contradictory emotions, or hesitant judgments. However bitter a situation may appear, the accepted prompting of the Overself can being sweetness into it; however trying it may be, the same promoting can being fortitude into it. The human who has trained oneself to listen for the voice of intuition, which means trained oneself to wait for it to speak and discipline oneself to be inwardly alert yet also inwardly quiet for it, does not have to suffer the painful conflicts and tormenting divisions which others do when confronted by issues demanding a choice or a decision. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

No charitable human could oneself be blessed in Heaven while one knew that even one human soul was still in hell; and if so, are we more merciful than God? At the back of this objection lies a mental picture of Heaven and hell co-existing in unilinear time as the histories of England and America co-exist: so that at each moment the blessed could say “The miseries of hell are now going on.” However, I notice that Our Lord, while stressing the terror of hell with unsparing severity, usually emphasizes the idea not of duration but of finality. Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story—not as the beginning of a new story. That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt: but whether this eternal fixity implies endless duration—or duration at all—we cannot say. We know much more about Heaven that hell, for Heaven is the home of humanity and therefore contains all that is implied in a glorified human life: but hell was not made for humans. It is in no sense parallel to Heaven: it is “the darkness outside,” the outer rim where being fades away into nonentity. Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghost may not wish to come out of hell, in a vague fashion wherein an envious human “wishes” to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free. In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? However, He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what God does. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

One caution, and I have done. In order to rouse modern minds to an understanding of the issues, I ventured to introduce a picture of the sort of bad human whom we most easily perceive to be truly bad. However, when the picture has done that work, the sooner it is forgotten the better. In all discussions of Hell we should keep steadily before our eyes the possible damnation, not of our enemies nor our friends (since both these disturb the reason) but of ourselves. This essay is not just about your wife or son, nor about race or culture; it is about you and me. Evil is nothing other than a turning away from good, and therefore evil is secondary in relation to good. Evil cannot come from good, because if it came from good it would not be evil. However, since everything that exists comes from good, everything is in some way good, but evil does not exist at all. Evil in its nature is neither a thing nor does it bring anything forth. Evil does not exist at all and is neither good nor productive of good. All things which are, by the very fact that they are, are good and come from good; but in so far as they are deprived of good, they are neither good nor do they exist. That which has no existence is not altogether evil, for the absolutely non-existent will be nothing, unless it be thought of as subsisting in the good superessentially. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Good, then, as absolutely existing and as absolutely non-existing, will stand in the foremost and highest place, while evil is neither in that which exists nor in that which does not exist. For this reason all things are good, since some things are better than others and the goodness of the less good adds to the glory of the better. Those things we call evil, then, are defects in good things, and quite incapable of existing in their own right outside good things. However, those very defects testify to the nature goodness of things. For what is evil by reason f a defect must obviously be good of its own nature. For a defect is something contrary to nature, something which damages the nature of a thing—and it can do so only by diminishing that thing’s goodness. Evil therefore nothing but the privation of good. And thus it can have no existence anywhere except in some good thing. So there can be thing which are good without any evil in them, such as God himself, and the higher celestial beings; but there can be no evil things without good. For if evils cause no damage to anything, they are not evils; if they do damage something, they diminish its goodness; and if they damage it still more, it is because it still has some goodness which they diminish; and if they swallow it up altogether, nothing of its nature is left to be damaged. And so there will be no evil by which it can be damaged, since there is then no nature left whose goodness any damage can diminish. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Since God created all things good and there is nothing which was not created by him, whence arise evil? Answer: Evil is not a natural thing, it is rather the name given to the privation of good. Thus there can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good, nor car there by evil where there is no good. Therefore, when we call a thing good, we praise its inherent nature; when we call a thing evil, we blame not its nature, but some defect in it contrary to its nature, which is good. Iniquity has no substance. There is a nature in which there is no evil—in which, indeed, there can be no evil. However, it is impossible for a nature to exist in which there is no good. Evil is not a substance, for as it has not God for its author, it does not exist; and so the defect of corruption is nothing else than the desire or act of a misdirected will. The steel is not evil; but the human who uses the steel for a criminal purpose, one is evil. Evil is a bad use of things as a result of erroneous decisions of the will (blindness due to evil desire, et cetera). One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the nature of good. Now we have said above that good is everything appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its own perfection, it must necessarily be said that the being and perfection of every created thing is essentially good. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Hence it cannot be that evil signifies a being, or any form or nature. Therefore it must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. Evil is not a being, whereas good is a being. That every agent works for an end clearly follows from the fact that every agent tends to something definite. Now that to which an agent tends definitely must needs be befitting to that agent, since the latter would not tend to it save on account of some fittingness thereto. However, that which is befitting to a thing is good for it. Therefore every agent works for a good. The state was instituted by Go to restrain sin and promote a just social order. One of the most common misconceptions in Western political thought is that the role of government is determined solely by the will of the people. When Pilate questioned Jesus on the eve of His execution, Christ told the governor that he would not even hold his office or political authority if it had not been granted him by God. The apostle Paul spoke of civil authority as “God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Peter used similar language, saying that governments were set by God to “punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” Government originated as an ordinance of God. It is, in one sense, God’s response to the nature of the people themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Humans can adapt themselves somehow to anything their imagination can cope with…but one cannot deal with chaos. While it cannot redeem the World or be used as a tool to establish the Kingdom of God, civil government does set the boundaries for human behaviour. The state is not a remedy for sin, but a means to restrain it. Its limited task is to promote the good of the community in temporal concerns, the protection of life and property and the preservation of peace and order. When God established ancient America, His first order of business was the propagation of law, not just for religious purposes, but for the ordering of civil life. Even before the Ten Commandments there was a great need for civil adjudication. The biblical text records that “Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people and they stood around him from morning till evening.” (Court dockets seemed to have been clogged from the very beginning.) Moses explained that “the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and laws.” Thus the Americans involved in a dispute are to look not to the whim of a judge or to an arbitrary law but rather to a ruling based on divine laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The judicial role was not a mechanism to advance the state’s perception of social equilibrium, but to discern God’s reveled law. This is the origin of what we call the rule of law; it stands in stark contrast to modern moral relativism. Without transcendent norms, laws are either established by social elites or are merely bargains struck by competing forces in society. In the Judeo-Christian view, law is rooted in moral absolutes that do not vacillate with public taste or the whim of fashion. Thus rooted, government can perform not only the negative function of restraining evil, but the positive function of promoting a just social order so that people can live in harmony. The apostle Paul had this in mind when he urged his young colleagues Timothy to pray “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” Humans are engaged in a continual quest for community. It is important to remember, however, that the state is not itself that community. Anyone who has ever dealt with a government bureaucracy knows that it is rare enough to get a phone call through, let alone to cultivate warm fuzzy feelings for the mammoth machine of big government. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

However, the state can protect people’s voluntary efforts to shape community by granting equal protection of the law, by upholding principles of justice so the weak and powerless are not exploited, and by guaranteeing liberty and providing security. In this way the government sustains a stable environment in which people can live, producing art, literature, music, and happy homes. They can partake of one of the primary benefits of democracy: the simple freedom to enjoy of cup of coffee by the warm fireplace with one’s family. Christianity teaches, then, that state serves a divinely appointed and divinely defined task, although it is not in itself divine. Its authority is legitimate, though limited. The church is the community that administers and encourages the worship of God and meets the spiritual worship of God and meets the spiritual needs of God’s people, including teaching, offering the sacraments, and the bearing of one another’s burdens. The primary purpose of the church in relation to the World is evangelization—that is, to proclaim in word and deed the same gospel that Christ announced. The church is not the actual Kingdom of God, but is to reflect the love, justice, and righteousness of God’s Kingdom within society. The church is the community in which through its behavioural and mission the reign of God becomes visible, serving as the precursor and avant-grade of the society that will be fulfillment of hope. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Though the church as a human institution often fails in this high calling, its most potent social weapon is its commitment to live out the Lord’s command to love one’s neighbour, the law of love. In essence, the program of the church disregarded the social divisions of society; it made the church a home for all classes; its democratic basis was a common worship and fellowship and mutual love. The church’s transcendent vision holds the World accountable to something beyond itself. In doing so, its members serve as ambassadors, citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom at work in this World. The Christian who is involved in the material history of this World is involved in it as representing another order, another master (than the “prince of this World”), another claim (than that of the natural heart of humans). Thus one must plunge into social and political problems in order to have an influence on the World, not in the hope of making it a paradise, but simply in order to make it tolerable—not in order to diminish the opposition between this World and the Kingdom of God, but simply in order to modify the opposition between the disorder of this World and the order of preservation that God wills for it—not in order to “bring in” the Kingdom of God, but in order that the gospel may be proclaimed, that all humans may really hear the good news of salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Thus, the church, while not the Kingdom of God, is to live out the values of the Kingdom of God in this World, resisting the ever-present temptation to usher in the Kingdom of God by political means. Yet this is the temptation to which the church has mist commonly succumbed, and certainly this is its greatest temptation today. The gospels make it clear that in Jesus’ eyes anything that would distort his mission as servant of the Lord was a temptation. He did not accept the view of those who confuse the things of God with attitudes that are purely political. He rejects unequivocally any recourse to violence. He offers his message of conversation to all, not excluding even the tax collectors. The purpose of his mission embraces far more than political order. It embraces the salvation of the entire person through transforming and peace-giving love. Unlike the politics of the World, the politics of the Kingdom is the politics of faith, hope, and love: faith that confesses the Risen Saviour, hope that looks for His appearing, love that is inflamed by His sacrifice on the cross. The church anticipated the form of the World to come and thus it transcends the social and political forms of this World. While Jesus did not come to establish a political kingdom, the announcement of the Kingdom had profound consequences for the political order. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

When Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this Earth, Pilate may have breathed a sign of relief. He should have reconsidered. Which is more threatening to a ruler—and external foe wit mighty but visible armies or an eternal king who rules the very souls of humans? The latter can command the will and affections, demand absolute obedience, impart unlimited power to His subjects, and radically change their values and lives; His followers fear no Earthly power and His Kingdom has no end. In the face of such a potentate, any mere political leader must shudder. This is why the Kingdom of God has had such an astonishing effect upon the most powerful of human empires in every age. It is not a blueprint for some new social order; nor does it merely set the forces of radical cultural change in motion. Rather, God’s Kingdom promises radical changes in human personalities. This is the crucial point. While human politics is based on the premise that society must be changed in order to change people, in the politics of the Kingdom it is people who must be changed in order to chance society. Through humans who recognize its authority and live by its ethical standards, the Kingdom of God invades the stream of history. In breaks the vicious and otherwise irreversible cycles of violence, injustice, and self-interest. In this way the Kingdom of God equips its citizens to be the best citizens in the kingdoms of humans. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Such was certainly the case in early nineteenth-century England, when one man dared—against great personal and political odds—to represent the standards of the Kingdom of God for the good of his nation. We may argue about everything except Truth. Even the very best argument can produce only another thought at the end. For Truth can be expressed in words, spoken or written, only by bringing it down to the level of intellect, whereas on its own level as being knowledge of the Real it transcends intellect. Any thought of the Real merely makes an object of it, one among a multitude of others objects, and hence fails to arrive at it. It is impossible to think of the Pure Self without making it an idea, that is, an object, and therefore without missing it. God is neither to be looked upon with human eyes nor comprehended with human intellect. For the eyes see only things and the intellect takes hold only of thoughts. Absolute Being is neither analysable nor measurable, neither imaginable nor weighable. If the Real is unique, if it has no duplicate, nothing inferior to it can make it an object of experience. The ego, the self which sets out to do so, cannot come closer than getting its own personal reactions, however rarefied these may be and however uncommon these mystic experiences are. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

What the Godhead is we do not know. The nature and the structure of the Grand Mystery are beyond all human investigation. We cannot describe it correctly or name it accurately. We can only observe some of its workings and effects in our individual selves and in the Universe. Please Turn aside your storms, please send them away. May peace descend in their wake. Lord Almighty, Lord of Lightning, please withhold the chaos, please let it pass by the place, leaving it in calm. Dear Lord in Heaven, weaver of beauty, laying patterns on the World, binding all things together: please wrap your threads lightly about America in protection. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all that lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy name because Thu hast kept us in life and sustained us; so mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statutes, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20  

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse. Homes range in size from approximately 2,000 to nearly 4,000 square feet!

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!

#CresleighHomes

It was until very recently considered not worthwhile to rack one’s brains over medieval abstruse alchemical symbols. A fierce controversy is already ranging today among biologist over the problems and ethical issues arising out of eugenics. Should we try to breed a better race? If so, exactly what is “better?” And who is to decide? Such questions are not entirely new. Yet the techniques soon to be available smash the traditional limits of the argument. We can now imagine reaming the human race not as a farmer slowly and labouriously “breeds up” one’s herd, but as an artist might, employing a brilliant range of unfamiliar colours, shapes, and forms. Not far from Route 80, outside the little town of Hazard, Kentucky USA, is a place picturesquely known as Valley of Troublesome Creek. In this tiny backwoods community lives a family whose members, for generations, have been marked by an unusual anomaly: blue skin. According to Dr. Madison Cawein of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, who tracked the family down and traces its story, the blue-skinned people seem perfectly normal in other respects. Their unusual colour is caused by a rare enzyme deficiency that has been passed from one generation to the next. Given our new, fast-accumulating knowledge of genetics, we shall be able to breed whole new races of bule people—or, for that matter, green, purple, or orange. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

In a World still suffering from the moral lesion of racism, this is a thought to be conjured with. Should we strive for a World in which all people share the same skin colour? If we want that, we shall no doubt have the technical means for bringing it about. Or should we, instead, work toward even greater diversity than now exists? What happens to the entire concept of race? To standards of physical beauty? To notions of superiority or inferiority? We are hurtling toward the time when we will be able to breed both super- and sub-races. As Theodore J. Gordon put it in The Future, “Given the ability to tailor the race, I wonder if we would create all men equal, or would we choose to manufacture apartheid? Might the races of the future be: a superior group, the DNA controllers; the humble servants; special athletes for the ‘game”; research scientists wit 200 IQ and diminutive bodies.” We shall have the power to produce races of morons or of mathematical savants. We shall also be able to breed babies with supernormal vision or hearing, supernormal ability to detect changes in odor, or supernormal muscular or musical skills. We will be able to create a variety breed of humans, and countless other varieties of the previously monomorphic human being. Ultimately, the problems are not scientific or technical, but ethical and political. Choice—and the criteria for choice—will be critical. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Assuming hopefully for the moment that no dictator, self-righteous planning board or omnipotent black box is going to make genetic selections for the coming generation, then who or what is? Not parents, certainly. They will take the problem to their friendly neighbourhood Certified Gene Architect. It seems inevitable to me that there will also be competitive schools for genetic architecture. The Functionalists will persuade parents to produce babies fitted for the present needs of society; the Futurists will suggest children who will have a niche in the culture as it will have evolved in twenty years; the Romantics will insist that each child be bred with at least one outstanding talent; and the Naturalists will advise the production of individuals so balanced genetically as to be in almost perfect equilibrium. Human body styles, like human clothing styles, will become outre, or a la mode as the genetic couturiers who designed them come into and out of vogue. Buried behind this tongue-in-cheek are serious issues, made more profound by the immensity of the possibilities—some of them so grotesque that they appear to leap at us from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch. Mention was made earlier of the idea of breeding humans with gills or implanting gills in them for underwater environments. At a meeting of World-renowned biologists in London, J.B.S. Haldane began to expatiate about the possibility of creating new, far-out forms of humans for space exploration. “The most obvious abnormalities in extra-terrestrial environments are differences in gravitation, temperature, air pressure, air composition, and radiation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

“Clearly a gibbon is better preadapted than a man for life in a low gravitational field, such as that of a space ship, an asteroid, or perhaps even the moon. A platyrrhine with a prehensile tail is even more so. Gene grafting may make it possible to incorporate such features into the human stocks.” While the scientists at this meeting devoted much of their attention to the moral consequences and perils of the biological revolution, no one challenged Dr. Haldane’s suggestions that we shall someday make humans with tails if we want them. Indeed, Dr. Lederberg merely observed that there might well be non-genetic ways to accomplish the same ends more easily. “We are going to modify man experimentally through physiological and embryological alterations, and by the substitution of machines for his parts. If we want a man without legs, we don’t have to breed him, we can chop them off; if we want a man with a tail, we will find a way of grafting it on to him.” At another meeting of scientists and scholars, Dr. Robert Sinsheimer, a Caltech biophysicist, put the challenge squarely: “How will you choose to intervene in the ancient designs of nature for man? Would you like to control the sex (gender) of your offspring? It will be as you wish. Would you like your son to be six feet tall—seven feet? Eight feet? What troubles you?—allergy, obesity, arthritic pain? These will be easily handled. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

“For cancer, diabetes, phenylketonuria there will be genetic therapy. The appropriate DNA will be provided in the appropriate dose. Viral and microbial disease will be easily met. Even the timeless patterns of growth and maturity and aging will be subject to our design. We know of no intrinsic limits to the life span. How long would you like to live?” Lest his audience mistake him, Dr. Sinsheimer asked: “Do these projections should like LSD fantasies, or the view in a distorted mirror? None transcends the potential of what we now know. They may not be developed in the way one might now anticipate, but they are feasible, they can be brought to reality, and sooner rather than later.” Not only can such wonders be brought to reality, but the odds are they will. Despite profound ethical questions about whether they should, the fact remains that scientific curiosity is, itself, one of the most powerful driving forces in our society. In the words of Dr. Rollin D. Hotchkiss of the Rockefeller Institute: “Many of us feel instinctive revulsion at the hazards of meddling with the finely balanced and far-reaching systems that make an individual what he is. Yet I believe it will surely be done or attempted. The pathway will be built from a combination of altruism, private profit and ignorance.” To this list, worse yet, he might have added political conflict and bland unconcern. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

Thus Dr. A. Neyfakh, chief of the research laboratory of the Institute of Development Biology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, predicts with a frightening lack of anxiety that the World will soon witness a genetic equivalent of the arms race. He bases his argument on the notion that the capitalist powers are engaged in a “struggle for brains.” To make up for the brain drain, one or another of the “reactionary governments” will be “compelled” to employ genetic engineering to increase its output of geniuses and gifted individuals. Since this will occur “regardless of their intention,” an international genetics race is inevitable. And this being so, he implies, the Soviet Union ought to be ready to jump the gun. Criticized by the Soviet philosopher A. Petropavlovsky for his seeming willingness, even enthusiasm, to participate in such a race, Dr. Neyfakh shrugged aside the horrors that might be unleased by hasty application of the new biology, replying merely that the advance of science is, and ought to be, unstoppable. If Dr. Neyfakh’s political logic leaves something to be desired, his appear to cold war passion as a justification for genetic tinkering is terrifying. Nonetheless, it is safe to day that, unless specific counter-measures are taken, if something can be done, someone, somewhere will do it. The nature of what can and will be done exceeds anything that humans are yet psychologically or morally prepared to live with. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

We have to be careful with playing God, but ignoring God. People had been fed up with the waves of change sweeping the nation in the early nineties. Not only was prayer outlawed in schools, but in all public places, before football games and commencements, and in all public buildings. Even the Senate chaplaincy had been abandoned. A series of ACLU-sponsored cases had reshaped American geography: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was forced to change its name, as was Corpus Christi, Texas. St. Louis was narrowly spared by a five-four decision that held that the word saint no longer held a specifically sacred connotation. Drug dealers’ armed gangs controlled several public schools. Many assume that humans desire only what is good for them, and therefore that pleasure is a guide for desirable actions. However, we know that many of human’s desires are irrational, precisely because they harm one (if not others) and interfere with one’s development. The person who is motivated by the wish to destroy and who feels pleasure in the act of destruction could hardly present the excuse that one has the right to behave destructively because this is a desire and one’s source of pleasure. Mental cruelty, the wish to humiliate and to hurt another person’s feelings, is probably even more widespread than physical sadism. This type of sadistic attack is much safer for the sadist; after all, no physical force but “only” words have been used. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

On the other hand, the psychic pain can be as intense or even more so than the physical. I do not need to give examples for this mental sadism. Parents inflict it upon their children, professors on their students, superiors on their inferiors—in other words, it is employed in any situation where there is someone who cannot defend oneself against the sadist. (If the teacher is helpless, the students often turn into sadists.) Mental sadism may be disguised in many seemingly harmless ways: a question, a smile, a confusing remark. Who does not know an “artist” in this kind of sadism, the one who find just the right word or the right gesture to embarrass or humiliate another in this innocent way. Naturally, if the humiliation is inflicted in front of others, this kind of sadism is often all more effective. Now, Joseph Stalin was a sadist and enjoyed playing God. One particular for Stalin enjoyed was to assure people that they were safe, only to arrest them a day or two later. Of course, the arrest hit the victim all the more severely because one had felt especially safe; besides that, Stalin could enjoy the sadistic pleasure of knowing the human’s fate at the same time that he was assuring one of his favour. What greater superiority and control over another person is there? #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Here are some specific examples: Shortly before the arrest of the Civil War hero D. F. Serdich, Stalin toasted him at a reception, suggesting that they drink to “Bruderschaft.” Just a few days before Bliukher’s destruction, Stalin spoke of hum warmly at a meeting. When an Armenian delegation came to him, Stalin asked about the poet Charents and said he should not be touched, a few months later Charents was arrested and killed. The wife of Ordzhonikidze’s Deputy Commissar A. Serebrovskii, told about an unexpected phone call from Stalin one evening in 1937. “I hear you are going about on foot,” Stalin said. “That’s no good. People might think what they shouldn’t. I’ll send you a car if yours is being repaired.” And the next morning a car from the Kremlin garage arrived for Mrs. Serebrovskii’s use. But two days later her husband was arrested, take right from the hospital. The famous historian and publicists I. Steklov, disturbed by tall the arrests, phoned Stalin an asked for an appointment. “Of course, come on over,” Stalin said, and reassured him when they met: “What’s the matter with you? The Party knows and trusts you; you have nothing to worry about.” Steklov returned home to his friends and family, and that very evening the NKVD came for him. Naturally the first thought of his friends and family was to appeal to Stalin, who seemed unaware of what was going on. It was much easier to believe in Stalin’s ignorance than in subtle perfidy. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

In 1938 I.A. Akulov, onetime Procurator of the USSR and later Secretary of the Central Executive Committee, fell while skating and suffered an almost fatal concussion. On Stalin’s suggestion, outstanding surgeons were brought from abroad to save his life. After a long and difficult recovery, Akulov returned to work, whereupon he was arrested and shot. A particularly refined form of sadism was Stalin’s habit for arresting the wives—and sometimes children—of some of the highest Soviet or Party functionaries and keeping them in a labour camp, while their humans had to do their jobs and bow and scrape before Stalin without daring even to ask for their release. It does not require much imagination to visualize the extreme humiliation of these high functionaries who could not quit their positions, could not ask for the realize of their wives or sons, and had to agree with Stalin that the arrest had been justified. Either such men had no feelings at all, or they were morally broken and had lost all self-respect and sense of dignity. Still another form of Stalin’s sadism was the unpredictability of his behaviour. There are cases of people whom he ordered to be arrested, but who after torture and severe sentences were released after a few months or years and appointed to high offices, often without explanation. Stalin’s behaviour shows clearly one element in his character—the wish to show people that he had absolute power and control over them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

By his word he could kill them, have them tortured, have them rescued again, have them rewarded; Stalin had the power of God over life and death, the power of nature to make grow and to destroy, to inflict pain and to heal. Life and death depended on his whim. This may also explain why Stalin did not destroy some people. The motive was that Stalin enjoyed the sensation of control by whim and by mood, not restricted by any—even the most evil—principle. And that is why people fear cloning. Without Christian culture and Christian hope, the modern World would come to resemble a half-derelict fun-fair, gone nasty and poverty-racked City. Wise men and women have long recognized the need for the transcendent authority of religion to give society its legitimacy and essential cohesion. One of the most vigorous arguments was made by Cicero, who maintained that religion is “indispensable to private morals and public order…and no man of sense will attack it.” Augustine argued that the essence of public harmony could be found only in justice, the source of which is divine. “In the absence of justice,” he asked, “what sovereignty but organized brigandage?” In the New World the primary civilizing force was Christianity. Christianity provided a transcendent spiritual end which gave Wester culture its dynamic purpose. It furnished the soul for the Western civilization and provided its moral legitimization; or the fir principles which could mediate between the individual and society to provide both with a sense of proportion and responsibility in order to inform behaviour. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

Much of America’s remarkable success has been credited to its religious nature; it was later called a nation with “the soul of a church.” However, men and women need more than a religious value system. They need civic structures to prevent chaos and provide order. Religion is not intended or equipped to do this; when it has tried, it has brought grief on itself and the political institutions it has attempted to control. An independent state is crucial to the commonweal. Both the City of God and the city of man are vital to society—and they must remain in delicate balance. All human history and culture may be viewed as the interplay of the competing values of these two cities; and wherever they are out of balance, the public good suffers. This is why today’s conflict is so dangerous. It would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed should either side win unconditionally. Victory for either would mean defeat for both. In the beginning God created one World (unus mundus). This He divided into two—Heaven and Earth. We can understand the extraordinary fascination emanating from the mystery. Men and women have always been spiritual beings. If this is nothing less than a restoration of the original state of the cosmos and the divine unconsciousness of the World, we gain reliable knowledge. However, modern culture, in its zeal to eliminate divisive influences and create a self-sufficient, “enlightened” society, has ignored this fundamental truth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Along with denying God, today’s social visionaries have denied human’s intrinsic need for God. At the same time, Christianity has become a pale shadow of the radical Kingdom its Founder announced. The shock waves that threaten the very foundations of our culture today, then, emanate from society’s failure to understand human’s need for God and the Christians’ failure to accurately present Christ’s messages of the Kingdom of God. This failure creates a disadvantage of breaking up, or obscuring, the universal interrelationship of causing events to become so uncertain that a recognition of the greater relationship, id est, of the unity of the World, to become more and more difficult. So before we can hope to deal with the modern religious-political conflict, we must take what at first may seem to be a digression. However, bear with me. For until we understand the true nature of human and the true nature of Christ’s message, we cannot hope to understand the human story and why we are in the mess we are in today—or more importantly, the way out. The place to begin, then, is with human nature itself. To be found in the human body is a kind of aetheric substance. It is the best medicament not only for the body but also for the mind (mens). Though it is a corporeal substance, as a combination of the spirit and soul of the spagyric medicine it is essentially spiritual. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

Meditative philosophy consists in the overcoming of the body by mental union [unio mentalis]. This first union does not as yet make the wise human, but only the mental disciple of wisdom. The second union of the mind with the body shows forth the wise human, hoping for and expecting that blessed third union with the first unity [id est, the unus mundus, the latent unity of the World]. May Almighty God grant that all humans be made such, and may He be one in All. Just as the Church insists on the literal taking up of the physical body into Heaven, so the alchemists believe in the possibility, or even in the actual existence, of their stone or of the philosophical gold. In both cases belief was a substitute for the missing empirical reality. Even though alchemy was essentially more materialistic in its procedures than the dogma, both of them remain at the second, anticipatory stage of the coniunctio, the union of the unio mentalis with the body. Armed with psychological understanding, we are in a position to penetrate into the meaning of even the most abstruse alchemical symbols, and there is no justifiable reason why we should not apply the same method to dogma. Nobody, after all, can deny that it consists of ideas which are born of human’s imagining and thinking. The question of how far this thinking may be inspired by the Holy Ghost is not affected at all, let alone decided, by psychological investigation, nor is the possibility of a metaphysical background denied. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Psychology cannot advance any argument either for or against the objective validity of any metaphysical view. Yet, the psychic is a phenomenal World in itself, which can be reduced neither to the brain nor to metaphysics. Symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown. We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psychotherapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendences betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic action. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. Ideas develop from seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in Scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a “pious opinion” and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images. When Mind concentrates itself into the World-Mind, it establishes a focus. However vast, it goes out of its own unlimited condition, it passes from the true Infinite to the pseudo-Infinite. Consequently the World-Mind, being occupied with its cosmos, cannot be regarded as possessed of the absolute character of Pure Mind. For what is its work but a movement of imagination? And where in the ineffable absolute is there room for either work or imagination? The one would break its eternal stillness, the other would veil its unchangeable reality. This of course it can never do, for Being can never become Non-Being. However, it can send forth an emanation from itself. Such an emanation is the World-Mind. Through its prolonged contemplation of the cosmos Mind thus becomes a fragment of itself, bereft of its own undifferentiated unbroken unity. Nevertheless the World-Mind, through its deputy the Overself, is still for humans the highest possible goal. Because of Mind’s presence, that which humans all call God arises, creates, and dissolves entire Worlds, kingdoms of Nature; yet Mind itself never moves, never acts, is forever still, is the ultimate of all ultimates, forever the only Unpassing, the only Unconditioned, the untouchable Mystery. Mind is the essence of all manifested things as World-Mind and the Mystery being unmanifest Nothing. The distinguishing quality of Mind is a continuous stillness, whereas that of World-Mind is a continuous activity. In the one there is absolutely nothing whereas in the other there is an infinite array of Universes. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

Mind is the essence of all conscious beings. Their consciousness is derivative, borrowed from it; they could know nothing of their power; whereas Mind alone knows all things and itself. When it knows them in time, it is World-Mind; when it knows itself alone, it is the unknown to humans and unknowable Godhead. The World-Mind pervades the cosmos; Mind extends beyond it. Among all numbers, it is the lowest one—1—which is the foundation as well as he constituent of the entire series. However, the empty number—nought—is even more important and significant because it symbolizes the inexpressible, ineffable, and inconceivable Power behind all powers. God is the maker and governor of the World. Godhead means Mind, the absolute, beyond all that is conceivable. Whether we see God’s presence in the untiring activity of the Universe or in the complete quiet of the Void, we do not see two different things but rather two phases of a single thing. World-Mind is only a function of Mind. It is not a separate entity. There is only one Life-Power, not two. Hence it is wrong to say that World-Mind arises within Mind. Similarly of the Overself; it too is a different function of the same Mind. The mind’s first expression is the Void. The second and succeeding is the Light, that is, the World-Mind. This is followed by the third, the World-Idea. Finally comes the fourth, manifestation of the World itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

The Supreme Godhead is unindividualized. The World-Mind is individuated (but not personalized) into emanated Overselves. The Overself is an individual, but not a person. The ego is personal. What is the meaning of the words “the Holy Trinity”? The Father is the absolute and ineffable Godhead, Mind in its ultimate being. The Son is the soul of the Universe, that is, the World-Mind. The Holy Ghost is the soul of each individual, that is, the Overself. The Godhead is one and indivisible and not multiform and can never divide itself up into three personalities. What is the Holy Trinity? How could it be three Gods? No—It is the Good, the Beautiful, and the True—three aspects of the One, only God. The holy trinity is truth, goodness, and beauty. For they are learning attributed of the divine soul in humans. Mind in itself stays always in absolute repose: there is then no operation whatever, no movement or manifestation, no creation or communication or revelation; it is forever inaccessible and unknow. This is the “Divine Darkness” of early Christian Fathers, the Godhead of medieval Christians theologians. The idea of Mind in utter repose, absolutely still, unmanifested in any way whatsoever, is the farther limit of human finite thought about the Deity. Mind as such is unconcerned with any World. It is without any limits and could not be confined in any form. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

We can learn something worthwhile from our experience with spiritual and psychological suffering—those pains of the heart that may come from a wounded conscience loneliness, disappointment, or a love that is lost. You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing about it. You need not guess, for I will tell you; I am a great coward. However, what is that to the purpose? When I think of pain—of anxiety that gnaws like fire and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains that seem already intolerable and then are suddenly increased, of infuriating scorpion-stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement a human who seemed half dead with one’s previous tortures—it “quite o’ercrows my spirit.’ If I knew any way of escape I would crawl through sewers to find it. However, what is the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already: they are the same as yours. I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made “perfect through suffering” is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

In estimating the credibility of the doctrine two principles ought to be observe. In the first place we must remember that the actual moment of present pain is only the center of what may be called the whole tribulational system which extents itself by fear and pity. Whatever good effects these experiences have are dependent upon the center; so that even if pain itself was of no spiritual value, yet, if fear and pity were, pain would have to exist in order that there should be something to be feared and pitied. And that fear and pity help us in our return to obedience and charity is not to be doubted. Everyone has experienced the effect of pity in making it easier for us to love the unlovely—that is, to love humans not because they are in any way naturally agreeable to us but because they are our brethren. The beneficence of fear most of us have learned during the period of “crises” that led up to the present war. My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, send this whole pack of cards tumbling down. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another World and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. However, the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to require my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

In the second place, when we are considering pain itself—the center of the while tribulational system—we must be careful to attend to what we know and not to what we imagine. That is one of the reasons why we are focusing on human pain, and animal pain. About human pain we know, about animal pain we only speculate. However, even within the human race we must draw our evidence from instances that have come under our own observation. The tendency of this or that novelist or poet may represent suffering as wholly bad in its effects, a producing, and justifying, every kind of malice and brutality in the sufferer. And, of course, pain, like pleasure, can be so received: all that is given to a creature with free will must be two-edged, not by the nature of the giver or of the gift, but by the nature of the recipient. And, again, if sufferers are persistently taught by the bystanders that results are the proper and masculine results for them to exhibit, the evil results of pain can be multiplied. Indignation at others’ sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humanity from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in the stead. However, if spared such officious vicarious indignations, I am not convinced that suffering has any natural tendency to produce such evils. I did not find the front-line trenches or the C.C.S. more full than any other place of hatred, selfishness, rebellion, and dishonesty. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen humans, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects. I see in loved and revered historical figures, such as Johnson and Cowper, traits which might scarcely have been tolerable if the humans had been happier. If the World is indeed a “vale of soul making” it seems on the whole to be doing its work. Of poverty—the afflictions—I would not dare to speak as from myself; and those who reject Christianity will not be moved by Christ’s statement that poverty is blessed. However, here a rather remarkable fact comes to my assistance. Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere “opiate of the people” have a contempt for the rich, hat is, for all humankind expect the poor. They regard the poor as the only people worth preserving from “liquidation,” and place in them the only hope of the human race. However, this is not compatible with a belief that the effects of poverty on those who suffer it are wholly evil; it implies that they are good. However, Christianity paradoxically demands—that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed. I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the World would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mouring, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

If suffer is to teach us, we need a certain perspective because we will all suffer in one way or another. The pain of a wounded conscience comes to us not just to cause suffering. It is an invitation for us to respond in a way that will ultimately lead to joy. To accept the invitation early, we simply need to stop—in midair if necessary—and turn away from whatever we were going to do. If it is too late for that, the invitation of an aroused conscience can still be accepted by a few well-known steps of repentance. This approach will also stop the pain, but it will also leave you true to yourself and to the Universe of God’s reality. At the same time, your capacity for joy will be undiminished—it may even be enhanced through newly discovered self-control. Then the next time pain of conscience comes, it will come as the voice of a friend, to tell you those sensitive, painful kinds of things you would hope a true friend would share. God, Earth-Shaker, Lord of the Sea, your undeniable power moves against this ship, which moves, in response, from side to side. This great ship, proud accomplishment of human mind and muscle, is at your mercy. We who sail on the surface of your depths acknowledge your power, and your mastery of this realm. That is why we turn our prayers toward you, to the blue-maned deep-dweller, who can stretch out His trident-armed hand and make the flat sea-surface grow mountains and canyons, founder the ships that cross it, or who can, if He wishes, still the churning, and smooth the way of the wave-cleaving ships. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Lord of waters, we pray to you, scattering offerings overboard. Please take them and not us. Please receive them gladly and give in return calm seas and safe passage, until we return to land with gratitude for your kindness. We humble ourselves before You, the one true God, who governs the affairs of this beloved nation. We sever You only because You have granted us this privilege and authority, and so we ask You, dear Father, to please lead us. We seek Your will. Whatever all this means, please give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear. Please have it Your way, not ours, and please forgive us the sin that would make us blind to Your truth. It is truth that Thou alone art the Lord of all Thy people, and a mighty King to the champion their cause. Thou art the first and Thou art the last, and besides Thee we have no King or Redeemer. Thou bringest low and haughty and raisest up the lowly; Thou leadest forth the captives and deliverest the meek. Thou helpest the poor, and answerest Thy people when they call unto Thee. From captivity Thou didst redeem us, O Lord our God; and from the house of bondage Thou didst deliver us. Thou didst reveal Thy saving power at the New Years so that the children of America passed through in safety. Wherefore they praised and extolled Thee, O Lord; they offered thanksgiving to Thee, their living God. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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In golf you are always breaking a barrier. When you bust it, you set yourself a little higher barrier, and try to break that one.  Whether it is in education, sports, or career, it is important to apply the same concept to life. The conquest of the oceans links up directly with the advance toward accurate weather prediction and, ultimately, climate control. What we call weather is largely a consequence of the interaction of the sun, air, and ocean. By monitoring ocean currents, salinity, and other factors, by placing weather-watch satellites in the skies, we will greatly increase our ability to forecast weather accurately. Prior to the 1970’s, it was impossible to monitor the weather around the entire globe, but as Dr. Walter Orr Roberts, past president of the American Association for the advancement of since predicted, we are now able to have the entire globe under continuous weather observation at a reasonable cost. And this has vastly improved forecasting of storms, freezes, droughts, smog episodes, tsunamis, and even earthquakes—with attendant opportunities to avert disaster. However, it was also predicted that lurking in the future would also be the awesome potential weapon of war—the deliberate manipulation of weather for the benefit of the few and powerful, to the detriment of the enemy, and perhaps the bystanders as well. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

In a science fiction story entitled The Weather Man, Theodore L. Thomas depicts a World in which the central political institution is a “Weather Council.” In it, representatives of the various nations hammer out weather policy and control peoples by adjusting climate, imposing a drought here or a storm there to enforce their edicts. We may be currently be capable of having such carefully calibrated control. The ionosphere is the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere. It begins at about 50 kilometers (30 miles) above Earth’s surface and contains atoms and molecules that are ionized (that is, they lose an electron and become positively charged) by the Sun’s ultraviolet light. HAARP is a full High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, that uses an ionospheric heater, so called because the excitation of electrons increases their temperature. By altering the density of electrons, in a specific region, scientists using HAARP can study how the ionosphere reacts to changing conditions. Many have accused HAARP of controlling the weather to ensure a global warming conspiracy, which is basically what Theodore L. Thomas predicted in April is 1962. No matter if these predications and allegations are true, there is no question that the day is past when humans simply had to take whatever Heaven deigned to give in the way of weather.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

 Many primitive peoples believed that everything was controlled by some sort of spirit. If there was a storm, the reason must be that the gods were angry. If crops were bad, then the first-born son must be sacrificed to appease the gods. A child born deformed was thought to be possessed by an evil spirit, and had to be killed. A person who was emotionally or physically ill must be possessed by a demon. People also assumed that forces or spirits controlled their behaviour. In most primitive cultures even today, people assume that they have little choice in their own destiny, because it is controlled by good and evil spirits. Through the use of technology and the fake news media, it is possible that people are using fear and the age of information to scare people in order to control them. However, “Take heed that no human deceives you,” reports Matthew 24.4. Deception will play a very big role in the last days, for the “devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time,” reports Revelation 12.2. “He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of the sky to the Earth in the presence of the people,” reports Revelation 13.13 In the blunt words of the American Meteorological Society: “Weather modification today is a reality.” This represents one of the turning points in history and provides humans with a weapon that could radically affect agriculture, transportation, communication, recreation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Unless wielded with extreme care, however, the gift of weather system is an integrated whole; a minute change at one point can touch off massive consequences elsewhere. Even without aggressive intent, there is danger that attempts to control a drought on one continent could trigger a tornado on another. Moreover, the unknown sociopsychological consequences of weather manipulation could be enormous. Millions of us, for example, hunger for sunshine, as our mass migrations to Florida, California or the Mediterranean coast indicate. We may well be able to produce sunshine—or a facsimile of it—at will. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is studying the concept of a giant orbiting space mirror capable of reflecting the sun’s light downward on night-shrouded parts of the Earth. A NASA official, George E. Mueller, has testified before Congress that the United States of America will have the capacity to launch huge sun-reflecting satellites into space, and in the plane of the can be assigned remotely by electrical signals. By appropriately adjusting the segments, it would then be possible, depending on the need, to spread the entire soar energy reflected by the mirror over wide regions of the Earth’s surface or to concentrate it on single points, or finally to radiate it out into space if not being used. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

“Space mirrors” of this type would be in a weightless state as a result of their orbital motion; this fact would considerably simplify their manufacture. Using these large space mirrors, it would also be possible to make other planets inhabitable, as well as areas in the North of Earth through artificial solar radiation, to keep the sea lanes to Northern Siberian harbours, to Spitzbergen, et cetera free of ice, or to influence even the weather by preventing sudden drops in temperature and pressure, frosts, hail storms, and to provide many other benefits. Humans have the technology to renovate and control the Earth, expand livable region and save rain forests. The present natural light-dark cycle is tired to human biological rhythms in ways that are, as yet, unexplored. One can easily imagine the use of orbiting sun-mirrors to alter the hours of light for agricultural, industrial or even psychological reasons. For example, the introduction of longer days into Scandinavia could have a strong influence on the culture and personality types now characteristic of that region. To put the matter only half-facetiously, what happens to Ingmar Bergman’s brooding art when Stockholm’s brooding darkness is lifted? Could The Seventh Seal or Winter Light have been conceived in another climate? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The increasing ability to alter weather, the development of new energy sources, new materials (some of them almost surrealistic in their properties), new transportation means, new foods (not only from the sea, but from hydroponic food-growing factories)—all these only begin to hint at the nature of that lie ahead. In War with the Newts, Karel Capek’s marvelous but little-known novel, humans being about the destruction of civilization through their attempt to domesticate a variety of salamander. Today, among other things, humans are learning to exploit animals and fish in ways that would have made Mr. Capek smile wryly. Trained pigeons are used to identify and eliminate defective pills from drug factor assembly lines. In Ukraine, Soviet scientists employ a particular species of fish to clear the algae off the filters in pumping stations. Dolphins have been trained to carry tools to “aquanauts” submerged off the coast of California, and to ward off sharks who approach the work zone. Others have been trained to ram submerged mines, thereby detonating them and committing suicide on human’s behalf—a use that provoked a slight furor over inter-species ethics. If, and when, humans make contact with extra-terrestrial life—a possibility that many reputable astronomers regard as almost inevitable, research into communication between humans and the dolphin may prove to be extremely useful. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

In the meantime, dolphin research is yielding new data on the ways in which human’s sensory apparatus differs from that of other animals. It suggests some of the outer limit within which the human organism operates—feelings, moods, perceptions not available to humans because of their own biological make-up can be at least analyzed or described. Existing animal species, however, are by no means all we have to work with A number of writers have suggested that new animal forms be bred for specialized purposes. Sir George Thomson notes that “with advancing knowledge of genetics very large modifications in the wild species can no doubt be made.” Arthur Clarke has written about the possibility that we can “increase the intelligence of our domestic animals, or evolve wholly new ones with much higher Intelligence Quotients (IQ) than any existing now.” We are also developing the capacity to control animal behaviour by remote control. Dr. Jose M. R. Delgado, in a series of experiments terrifying in their human potential, implanted electrodes in the skull of a bull. Waving a red cape, Dr. Delgado provoked the animal to charge. Then, with a signal emitted from a tiny hand-held radio transmitter, he made the beast turn aside in mid-lunge and trot docilely away. Whether we grow specialized animals to serve us or develop household robots depends in part on the uneven race between the life sciences and the physical sciences. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

It may be more cost efficient to make machines for our purposes, than to raise and train animals. Yet the biological sciences are developing so rapidly that the balance may well tip within our lifetimes. Indeed, the day may even come when we begin to grow our machines. Now the principle of fidelity is but a special cast of the principle of fairness applied to the social practice of promising. Promising is an action defined by a public system of rules. These rules are, as in the case of institutions generally, a set of constitutive conventions. Just as the rules of games do, they specify certain activities and define certain actions. In the case of promising, the basic rule is that governing the use of the words “I promise to do X.” It reads roughly as follows: if one says the words “I promise to do X” in the appropriate circumstances, one is to do X, unless certain excusing conditions obtain. This rule we may think of as the rule of promising; it may be taken as representing the practice as a whole. It is not itself a moral principle but a constitutive convention. In this respect it is on par with legal rules and statues, and rules of games; as these do, it exists in a society when it is more or less regularly acted upon. The way in which the rule of promising specifies the appropriate circumstances and excusing conditions determines whether the practice it represents is just. For example, in order to make a binding promise, one must be fully conscious, in rational frame of mind, and know the meaning of the operative words, their use in making promises, and so on. Furthermore, these words must be spoken freely or voluntarily, when one is not subject to threats or coercion, and in situations where one has a reasonably fair bargaining position, so to speak. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

If the operative words of a promise are uttered while one is asleep, or suffering from delusion, or if one was forced to promise, or if pertinent information was deceitfully withheld from one, a person is not required to perform. In general, the circumstances giving rise to a promise and the excusing conditions must be defined so as to preserve the equal liberty of the parties and to make the practice a rational means whereby humans can enter into and stabilize cooperative agreements for mutual advantage. Unavoidably the many complications here cannot be considered. It must suffice to remark that the principles of justice apply to other institutions. Therefore the restrictions on the appropriate conditions are necessary in order to secure equal liberty. It would be wildly irrational in the original position to agree to be bound by words uttered while asleep, or extorted by force. No doubt it is so irrational that we are inclined to exclude this and other possibilities as inconsistent with the concept (meaning) of promising. However, I shall not regard promising as a practice which is just by definition, since this obscures the distinction between the rule of promising and the obligation derived from the principle of fairness. There are many variations of promising jut as there are of the law of contract. Whether the particular practice as it is understood by a person, or a group of persons, is just remains to be determined by the principles of justice. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

What do you know about covenants? A covenant is a promise or a solemn agreement. When we covenant with another person, we makes promises to each other. When we make a covenant with the Lord, we know that He will keep His promises. It is very important that we also keep our promises, or our part of the covenant, with the Lord. There are many stories in the scriptures about people who made covenants with the Lord. Do you remember the story of Noah? When Noah lived on the Earth, the people were so wicked that the Lord commanded Noah to build an ark to save at least two of every kind of animal as well as his own righteous family. It rained for forty days and forty nights, and the Earth was washed clean by a great flood. The Lord made a covenant, promising that the Earth would never again be destroyed by a flood. As a sign of that covenant, God sent a rainbow. Today when we see a rainbow, we should remember the promise God made. “And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the Earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the Earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be flood to destroy the Earth. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the Earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the Earth that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the water shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the Earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant,” reports Genesis 9.9-17. A bona fide promise is one which arises in accordance with the rule of promising wen the practice it represents is just. One person says the words “I promise to do X” in the appropriate circumstances as defined by a just practice, one has made a bona fide promise. Next, the principle of fidelity is the principle that bona fide promises are to be kept. It is essential, as noted above, to distinguish between the rule of promising and the principle of fidelity. The rule is simply a constitutive convention, whereas the principle of fidelity is a moral principle, a consequence of the principle of fairness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

For suppose that a just practice of promising exists. Then in making a promise, that is, in saying the words “I promise to do X” in the appropriate circumstances, one knowingly invokes the rule and accepts the benefits of a just arrangement. There is no obligation to make a promise, let us assume; one is at liberty to do so or not. However, since by hypothesis the practice is just, the principle of fairness applies and one is to do as the rule specifics, that is, one is to do X. The obligation to keep a promise is a consequence of the principle of fairness. Therefore, by God keeping His promises, He demonstrates that he is a fair God. I have said that by making a promise one invokes a social practice and accepts the benefits that it makes possible. What are these benefits and how does the practice work? Well, let us assume that the standard reason for making promises is to set up and to stabilize small-scale schemes of cooperation, or a particular patter of transactions. The role of promises is analogous to that which Dr. Hobbes attributed to the sovereign. Just as the sovereign maintains and stabilizes the system of social cooperation by publicly maintaining an effective schedule of penalties, so humans in the absence of coercive arrangements establish and stabilize their private ventures by giving one another their word. Such ventures are often hard to initiate and to maintain. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

It is especially evident that these ventures of giving one’s word and taking another by their word is hard to initiate and to maintain in the case of covenants, that is, in those instances where one person is to perform before the other. For this person may believe that the second part will not do one’s part, and therefore the scheme never gets going. It is subject to instability of the second kind even though the person to perform later would in fact carry through. Now in these situations there may be no way of assuring the part who is to perform first except by giving one a promise, that is, by putting oneself under an obligation to carry through later. Only in this way can the scheme be made secure so that both can gain from the benefits of their cooperation. The practice of promising exists for precisely this purpose; and so while we normally think of moral requirements as bonds laid upon us, they are sometimes deliberately self-imposed for our advantage. Thus promising is an act done with the public intention of deliberately incurring an obligation the existence of which in the circumstances will further one’s ends. We want this obligation to exist and to be known to exist, and we want others to know that we recognize this tie and intend to abide by it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Having, then, availed ourselves of the practice for this reason, we are under an obligation to do as we promised by the principle of fairness. In this account of how promising (or entering into covenants) is used to initiate and to stabilize forms of cooperation, I have assumed that each person knows, or at least reasonably believes, that the other has a sense of justice and so a normally effective desire to carry out one’s bona fide obligations. Without this mutual confidence nothing is accomplished by uttering words. In a well-ordered society, however, this knowledge is present: when its members give promises there is a reciprocal recognition of their intention to put themselves under an obligation and a shared rational belief that this obligation is honoured. It is this reciprocal recognition and common knowledge that enables an arrangement to get started and preserves it in being. “Ye have entered into a covenant with one, that ye will serve one and keep one’s commandments, that one may pour out one’s Spirit more abundantly upon you,” reports Mosiah 18.10. There is no need to comment further on the extent to which a common conception of justice (including the principles of fairness and natural duty), and the public awareness of human’s willingness to act in accordance with it, are a great collective asset. I have already noted the many advantages from the standpoint of the assurance problem. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

 It is now equally evident that, having trust and confidence in one another, humans can use their public acceptance of these principles enormously to extend the scope and vale of mutually advantageous schemes of cooperation. From the standpoint of the original position, them it is clearly rational for the parties to agree to the principles of fairness. This principle can be used to secure these ventures in ways consistent with freedom of choice and without unnecessarily multiplying moral requirements. At the same time, given the principle of fairness, we see why there should exist the practice of promising as a way of freely establishing an obligation when this is to be the mutual advantage of both parities. Such an arrangement is obviously in the common interest. These considerations are sufficient to argue for the principle of fairness. Before taking up the question of political duty and obligation, as the discussion of promises illustrates, the contract doctrine holds that no moral requirements follow from the existence of institutions alone. Even the rule of promising does not give rise to a moral obligation by itself. To account for fiduciary obligations, we must take the principle of fairness as a premise. Thus along with most other ethical theories, justice as fairness holds that natural duties and obligations arise only in virtue of ethical principles. These principles are those that would be chosen in the original position. Together with the relevant facts of the circumstances at hand, it is these criteria that determine our obligations and duties, and single out what count as moral reasons. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

A (sound) moral reason is a fact which one or more of these principles identifies as supporting a judgment. The correct moral decision is the one most in line with the dictates of this system of principles when it is applied to all the facts it deems to be relevant. Thus the reason identified by one principle may be supported, overridden, or even canceled (brought to naught) by reasons identified by one or more other principles. I assume, though, that out of the totality of facts, presumably in some sense infinite, a finite or surveyable number are selected as those that bear upon any particular case so that the full system enables us to reach a judgment, all things considered. By contrast, institutional requirements, and those deriving from social practices generally, can be ascertained from the existing rules and how they are to be interpreted. For example, as citizens our legal duties and obligations are settled by what the law is, insofar as it can be ascertained. The norms of applying to persons who are players in a game depend upon the rules of the game. Whether these requirements are connected with moral duties and obligations is a separate question. This is so even if the standards used by judges and others to interpret and to apply the law resemble the principles of right and justice, or are identical with them. It may be, for example, that in a well-ordered society the two principles of justice are used by courts to interpret those parts of the constitution regulating freedom of thought and conscience, and guaranteeing equal protection of the laws. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Although in this case it is clear that, should the law satisfy its own standards, we are morally bound, other things equal, to comply with it, the questions what the law demands and what justice requires are still distinct. The tendency to conflate the rule of promising and the principle of fidelity (as a special case arising from the principle of fairness) is particularly strong. At first sight they may seem to be the same thing; but one is defined by the existing constitutive conventions, while the other is explained by the principles that would be chosen in the original position. In thus way, then, we can distinguish two kinds of norms. The terms “duty” and “obligation” are used in the context of both kinds; but the ambiguities stemming from this usage should be easy enough to resolve. However, one may wonder, is it possible, without appealing to a prior general promise, or agreement to keep agreements, to explain the fact that by uttering certain words (by availing oneself of a convention) ne becomes bound to do something, particularly when the action whereby one becomes bound is publicly performed with the very intention, which one wants others to recognize, of bringing about this obligation. Or what is the something implied in there being bona fide agreements which looks much like an agreement to keep agreements and yet which, strictly speaking, cannot be one (since no such agreement has been entered into)? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Now the existence of a just practice of promising as a system of public constitutive rules and the principle of fairness suffice for a theory of fiduciary obligations. And neither implies the existence of an actual prior agreement to keep agreements. The adoption of the principle of fairness is purely hypothetical; we only need the fact that this principle would be acknowledged. For the rest, once we assume that a just practice of promising obtains, however it may have come to be established, the principle of fairness is enough to bind those who take advantage of it, given the appropriate conditions already described. Thus what corresponds to the something, which looked like a prior agreement but is not, is the just practice of giving one’s word in conjunction with the hypothetical agreement on the principle of fairness. Of course, another ethical theory might derive this principle without using the conception of the original position. For the moment I need not maintain that the fiduciary ties cannot be explained in some other way. Rather, what I am concerned to show is that even though justice as fairness sues the notion of an original agreement it is still able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Everyone will admit that choice is essentially conscious; to choose involves knowing that you choose. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Now Paradisal humans always choose to follow God’s will. In following it one also gratified one’s won desire, both because all the actions demanded of one were, in fact, agreeable to one’s blameless inclination, and also because the service of God was itself one’s keenest pleasure, without which as their razor edge all joys would have been inspired to one. The question “Am I doing this for God’s sake or because I happen to like it?” did not then arise, since doing things for God’s sake was what one chiefly “happened to like.” One’s Godward will rode one’s happiness like a well-managed horse, whereas our will, when we are happy, is carried away in the happiness as in a ship racing down a swift stream. Pleasure was then an acceptable offering to God because offering was a pleasure. However, we inherit a whole system of desires which do not necessarily contradict God’s will but which, after centuries of usurped autonomy, steadfastly ignore it. If the thing we like doing is, is in fact, the thing God wants us to do, yet that is not our reason for doing it; it remains a mere happy coincidence. We cannot therefore know that we are acting at all, or primarily, for God’s sake, unless the material of the action is contrary to our inclinations, or (in other words) painful, and what we cannot know that we are choosing, we cannot choose. The full acting out of the self’s surrender to God therefore demands pian: this action to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination.  #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like, I know very well from my own experience at the moment. When we undertake a task and become thoroughly immersed in it, it will become a temptation rather than a duty. One may still hope whatever the task is, in fact, in conformity with God’s will: but to content that one is learning to surrender oneself by doing what is so attractive to one would be ridiculous. However, the more virtuous a human becomes the more one enjoys virtuous actions. Intuition is always sure of itself, but few persons are always sure whether what they feel is actually intuition or not. They may test it against reasoned analysis. You lift your magical hands, great healer, and send out healing knowledge. You know each medication and its effects, each technique and when it should be used, each symptom and what it means, each illness and how to treat it, each patient and what to do. May my hands be yours. “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your day and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the Heavens are above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.18-22. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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