Television is the test of the modern World and in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by the television—of that I am quite sure. The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight line of human improvement. Frequently in history new achievements have led to regressive developments. Many times, when forced to find a new solution, humans run into a blind alley from which one has to extricate oneself; and it is indeed remarkable that thus far in history one has been able to do so. Human’s nature cannot be defined in terms of a specific quality, such as love, hate, reason, good or evil, but only in terms of fundamental contradictions that characterize human existence and have their root in the biological dichotomy between missing instincts and self-awareness. Human’s existential conflict produces certain psychic needs common to all humans. One is forced to overcome the horror of separateness, of powerlessness, and of lostness, and find new forms of relating oneself to the World to enable one to feel at home. These psychic needs are called existential because they are rooted in the very conditions of human existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Existential needs are shared by all humans, and their fulfillment is as necessary for human’s remaining sane as the fulfillment of organic drives is necessary for their remaining alive. However, each of these needs can be satisfied in different ways, which vary according to the differences of one’s social condition. These different ways of satisfying the existential needs manifest themselves in passions, such as love, tenderness, striving for justice, independence, truth, hate, sadism, masochism, destructiveness, narcissism. These are character-rooted passions—or simply human passions—because they are integrated in human’s character. Character is the relatively permanent system of all noninstinctual strivings through which humans relate themselves to the human and natural World. One may understand character as the human substitute for the missing terrestrial instincts; it is human’s second nature. What all humans have in common are their organic drives (even though highly modifiable by experience) and their existential needs. What they do not have in common are the kinds of passions that are dominant in their respective characters—character-rooted passions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The difference in character is largely due to the difference in social conditions (although genetically given dispositions also influence the formation of the character); for this reason one can call character-rooted passions a historical category and instincts a natural category. Yet the former are not a purely historical category either, because they are the result of the impact the various historical constellations have on the biologically given conditions of human existence. Reconstruction of the human’s mind may have happened at the beginning of prehistory. The evidence lies essentially in those findings which indicate that humans, perhaps as early as half a million years ago (Peking Man) had cults and rituals, manifesting that one’s concerns went beyond satisfying one’s material needs. The history of prehistoric religion and art (not separable in those times) is the main source for the study of primitive human’s mind. Obviously, I cannot set forth into this vast and as yet controversial territory within the context of the study. We cannot reveal the nature of prehistoric human’s mind unless we have a key with which we can decipher it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

This key, I believe, is our own mind Not our conscious thoughts, but those categories of thought and feeling that are buried in our unconscious and yet are an experiential core present in all humans of all cultures; briefly, it is what I would like to call human’s primary human experience. This primary human experience is in itself rooted in human’s existential situation. For this reason it is common to all human and does not need to be explained as being racially inherited. The first question, of course, is whether we can find his key; whether we can transcend our normal frame of mind and transpose ourselves into the mind of the “original man.” Drama, poetry, art, myth have done this, but not psychology, with the exception of psychoanalysis. The various psychoanalytic schools have done it in different ways; Dr. Freud’s original man was a historical construct of the member of a patriarchally organized human band, ruled and exploited by a father-tyrant against whom the sons rebel, and whose internalization is the basis for the formation of the superego and a new social organization. Dr. Freud’s aim was to help the contemporary patient to discover one’s own unconscious by letting one share the experience of what Dr. Freud believed to be his earliest ancestors. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Even though this model of original man was fictitious and the corresponding “Oedipus complex” was not the deepest level of human experience, Dr. Freud’s hypothesis opened up an entirely new possibility: that all humans of every period and culture had shared a basic experience with their common ancestors. Thus Dr. Freud added another historical argument to the humanist belief that all humans share the common core of humanity. We are particularly interested in the variety of myths, rituals, and religions. Myths can be ingeniously and brilliantly used as a kay for understanding of the unconscious, and thus builds a bridge between mythology and psychology more systematically and extensively than ever before. The use of our unconscious is a key to the understanding of prehistory. This requires the practice of self-knowledge in the psychoanalytic sense: the removal of a major part of our resistance against the awareness of our unconscious, thus reducing the difficulty of penetrating from our conscious mind to the depth of our core. Provided we are able to do this, we can understand our fellow humans who live in the same culture as we do, also have humans of an entirely different culture, and even a mad human. We can also sense what original humans must have experienced, what existential need one had, and in what ways human (including ourselves) can respond to these needs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

When we see primitive art, down to the cave paintings of thirty thousand years ago, or the art of radically different cultures like the African or Greek of that of the Middles Ages, we take it for granted that we understand them, in spite of the fact that these cultures were radically different from ours. We dream symbols and myths that are like those men thousands of years ago conceived when they were awake. Are they not a common language of all humanity, regardless of vast differences in conscious perception? Humans felt themselves brutally torn for their environment and isolated in the middle of a World whose measure and laws they did not know; they therefore felt obliged to learn, by constant bitter effort and their own mistakes, everything one had to know to survive. The animals surrounding one came and went, indefatigably repeating the same actions: hunting, gathering, searching for water, doubling or fleeing to defend themselves against innumerable enemies; for them, periods of rest and activity succeed each other in an unchanging rhythm fixed by the needs for food or sleep, reproduction or protection. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Humans detach themselves from their surroundings; they feel alone, abandoned, ignorant of everything except that one knows nothing. One’s first feeling thus was existential anxiety, which may even have taken them to the limits of despair. Self-awareness and foresight brought, however, the awesome gifts of freedom and responsibility. Humans feel free to execute some of their plans and to leave others in abeyance. They feel the joy of being the master, rather than a slave, of the World and of oneself. However, the joy is tempered by a feeling of responsibility. Humans know that they are accountable for their acts: they have acquired the knowledge of good and evil. This is a dreadfully heavy load to carry. No other animal has to withstand anything like it. There is a tragic discord in the soul of humans. Among the flaws in human nature, this one is far more serious than the pain of child birth. A part of the application of redemption that is a progressive work that continues throughout our Earthly lives. It is also a work in which God and humans cooperate, each playing distinct roles. This part of the application of redemption is called sanctification: Sanctification is a progressive work of God and humans that makes us more and more free from sin and like Christ in our actual lives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

It may be that only one clarification would be useful here, so far as my own understanding of sanctification is concerned. Although it is certainly true that the work or process of sanctifying the apprentice begins immediately in the newly regenerate heart, the “safe” but still “unsound” person, to use language above, is not a condition of settled, pervasive righteousness that is appropriately named “sanctification.” Sanctification in this life will always be a matter of degree, to be sure, but there is a point in genuine spiritual growth before which the term “sanctification” simply does not apply—just as “hot” when applied to a cup of coffee is a matter of degree, but there is a point before which is not hot, even if in the process of being heated. So what shall we say about sanctification in summary? It is a consciously chosen and sustained relationship of interaction between the Lord and one’s apprentice, in which the apprentice is able to do, and routinely does, what one knows to be right before God because all aspects of one’s person have been substantially transformed. Sanctification applies primarily to the moral and religious life, but extends in some measure to the prudential and practical life (acting wisely) as well. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Sanctification is not an experience, though experience of various kinds may be involved in it. It is not a status, though a status is maintained by means of it. It is not an outward form and has no essential connection with outward forms. It does, on the other hand, become a “track record” and system of habits. It comes about through the process of spiritual formation, through which the heart (spirit, will) of the individual and the whole inner life take on the character of Jesus’s inner life. Several characteristics can serve as marks of those who have become established in their whole being as children of light. One is that whenever they are found to be in the wrong, they will never defend it—neither to themselves nor to others, much less to God. They are thankful to be found out, and they fulfill the proverb, “Reprove a wise human, and one will love you,” reports Provers 9.8. Indeed, when accused of being in the wrong when they are not, they will not defend themselves, but will say only as much as is required to present misunderstanding of the good and to assist those who truly desire to know the facts of the cause. Thus meaning of being justified by grace alone has penetrated to every pore of their being, and they rest there in human relations as well as before God. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Another of their characteristics is that they do not feel they are missing out on something good by not sinning. They are not disappointed and do not feel deprived. They do not fret because evildoers prosper, and they are not envious toward them (Psalm 37.1). They know that “better is the little of the righteous than the abundance of many wicked,” reports Psalm 37.16. This of course is related to the point made earlier that they do not regard sin as something good, but as a slop—which is exactly what everyone knows after engaging in it. Why stick your head, your soul, or your body into that? Another characteristic, following upon these mentioned, is that the children of light are mainly governed by the pull of the good. Their energy is not invested in not doing what is wrong, but in doing what is good. For example, they are not struggling with “Thou shalt not covet,” but rejoicing that others have good things they do. Whatever desires one might have for what is forbidden by God are regarded as ridiculous, not as something to be seriously thought about. The good is the only thing worth considering. Here, life in the path of rightness becomes easy and joyous. That is a characteristic of children of light who are well on their way. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

 I acknowledge that the work of God is easy and pleasant to those who God rightly furnishes with endowments for it. True, those who asset it to be easy to humans, in their common condition, show their imprudence in contradicting the general experience of Heathens and Christians. However, the wisdom of God has ever furnished people with a good persuasion of a sufficient strength, that they might be enabled both to will and do their duty. Do something for someone else, for the sick, unwanted, crippled, heartbroken, aged, or alone. Love God and be dedicated to living His life, not your own. This is holiness. It is the complete surrender of self in obedience to the will and service of God. The acceptance of the will of God. It is the scope of true biblical holiness, which must affect every aspect of our lives. Second, even though the rules may be biblically based, we often end up obeying the rules rather than obeying God; concern with the letter of the law can cause us to lose its spirit. Third, emphasis on rule-keeping deludes us into thinking we can be holy through our efforts. However, there can be no holiness apart from the work of the Holy Spirit—in quickening us through the conviction of in and brining us by grace to Christ, and in sanctifying us—for it is grace that cases us to even want to be holy. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

And, our pious efforts can become ego-gratifying, as if holy living were some kind of spiritual beauty contest. Such self-centered spirituality in turn leads to self-righteousness—the very opposite of the selflessness of true holiness. No, holiness is much more than a set of rules against sin. Holiness must be seen as the opposite of sin. Sin, as the Westminster Confession defines it, is “any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God.” Holiness, then, is the opposite: “conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God.” Conforming to the character of God—separating ourselves from sin and cleaving to Him—is the essence of biblical holiness, and it is the foundational covenant, a central theme running throughout Scripture. The earliest call to holiness came soon after Moses had led Israel out of Egypt and through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Safe at last from the Egyptian army, this unruly horde of humanity—600,000 men accompanied by women and children—camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. There, God called Moses to the mountaintop and instructed him in the laws by which His chosen people were now to live. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

These laws ranged from the all-encompassing Ten Commandments (the first four of which demand unconditional, reverent worship of a holy God) to such detailed ordinances as the means of restitution for stolen animals. When the Israelites accepted God’s covenant with the words, “Everything the Lord has said we will do…we will obey,” God again called Moses to the mountaintop where He made one of the most remarkable promises in the Bible: “I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar and…I will dwell among the Israelites.” What a staggering thought! The sovereign God of the Universe promised to pitch His tent, actually to dwell in the midst of His chosen people. Many are tempted to skip over these chapters of Exodus and Leviticus that describe in such detail the construction of the tabernacle, the forms of worship and the like. Altars and acacia word and cubits sound irrelevant today, superseded by the atonement of Christ. However, this is a perfect example of the necessity of taking the Word of God in its entirety. For the prescriptions for the place wherein God was to dwell and be worshipped reveal the very character of God Himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The tabernacle reflects a holy God, a God set apart, unique, utterly unstained by the sin of the World. No wonder God specified rules of cleanliness for those who worshiped there. It was not because He had some obsession with personal hygiene, but because in every way possible His people were to be clean, set apart—holy—as they entered to worship in the place where He, a holy God, actually dwelt. This is indeed the very heart of the relationship God demanded with His people, expressed in the covenant: “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy.” Understanding this basic covenant, the character of God, and what He expects is essential to understanding the New Covenant. For the character of God has not changed, nor has His expectation of holiness from His people. In fact, the same remarkable promise that God made to Moses—that He would pitch His tent and dwell in the midst of His people—is a central theme throughout Scripture. In the familiar passage of John’s gospel, “The Word became flesh, and swelt among us,” the Greek word for dwelt literally means to “pitch a tent.” So now, through Christ, God comes to “pitch His tent” among His people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

And to carry the theme to its conclusion, John, in describing his apocalyptic vision of the new Heaven and New Earth, writes, “The tabernacle of God is among humans, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people.” Again the word dwell is literally translated to “pitch a tent.” Thus, from Exodus to Revelation we find the identical imagery, a holy God “pitching His tent” among His people: first in the tabernacle, then in Christ and Christ in us, and ultimately in His kingdom. Salvation, therefore, is not simply a matter of being separated from out past and freed from our bondage to sin: salvation means also that we are joined to a holy God. By pitching His tent in our midst, God identifies with His people through His very presence. The reality of a “God who is here”—personal and in our midst—is an extraordinary assurance, one which distinguishes the Judeo-Christian faith from all other religions. However, God demand something in return for His presence. He demands that we identify with Him—that we be holy because He is holy. Holiness is not an option. God will not tolerate our indifference to His central command. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Moses and Aaron were not permitted to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land because they failed to treat God as holy (Numbers 20.12). Then a long succession of kings failed to respect God’s holiness and the Israelites ended up in captivity again. Therefore, as you see, holiness is the central covenant and command of Scripture, the cardinal point on which the whole of Christianity turns. It is not just for well-known saints like Mother Teresa, but for every believer. What does this mean for us, then, in the real World in which we live every day? God loves more the contemplative life, since He preserves it longer. For it does not end, as the active life does, with the life of the body. The penitent and the innocent are related as exceeding and exceeded. For whether innocent or penitent, those are the better and better loved who have the most grace. Other things being equal, innocence is the nobler thing and more beloved. God is said to rejoice more over the penitent than over the innocent, because often penitents rise from sin more cautious, humble, and fervent. Hence Gregory commenting on these words (Hom. 34 in Ev.) says that, “In battle the general loves the soldier who after flight returns and bravely pursues the enemy, more than one who has never fled, but has never done a brave deed.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Or it may be answered that gifts of grace, equal in themselves, are more as conferred on the penitent, who deserved punishment, than as conferred on the innocent, to whom no punishment was due; just as a hundred pounds [marcoe] are a greater gift to a poor person than to a kind.” Since God’s will is the cause of goodness in things, the goodness of one who is loved by God is to be reckoned according to the time when some good is to be given one by divine goodness. According therefore to the time, when there is to be given by the divine will to the predestined sinner a greater good, the sinner is better; although according to some other time one is the worse; because even according to some time one is neither god nor bad. To find your way to the major truths it is not enough to use the intellect alone, however, sharpened it ay be. Join intuition to it: then you will have intelligence. However, how does one unfold intuition? By penetrating deeper and hushing the noise of thoughts. Intuition tells us what to do. Reason tells us how to do it. Intuition points direction and give destination. Reason shows a map of the way there. To the inexperienced or ignorant the conclusions of reason and the discoveries of intuition may clash, but to the matured they accommodate an adjust themselves harmoniously. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

If both are on the same plane, we may oppose one thing to another, but not if they are on unequal planes. Intuition is not anti-intellectual but super-intellectual. When intuition guides and illuminates intellect, balances and restrains the ego, that which the wise people called “true intelligence” rises. The intuition never needs to hunger for truth. While the intellect is seeking and starving for it, the intuition already knows and feels it. Intuition is truth drawn from one’s own self, that is, from within, be it a practical or a spiritual truth, whereas intellect squeezes its conclusion out of presented evidence, that is, from without. Calculation may be pushed by the ego to the point of cunning. The first is quite proper to the business World and the mathematical sphere, but in the area of spiritual seeking it as only a limited applicability. The second is quite useless here. What is here of greater worth than both is intuition. However, because this latter faculty is little developed in most people, they have to be content for the time with simple trust. However, this is not a faculty; it is a trait of character. If one put it into the wrong channel, it may mislead a person. Or, if one places it properly, it may serve one well. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Behind it all is the Great Silence, broken only by the projection of new Worlds and the re-absorption of old ones, the unutterable and unknowable Mystery, unreachable and untouchable by humans. Tiny creature the humans are, with the tiny mind one has, THAT is utterly beyond one. However, from the Grand Mystery, the active God of which this planet Earth is a projection has in turn projected one. Here, communication in the most attenuated intuitive form is possible, even holy communion may be attained. This is the God, the higher power, to whom humans instinctively turn in despair or in aspiration, in faith or in doubt. Sometimes a mere fragment of one’s work is revealed to a chosen prophet in the Cosmic Vision, an awe-filled experience. Sometimes a person is granted a glimpse of the World-Mind. This, if it happens, does so during mediation usually, but not always. It is then both a physical and a mental grace, for the sight is, similar to the brightness of a million suns. We are surrounded by a World which seems both real and outside us. Nothing that we can find in this World corresponds to this idea of God. Are we to assert that it is illusory or that God exists but is remote from this World? The mystic can reply: “I know from experience that the idea is true and the existence is everywhere.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Modern humans look in all sorts of impossible places for an invisible God and will not worship the visible God which confronts one. Yet little thinking is needed to show that we are all suckled at the everlasting heart of Nature. It is easy to see that the source of all life is then the Sun and that its creative, protective, and destructive powers are responsible for the entire physical process of the Universe. However, it is not merely to the entire physical Sun alone that the aspirant addresses oneself but to the World-Mind behind it. One must look upon the Sun as a veritable self-expression and self-expression and self-showing of the World-Mind to all its creatures. The Sun is God’s face appearing in the physical World. Those who love to see the Sun in its mystery-laden risings or witness its equally mystery-laden settings bear outward testimony to an inward relationship. The Sun seen by humans is both their symbol of God’s power, glory, beauty, life, and light, and also the actual indictor of God’s central heart, the Presence Invisible. We must honour the Universal Ruler of things and beings as the daisy flower honours the Sun, for it is also the Source of Life. It is right to venerate the Sun, for without it we could not keep the body alive, could not grow the food we need. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

God who made the World still upholds it. He rules the entire Universe, this great Being, and regulates the Universal laws and destinies of humans. I place myself today in the hands of God, knowing that His protection comes with a price. For those who wish the help of the Holy Trinity must walk in the path of Jesus Christ with all their hearts. This I promise I will do. Even the stones make it clear to me that everything partakes of the nature of God. The buildings that surround me speak of the skills that have been given to us by God in ancient times, that are being given to us in these days, that will always be given to us by the mighty one. Please remind me of this daily, you who give so much! O Lord, the God of America our father, for ever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in Heaven and on the Earth is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted supreme above all. Riches and honour come of Thee, and Thou rule over all. In Thy hand is power and might; and it is in Thy power to make great, and to give strength unto all. Therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Winchester Mystery House

As enshrined in the legend of the “Famous Blue Séance Room,” The Grand Ball Room is without one marring nail in its entire hand-craved elegance. It was never known to its intended gayety because of The Great Earthquake of 1906 halted completion, and caused major damage to the mansion. The bare-brick fireplace forever awaits its Italian marble facing. The mansion contains 160 rooms, of which 110 were once available for viewing. There are 10,000 windows, nine kitchens, and 47 fireplaced built of rosewood, cherry, mahogany, Italian marble, oak, teak, and pipestone; all hand-craved and no two alike. For 38 years, 1884-1922, construction never ceased on the over 24,000 square foot mansion, once standing 9 stories high, but still an impressive five levels. Commonly, 16 carpenters were employed at one time, some having worked for 20 years without change. They produced the largest, most compilated and exclusively private residence in the Untied States of America.

winchestermysteryhouse.com

Television is a superficial medium made so by the short attention span of a peripatetic audience. One reaction to painful early experiences leads to an easily depressed personality. An individual may find it more tolerable to organize its misery in terms of one’s own badness rather than in terms of the badness of the World around. The individual then experiences the frustration of one’s need as one’s own fault for having those needs. One organizes one’s experiences in terms of one’s own demandingness, unreasonableness, lack of merit, unlovability, and so on. This is a sad cast of mind for, besides the disappointment, the individual now also feels guilt and constant self-belitting. The Anti-Libidinal Ego—the Internal Savotuer—is constantly attacking the Libidinal Ego. It may be that inner conflict and trouble will eventually arise when the individual can no longer resist very strong evidence that not oneself but the actual guardian or the actual environment is at fault, uncaring, or hostile—a very depressing discovery full of further guilt. However, when the evidence can no longer be ignored (that is selectively perceived and disowned), a person may be forced to make a more realistic assessment of what is happening. Such a depressed reaction leads to a more integrated personality-structure than does the schizoid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The schizoid reaction to painful early experiences is simply not to integrate. People who have left much experience unintegrated will experience both bad moments and good moments, but the connection between moments or experiences or events is only tenuous, and is not integrated with their total experience of themselves and of life. Their wanting something is not strongly connected either to getting it or to not getting it. No experience of wants, needs, or wishes is strongly associated with other experiences of the self; neither is the experience of being frustrated or angry or hurt strongly associated with any other self-structures. Nor is the experience of wants, needs, wishes strongly associated with experiences of attachment figures or other people of tings. There are dynamic organizations, but they are fragments: Libidinal, Anti-Libidinal, central. Having the separate and not much in communication with each other enables a person not to be constantly in touch with misery and frustration and rage. There is a sense of futility and emptiness which goes with the schizoid structure, and this is associated with the environment’s lack of appropriate response to the individual’s expression of oneself: lack of appropriate response does give a sense of futility to one’s doing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Much of what used to be diagnosed as hysteric behaviour in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the empty-feeling person, looking for a relationship to fil that emptiness, may in fact have been schizoid, the personality-structure being tragically such that no ordinary responsive and loving relationship could heal the split which maintained the empty feeling. The schizophrenic reaction would take these splits a stage further. There has been drastic depersonalizing. Fear of, love for, hate toward, bliss from, are experienced with no coherent connection to either self or other. “My” enjoyment is not mine, I do not feel it is “I” who is enjoying. “My” relationships—of fear, love, hate, and so on—are not “mine”; I do not feel that it is “I” who is fearing, loving, or hating. Objects float around without any constant handles of “enjoyable,” “hateful,” terrifying.” Yet there is enjoyment, fear, hate. Is it yours? Or yours? Or theirs? Or mine? It is hard to know for sure. In aggression, we are emotionally hardened, and aggression is a choice. A biologically adaptive type of aggression is instrumental aggression, which has the aim of obtaining that which is necessary or desirable. The aim of instrumental aggression is not destruction as such; this serves only as an instrument for attaining the real aim. #RandolphHarri 3 of 21

In this respect it is similar to defensive aggression, but in other important aspects it is different. It does not seem to have a phylogenetically programed neuronal basis such as that which programs defensive aggression; among mammals, only animals of prey, whose aggression is instrumental to obtaining food, are endowed with an innate neuronal pattern that impels them to attack their prey. The hunting behaviour of hominids and Homo is based on learning and experience, and does not seem to be phylogenetically programed. The most important case of instrumental aggression is war. It has become fashionable to consider war as caused by the power of human’s destructive instinct. Instinctivists and psychoanalysts have given this explanation of war. To reason with great skill and peaceful cooperation is as natural and fundamental a tendency in human relations as fight. Yet war is essentially a psychological problem. The riddle of war lies…deep in the unconscious, and we consider war an inexpedient form of instinct adaptation. War is not caused by human destructiveness, but its cause is realistic conflicts between groups which always have been solved by violence, since there was no international enforceable law according to which—as in civil law—the conflicts could have been solved peacefully. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

There is only an auxiliary role attributed to the factor of human destructiveness, which facilitates the readiness of people to go to war once the government had decided to wage war. The thesis that war is caused by innate human destructiveness is plainly absurd for anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of history. The Babylonians, the Greeks (for a very telling example see Thucydides’ description of the Peloponnesian War), up to the statesmen of our time, have planned war for they thought were very realistic reasons and weighed the pros and cons very thoroughly, even though, naturally their calculations were often erroneous. Their motives were manifold: land for cultivation, riches, slaves, raw materials, markets, expansion—and defense. Under special circumstances, a wish for revenge or in a small tribe the passion for destruction has been among the factors that motivated wars, but such cases are atypical. This view that war is caused by human’s aggression is not only unrealistic but harmful. It detracts attention from the real causes and thus weakens the opposition to them. The thesis about the innate tendency for war is not only repudiated by the historical record but also, and very importantly, by the history of primitive warfare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

We have shown previously that in the contact of aggression among primitive peoples that they—particularly the hunters and food gatherers—are the least warlike, and that their fighting is characterized by its relative lack of destructiveness and bloodthirstiness. We have furthermore seen that with the growth of civilization the frequency and bloodiness of wars have increased. If war were caused by innate destructive impulses, the reverse would have to be true. The humanitarian tendencies in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries brought about reductions of destructiveness and cruelty in war which were codified—and respected, up to and including the first World War—in carious international treaties. From this progressive perspective it seemed that civilized humans are less aggressive than primitive humans, and the still-existing occurrence of war was explained as caused by stubbornness of the aggressive instincts, which refuse to give in to the beneficial influence of civilization. However, in fact, the destructiveness of civilized humans was projected into human’s nature, and thus history was confused with biology. The first World War was motivated by the economic interests and ambitions of the political, military, and industrial leaders on both sides, and not by a need of the various nations involved to give vent to their dammed-up aggression. These motivations are well known, and need not be described here in detail. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

By and large, it can be said that the Germans ais in the 1914-1918 war were also its main motivations: economic hegemony in Western and Central Europe and territory in the East. (There were, in fact, also the aims of Adolf Hitler, whose foreign policy was essentially the continuation of the Imperial government.) The aims and motivations of the Western Allies were similar. France wanted Alsace-Lorraine; Russia, the Dardanelles; England, parts of the Germany colonies, and Italy, at least a small part of the booty. Had it not been for these aims, some of which were stipulated in secret treaties, peace would have been concluded years earlier and the lives of many millions of people on both sides would have been spared. Both sides in the First World War had to appeal to the sense of self0defense and freedom. The Germans claimed they were encircled and threatened, and furthermore, that they were fighting for freedom by fighting the czar; their enemies claimed that they were threatened by the aggressive militarism of the German Junkers, and they were fighting for freedom by fighting the Kaiser. To think that war owe it origin to the wish of the French, the German, the British, and the Russian populations to discharge their aggressiveness is untrue and serves only one function, that of detracting attention from those persons and social conditions responsible for one of the greatest slaughters in history. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

However, a small number of people do like to engage in wars as a mixture of group narcissism, instrumental aggression, and the wish to make a career and to gain power within and through this nationalistic movement. In fact, the Germany population definitely did not want war (the generals were also reluctant), the went into the war without resistance and fought bravely until the end. The psychological problem lies here, not in the causation of the war but in the question: What psychological factors make war possible even thought they do not cause it? There are a number of relevant factors to consider in answering this question. In the first World War (also, with some modifications, in the second World Warr) once it had started, the German (or French, Russian, British) soldiers went on fighting because they felt that losing the war would mean disaster for the nation. The individual soldiers were motivated by the feeling that they were fighting for their lives, and that it was a matter of killing or being killed. However, even these feelings would not have been sufficient to sustain the willingness to go on. They also knew  that if they ran away, they would  be shot, although even these motivations did not prevent large-scale munities from occurring in all armies; in Russian and Germany they le eventually to revolutions in in 1917 and 1918. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Another important factor for the possibility of war is the deeply engrained feeling of respect for and awe of authority. The soldier had traditional been made to feel that to obey one’s leaders was a mortal and religious obligation for the fulfillment of which one should be ready to pay with one’s life. It took about three to four years of the horror of life in the trenches and growing insight into the fact that they were being used by their leaders for aims of war that had nothing to so with defense, to break down this attitude of obedience, at least in a considerable part of the army and the population at home. Even if it entails risks for one’s life and much physical suffering, here are other, there are other more subtle motivations that make war possible and have nothing to do with aggression. Even if it entails risks for one’s life and much physical suffering, war is exciting. Considering that the life of the average persons is boring, routinized, and lacking in adventure, the readiness to go to war must be understood as a desire to put an end to the boring routine of daily life—and to throw oneself into an adventure, the only adventure, in fact, the average person may expect in one’s life. War also removes the free-rider problem. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

 Where the public is large and includes many individuals, there is a temptation for each person to try to avoid doing one’s shared. This is because whatever one person does one’s action will not significantly affect the amount produced. One regard the collective action of others as already given one way or the other. If the public good is produced, one’s enjoyment of it is not decreased by one’s not making a contribution. If it is not produced, one’s action would not have changed the situation any way.  A citizen receives the same protection from foreign invasion regardless of whether one paid one’s taxes. Therefore in the polar case trade and voluntary agreements cannot be expected to develop. It follows that arranging for and financing public goods must be taken over by the state and some binging rule requiring payment must be enforced. Even if all citizens were willing to pay their share, they would presumably do so only when they are assured that others will pay theirs as well. Thus once citizens have agreed to act collectively and not as isolated individuals taking the actions of others as given, there is still the task of tying down the agreement. The sense of justice leads us to promote just schemes and to do our share in them when we believe that others, or sufficiently many of them, will do theirs. However, in normal circumstances a reasonable assurance in this regard can only be given if there is a binding rule effectively enforces. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Assuming that the public good is to everyone’s advantage, and one that all would agree to arrange for, the use of coercion is perfectly rational from each person’s point of view. Many of the traditional activities of government, insofar as they can be justified, can be accounted for in this way. The need for the enforcement of rules by the state will still exist even when everyone is moved by the same sense of justice. The characteristic features of essential public good necessitates collective agreements, and firm assurance must be given to all that they will be honoured. War, to some extent, reverses all values. War encourages deep-seated human impulses, such as altruism and solidarity, to be expressed—impulses that are stunted by the principles of egotism and competition that peacetime life engenders in modern humans. Class differences, if not absent, disappear to a considerable extent. In war, humans are humans again, and have a chance to distinguish oneself, regardless of privileges that one’s social status confers upon one as a citizen. To put it in a very accentuated form: war is an indirect rebellion against the injustice, inequality and boredom governing social life in peacetime, and the fact must not be underestimated that while a soldier fights the enemy for one’s life, one does not have to fight the member of one’s own group for food, medical care, shelter, clothing; these are all provided in a kind of perversely social system. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

The fact that was has these beneficial features reduces the free rider problem. If civilian life provided the elements of adventurousness, solidarity, equality, and idealism that can be found in war, it may be very difficult, we may conclude, to get people to fight way. However, many people are very proud of America, and even if they are wealthy or well taken care of, they love their country so much, and as said before, see it as a religious and moral duty to defend its honour. However, when the country is doing relatively well, the stock market is breaking record high, unemployment is at all time lows, and Americans are involved in far less wars in the recent past, that is what causes division. People start fighting their own people, become divided politically, religiously, and you even see a break down in the family and community because there is no bonding national moment. After September 11, 2001, many American sat back in horror and watched the events unfold, but they, for the most part, did bond as a nation and becoming more humanitarian and prouder. Now, that they have had it so good, people are fighting each other because they do not have an enemy to stand up against. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The problem for governments in war is to make use of this rebellion by harnessing it for the purpose of war; simultaneously it must be prevented from becoming a threat to the government by enforcing strict discipline and the spirit of obedience to the leaders who are depicted as the unselfish, wise, courageous humans protecting their country from destruction. Major wars in modern times and most wars between that states of antiquity were not caused by dammed-up aggression, but by instrumental aggression of the military and political elites. This has been shown in the data about the difference in the incidence of war from the most primitive to the higher developed cultures. The more primitive a civilization, the less was do we find. The same trend can be seen in the fact that the number and intensity of wars has risen with the development of technical civilization; it is highest among the powerful states with a strong government and lowest among primitive humans without permanent chieftainship. For instance, the number of battles engaged in by the principal European powers in modern times shows the same trend. From the year 1480 to 1499 there were 9 battles, from 1500 to 1599 there were 87 battles, from 1600 to 1699 there were 239 battles, from 1700 to 1799 there were 781 battles, from 1800 to 1899 there were 651 battles, from 1900 to 1940 there were 892 battles. #RandolphhHarris 13 of 21

What the authors who explain that war is caused by human’s innate aggression have done is to consider modern war as normal, assuming that I must be caused by human’s “destructive” nature. They have tried to find the confirmation for this assumption in the data on animals and on our prehistoric ancestors, which have had to be distorted in order to serve this purpose. This position resulted for the unshakable conviction of the superiority of present-day civilization over pretechnical cultures. The logic was: if civilized humans are plagued by so many wars and so much destructiveness, how much worse primitive humans have been, who is far behind in the development toward “progress.” Since destructiveness must not be blamed on our civilization, it must be explained as the result of our instincts. However, the facts speak otherwise. Depictions of violence often glamorize vicious behaviour. They offend the Spirit and make you less able to respond to others in a sensitive, caring way. They contradict the Saviour’s message of love for one another. When we pollute our minds with harmful, violent materials, whether or not such material causes us to commit violent acts, the Spirit is offended. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

I believe the entertainment industry, who the TV news media is now trying to compete with for ratings, cannot portray on film people gunned down or ran over in cold blood, in living colour, and not have it affect the attitudes and thoughts of some of the people who see it. I believe that the desensitizing effect of such media abuses on the hearts and souls of those who are exposed to them results in a partial fulfillment of the Saviour’s statement that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” So, it is not only that the American people are doing relatively well and living in peace, but the media has also become far, far more violent and it has an impact on people. Now, the children of light, a Biblical term to say that they have the basic nature of light: that light is their parent and has passed on to them its nature, as any parent does, are not perfect people and do not live in a perfect World—yet. However, they are remarkably different. The difference is not one of a pose they strike, either from time to time or constantly, or of things they do or do not do—though their behaviour too is very different and distinctive. Where the children of light differ is primarily and most importantly on the “inside” of their life. It lies in what they are in their depths. Thought life: When we get to know their inner life is wat they think about, and what is on their mind that is perhaps the first thing that comes to our attention. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Simply stated, children of the light think about God. He is never out of their mind. They love to dwell upon God and upon his greatness and loveliness, as brought to light in Jesus Christ. They adore him in nature, in history, in his Son and in his saints. One could even day they are “God-intoxicated” (Acts 2.13; Ephesians 5.18, though no one has a stronger sense of reality and practicality than they do. Their mind if filled with biblical expressions of God’s nature, his actions, and his plans for them in his World. They do not dwell upon evil. It is not a big thing in their thoughts. They are sure of its defeat, but they still deal with it appropriately in specific situations. Because their mind is centered upon God and oriented with reference to him, all other good things are also welcome there: Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,” their minds pinder those things (Philippians 4.8). Thy are absolutely, realistically so, based upon the nature of God as they understand it. Feelings: And then perhaps we notice—and small wonder given what has already been observed—that the emotional life of these children of light is deeply characterized by love. That is how they invest the emotional life of their being. They love lots of good things and they love people. They love their life and who they are. They are thankful for their life—even though it may contain many difficulties, even persecution and martyrdom (Matthew 5.10-12). #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The children of light receive all of it as God’s gift, or at least as his allowance, where they will know his goodness and greatness and go on to live with him forever. And so joy and peace are with the even in the hardest of times—even when suffering unjustly. Because of what they have learned about God, they are confident and hopeful and do not indulge thoughts of rejection, failure, and hopelessness, because they know better. Will (spirit, heart): Looking a little deeper we find that these children of the light really are devoted to doing what is good and right. Their will is habitually attuned to it, just as their mind and emotions are habitually homing in on God. They are attentive to rightness, to kindness, to helpfulness, and they are purposefully knowledgeable about life, about what people need, and about how to do what is right and good in appropriate ways. These are people who do not think of themselves and what they want, and they really care very little, if at all, about getting their own way. “Let each of you regard one another as more important than oneself; do not look for your own personal interests, but for the interest of others,” reports Philippians 2.3-4. These are easy and good words to them. They are abandoned to God’s will and do not struggle and deliberate as to whether they will do what they know to be wrong. They do not hesitate to do what they know to be right. It is the obvious thing to do. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Body: That, of course, involves their body. They body has come over to the side of their will to do good. It is constantly poised to do what is right and good without thinking. And that also means that it does not automatically move into what is wrong, even contrary to their resolves and intentions, before they can think to not do it. It is no longer true of them that their “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” reports Matthew 26.41. They know by experience that these words of Jesus are not a declaration about the inevitable condition of humans, but a diagnosis of a condition to be corrected. The Spirit has substantially taken over their “members.” Consequently, we do not see them always being trapped by what their tongue, facial expressions, eyes, hands, and so on have already done before they can think. For their body and its parts are consecrated to serve God and are habituated to be his holy instruments. They instinctively avoid the paths of temptation. The bodies of these people look different. There is a freshness about them, a kind of quiet strength, and a transparency. They are rested and playful in a bodily strength that is from God. He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead has given life to the bodies through his Spirit that dwells in them. Social relations: In their social relations to others, they are completely transparent. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Because they walk in goodness the children of the light do not have use for darkness, and they achieve real contact of fellowship with others—especially other apprentices of Jesus. “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin,” reports 1 John 1.7. And “The one who loves one’s brothers and sisters abides in the light and there is no cause of offence in him,” reports 1 John 2.10. They do not conceal their thoughts and feelings (nor do they impose them upon everyone). Because of their confidence in God, they do not try to manipulate and manage others. Needless to say, in their social contexts they do not go on the attack or on the hunt, intending to use or other others. Moreover, the children of the light are completely noncondemning, while at the same time they will not participate in evil. They pay it only attention absolutely required in social setting, and beyond that, patient and joyful nonparticipation is the rule. They know how to really “be there” (wherever “there” is) without sharing in evil, as was true of Jesus himself. (Of course, as with him, others may disapprove of the “being there, and there are always some occasions where one should just step away). However, the children of light do not reject or distance themselves from the people who may be involved in such situations. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The children of the light know how to “love the sinner and hate the sin” gracefully and effectively. Soul: Furthermore, as you come to know these people—though those who know only the human powers of the flesh will never be able to understand them (1 Corinthians 2.14)—you see that all of the above is not just at the surface. It is deep, and in a certain obvious sense, it is effortless. It flows. That is, the things we have been describing are not things the children of light are constantly trying hard to do, gritting their teeth an carrying on. Instead, these are features of life that well up out of a soul that is at home in God. This is the outcome of spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Again, it does not mean perfect, but it does mean we have here a person whose soul is whole: a person who, though the internalized integrity of the law of God and the administrations of the gospel and the Spirit, has a restored soul. Such a soul effectively interfaces God and the full person and enables every aspect of the self to function as God intended. God, you have given all peoples on common origin. It is your will that they be gathered together as one family in yourself. Fill the hearts of humankind with fire of your love and with the desire to ensure justice for all. By sharing the good things you give us, may we secure an equality for all our brothers and sisters throughout the World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

May there be an end to division, strife and war. May there be a dawning of a truly human society built on love and peace. We ask this in your name. Lord, please bring us safely and without detour to your Kingdom, to the landing place before the great city where the Lord of Love rules. Bring us before one who sits on his throne. Make our names known to You and your angels. Please make smooth the way, please open the doors, please clear the path, unlock the gates. We are on a great journey. Stand by us until we are safely home! Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving, sing praises upon the hard unto our God. God covers the Heavens with clouds, He prepares rain for the Earth, He makes grass to grow on the hills. God gives to the beast its food, and to the young ravens when they cry. God delights not in the strength of the horse; nor takes pleasure in the vigour of humans. The Lord takes pleasure in them that revere Him, in them that hope for His mercy. Glorify the Lord, O America; praise thy God, O America. For He has made strong the bars of thy gates; He has blessed thy children within thee. God makes peace within they borders; God gives thee abundantly of the fat of wheat. God sends out His commandment to the Earth; His word goes speedily forth. For redemption of our souls, Lord hear our prayers. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

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All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human want directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth. If we are honest we have to admit that we will never fully know what happened to our ancestors in their journey towards modern humanity. To be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. Instrumental aggression is a biologically adaptive type of aggression, which has the aim of obtaining that which is necessary or desirable. The aim is not destructive as such; this serves only as an instrument for attaining the real aim. In this respect it is similar to defensive aggression, but in other important aspects it is different. It does not seem to have a phylogenetically programmed neuronal basis such as that which programs defensive aggression; among mammals, only animals of prey, whose aggression is instrumental to obtaining food, are endowed with an innate neuronal pattern that impels them to attack their prey. The hunting behaviour of hominids and Homo is based on learning and experience, and does not seem to be phylogenetically programmed. The difficulty with instrumental aggression lies in ambiguity of the terms “necessary” and “desirable.” It is easy to define necessary in terms of an unquestionable physiological need, as, for instance, warding off starvation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27

Capital is part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth. In December of 2020, 30 million Americans needed food assistance and/or could not feed themselves and their families. Simultaneously, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk made headlines for overtaking each other as the richest person in the World with more than $160 billion each. If a human steals or robs because he or she and his or her family do not have even the minimal amount of food they need, the aggression is clearly an act motivated by physiological necessity. The same would hold true for a primitive tribe on the verge of starvation which attacks another tribe that is better off. However, these clear-cut examples of necessity were once relatively rare, but are becoming increasingly common. Other more complicated cases are also becoming much more frequent. The leads of a nation realize that their economic situation will be seriously endangered in the long run unless they can conquer territory having the raw materials they need, or unless they defeat a competing nation. Although frequently such reasons are merely an ideological cover for the desire for increasing power or the personal ambition of the leaders, there are wars which do respond to a historical necessity, at least in a broad, relative sense. However, what is desirable? #RandolphHarris 2 of 27

In a narrow sense of the word desirable, one could answer: The desirable is what is necessary. In this instance “desirable” is based on the objective situation. More frequently, however, desirable is defined as that which is desired. If we use the term in this sense, the problem of instrumental aggression assumes another aspect, and in fact the most important one in the motivation of aggression. The truth is that people desire not only what is necessary in order to survive, not only that which provides the material basis for a good life; most people in our culture—and in similar periods of history—are greedy: greedy for more food, drink, pleasures of the flesh, possessions, power, and fame. Their greed may refer more to one than to another of these objects; what all people have in common is that they are insatiable and hence never satisfied. Greed is one of the strongest noninstictive passions in humans, and it is clearly a symptom of psychical dysfunctioning, of inner emptiness and a lack of a center within oneself. It is a pathological manifestation of the failure to develop fully, as well as one of the fundamental sins in Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian ethics. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27

A few examples will illustrate the pathological character of greed: it is well-known that overeating, which is one form of greed, is frequently caused by states of depression; or that compulsive buying is one attempt to escape from a depressed mood. The act of eating or buying is a symbolic act of filling the inner void and, thus, overcoming the depressed feeling for the moment. Green is a passion—that is to say, it is charged with energy and relentlessly drives a person toward the attainment of one’s goals. In our culture greed is greatly reinforced by all those measures that tend to transform everybody into a consumer. Of course the greedy person does not need to be aggressive, provided one has enough money to buy what one desires. However, if one wants to satisfy one’s desires, the greedy person who does not have the necessary means must attack. The most drastic example of this is the drug addict who is possessed by one’s greed for the drug (although in one’s case increasingly reinforced by physiological sources). The many who do not have the money to buy drugs, rob, assault, or even kill in order to get the necessary means. Destructive as their behaviour is, their aggression is instrumental and not their goals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27

On a historical scale greed is one of the most frequent causes of aggression and is probably as strong a motive for instrumental aggression as the desire for what is objectively necessary. The understanding of greed is obscured by its identification with self-interest. The latter is a normal expression of a biologically given drive, that for self-preservation, the aim of which is to obtain what is necessary for the preservation of life or of a customary, traditional standard of living. As Max Webber, R. H. Tawney, Heinrich von Brentano, Werner Sombart, and others have shown, humans in the Middle Ages were motivated by the desire to preserve one’s traditional standard of living, whether as a peasant or an artisan. The demands of the revolutionary peasants in the sixteenth century were not to have what the artisans in the cities had, nor did the artisans strive for the wealth of a feudal baron or a rich merchant. Even as late as the eighteenth century we find laws that forbid a merchant to try to take customers away from a competitor by making one’s own store look more attractive or by praising one’s wares to the disadvantaged of those of another merchant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27

Only with the full development of capitalism—as earlier, in comparable societies like that of the Roman Empire—did greed become a key motive for an ever-increasing number of citizens. However, greed, perhaps because of a still-lingering religious tradition, is a motive to which hardly anyone dares to confess. The logic went: self-interest is a biologically given striving anchored in human nature; self-interest equals greed; ergo: greed is rooted in human nature—and not a character-conditioned human passion. In our phantasy World we are engaged with ideas which have the nature of dynamic structures, acting as “authority figures,” “goodies” and “baddies,” “persecutors,” “victims,” “rescuers,” and so on. Mostly we define these stagey figures in such a way that our way of dealing with them or relating with them is implied in the word itself. We love “goodies” and we try to be like them and feel bad when we are not. We strongly dislike “baddies” and persecute or feel persecuted by them. We identify and sympathize with “victims” (if we did not, it would be because they are “baddies”—their suffering serves them right!) and we welcome and cheer on the “rescuers” (if we did not, it is because we see them as “persecutors”). #RandolphHarris 6 of 27

We have learnt to relate to the World in an excited but frustrated way, or in an angry need-rejecting way, or, thirdly, in a spuriously calm matter-or-fact way. What is left after the libidinal and the anti-libidinal organizations of the self have been disowned? There still remains a self shorn of both enjoyable and painful components, but still capable of engaging in the survival functions, mainly perceiving, remembering, comparing, planning, and so on—the ego-functions. This is left-over is the Central Ego; it is almost entirely a monitor of events. It is an organized region of the self which registers that there has been arousal of need, and gratification or frustration of needs, wishes, impulses to approach or retreat, but it does not register the accompanying feelings. Though of necessity in touch, however, minimally, with whatever dynamic structures enable the organism to survive, there is not much contact with the arousing, gratifying, or frustrating sensations themselves (which have formed “libidinal” and “anti-libidinal” organizations). The Central Ego relates to the Ideal Object. The phantasy is that is an individual does not make a nuisance of itself, is not unjustifiably demanding, and avoids whatever makes its attachment figures reject one, if one does all this and maybe more…then the individual will be behaving in an ideal way and the attachment figures, who of course are ideal, will be able to respond in an ideal way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27

This is called the Moral Defense (against the intolerable anxiety of living in the hostile World). Alas that is should sound so plausible a term. The World central might suggest that the Central Ego is somehow at the core of a person. However, the Central Ego is the monitor at the boundary between the self and other people and things. In this is closely resembles what Dr. Freud meant by “ego”—he also did not mean the self but only that monitoring process. It is also like Dr. Winnicott’s False Self, the Caretaker Self which protect more vulnerable feelings which are conceived of as deeper, further away, or further back. There are therefore circumstances when the Central Ego is divorced from much that is part of a person; there is only the sort of consciousness which is expressed in “I must get along somehow,” not feeling much or needing much or dreading much since all that is almost entirely split off. Being out of touch with most of the springs of action, the mode of speech is passive. This is how a withdrawn person does feel. The more personal pronouns are also removed: “That is life,” “It is what it is,” “That is how the cookie crumbles,” “No use complaining.” The Central Ego holds summarized abstracts of the environment: concepts not percepts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27

In these circumstances, the environment, too, is shorn of anything that might make for strong feelings. An Ideal object, it is stripped of its exciting or rejecting aspects, bland. Sometimes this is called the Accepted Object, since everything is experienced as acceptable: “My family is just ordinary,” “We get on well,” “We do not have problems,” What is anything to do with anything?” A person who represents the extreme condition in this mood, might say, “I have no wishes; I do not care about anything or anyone.” Such people have a simple system of guidance—pleasure—seeking/pain-avoiding, or survival, or a cause, or a set of values—by the light of which they manage their lives, rather as managers of industrial organizations may impersonally manage the organization on lines laid down by others. They manage; they do not enjoy. They may think of this matter-of0fact region as their real and most central self. It is a region of thoughts and calculations—an entrepreneurial self-region, or a managerial one, individualistic. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27

The extent to which it is cut off and isolated from other self-regions varies of course—people differ. If it varied from social classes to social class in systematic ways which would be shown up by research, I would not be surprised. I certainly think that it varies between the genders, by and large, the men’s Central Ego being on average more pronounced and more isolated, and also more highly valued than women’s. Personality-structures here, as so often, reflect the institutional structures of our society. So, perhaps to an even greater degree, do the theories we construct, since they are constructed by those of us who have done well by our institutional arrangements. There are people whose Central Ego is the most conscious and valued aspect of their self-imagery. They seem to be conscious of themselves mainly as thinkers, believing themselves to be most uniquely themselves when thinking. It is interesting to note how often philosophers are like this. Dr. Descartes wrote, “I think therefore I am—Cogito ergo sum”; Dr. Pascal called himself a mere fragile reed but, he added quickly, “un roseau pensant”: a thinking reed. Perhaps professional thinkers, academics, and theory-writers are particularly prone to this kind of personality structure, which they thus believe to be characteristic of the whole human race. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27

Being thinkers, they are good at words, and get themselves into print. However, they may not be accurately describing how it is for all of us.  Welfare economics is often defined as a conception of political economy, that is, as standards by which to assess economic arrangements and politics, and their background institutions. (“Welfare” suggest that the implicit moral conception is utilitarian: the phrase “social choice” is far better although I believe its connotations are still too narrow.) A doctrine of political economy must include an interpretation of the public good which is based on a conception of justice. It is to guide the reflections of the citizen when one considers questions of economic and social policy. One is to take up the perspective of the constitutional convention or the legislative stage and ascertain how the principles of justice apply. A political opinion concerns what advances the good of the body politic as a whole and invokes some criterion for the just division of social advantages. Justice as fairness applies to the basic structure of society. It is a conception for ranking social forms viewed as closed systems. Some decision concerning these background arrangements is fundamental and cannot be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27

In fact, the cumulative effect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic structure. Moreover, the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons that are. Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future. How humans work together now to satisfy their present desires affects the desires they will have later on, the kind of persons they will be. These matters are, of course, perfectly obvious and have always been recognize. They were stressed by economist as different as Alfred Marshall and Karl Marx. Since economic arrangements have these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design of institution to realize it. This choice must, therefore, be made on moral and political as well as on economic grounds. Considerations of efficiency are but one basis of decision and often relatively minor at that. Of course, this decision may not be openly faced; it may be made by default. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27

We often acquiesce without thinking in the moral and political conception implicit in that status quo, or leave things to be settled by how contending social and economic forces happen to work themselves out. However, if the conclusion is reached that it is best left to the course of events to decide, political economy must investigate this problem. One might think that this conception of justice relies upon the aims of existing individuals and regulates the social order by principles that persons guided by these aims would choose. We must not overlook the very special nature of that situation and the scope of the principles adopted there. Only the most general assumptions are made about the aims of the parties, namely, that they take an interest in primary social goods, in things that humans are presumed to want whatever else they want. A just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be arranged so as to bring about in its member the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice. Thus the requirement of stability and the criterion of discouraging desires that conflict with the principles of justice put further constraints on institutions. They must be not only framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27

In this sense, the principles of justice define a partial ideal of the person which social and economic arrangements must respect. Finally, as the argument for embedding ideals into our working principles has brought out, certain institutions are required by two principles. They define an ideal basic structure, or the outlines of one, toward which the course of reform should evolve. The upshot of these considerations is that justice as fairness is not at the mercy, so to speak, of existing wants and interests. It sets up an Archimedean point for assessing the social system without invoking a priori considerations The long range aim of society is settled in its main lines irrespective of the particular desires and needs of its present members. And an ideal conception of justice is defined since institutions are to foster the virtue of justice and to discourage desires and aspirations incompatible with it. Of course, the pace of change and the particular reforms called for at any given time depend upon the current conditions. However, the conception of justice, the general form of a just society and the ideal of the person consistent with it are not similarly dependent. There is no place for the question whether human’s desires to play the role of superior or inferior might not be so great that autocratic institutions should be accepted. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27

Also, there is no question whether human’s perception of the religious practice of others might not be so upsetting that liberty of conscience should not be allowed. We have no occasion to ask whether under reasonably favourable conditions the economic gains of technocratic but authoritarian institutions might be so great as to justify the sacrifice of basic freedoms. Of course, these remarks assume that the general assumptions of which the principles of justice were chosen were chosen are correct. However, if they are, this sort of question is already decided by these principles. Certain institutional forms are embedded within the concept of justice. This view shares with perfectionism the feature of setting up an ideal of the person that constrains the pursuit of existing desires. In this respect justice as fairness and perfectionism are both opposed to utilitarianism. The utilitarian can always say tat given social conditions and human’s interests as they are, and taking into account how they will develop under this or that alternative institutional arrangement, encouraging one pattern of wants rather than another is likely to lead to a greater net balance (or to a higher average) of satisfaction. On this basis the utilitarian selects between ideals of the person. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27

Some attitudes and desires, being less compatible with fruitful social cooperation, tend to reduce the total (or the average) happiness. Roughly speaking, the moral virtues are those dispositions and effective desires that can generally be relied upon to promote the greatest sum of well-being. Thus, it would be a mistake to claim that the principle of utility provides no grounds for choosing among ideals of the person, however difficult it may be to apply the principle in practice. Nevertheless, the choice does depend upon existing desires and present social circumstances and their natural continuations into the future. These initial conditions may heavily influence the conception of human good that should be encouraged, The contrast is that both justice as fairness and perfectionism establish independently an ideal conception of the person and of the basic structure so that not only are some desires and inclinations necessarily discouraged but the effect of the initial circumstances will eventually disappear. With utilitarianism we cannot be sure what will happen. Since there is no ideal embedded in its principle, the place we start from may always influence the path we are to follow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27

In order to find an Archimedean point it is not necessary to appeal to a priori or perfectionist principles. By assuming certain general desires, such as the desire for primary social goods, and by taking as a basis the agreements that would be made in suitably defined initial situation, we can achieve the requisite independence from existing circumstances. The original position is so characterizes that unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any one person are typical of all. Moreover, the same will hold for the considered judgments of the citizens of a well-ordered society effectively regulated by the principles of justice. Everyone has a similar sense of justice and in this respect a well-ordered society is homogeneous. Political arguments appeal to this moral consensus. There is another resemblance to idealism: justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community. The essential idea is that we want to account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional, community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that in its theoretical basis is individualistic. For reasons of clarity among others, we do not want to rely on an undefined concept of community, or to suppose that society is an organic whole with a life of its own distinct from and superior to that of all its members in their relations with one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27

Thus the contractual conception of the original position is worked out first. It is reasonably simple and the problem of rational choice that it poses is relatively precise. From this conception, however individualistic it might seem, we must eventually explain the value of community. Otherwise the theory of justice cannot succeed. To accomplish this we shall need an account of the primary good of self-respect which relates it to the parts of theory already developed. Since we see so many forms in Nature which are gloriously beautiful, and yet at the same time so many which are repulsively ugly, we may rightly conclude that both beauty and ugliness, the opposites, are present in the World-Idea and hence in the World-Mind. The same may be said of loving-kindness and merciless cruelty. For these attributes are merely human conceptions. The Infinite Mind is infinitely larger and more impersonal in outlook that is the human mind. It will be fund by experience that preoccupation with such questions as “Why does God allow evil in the World?” will fall away under the influence of the Witness Self. The question is relative to and relevant only in the sphere of the personal self in interaction with other personal selves, and in that sphere it has no answer. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27

In the sphere of God the question does not exist. “Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” is still as true as when spoken by the Christ over two thousand and twenty years ago. It is the outward appearance of their environment and the inward reality of their egoism which make so many thinkers doubt whether God is perfectly great. God has not the kind of limited five-sense conscious to which most human beings are limited. One trouble is that it is ordinarily believed that a God who is not a Person is no God at all because He will not be a thinking, intelligent being. It is so customary to associate consciousness with individual consciousness that it seems almost impossible to grasp the concept of omnipresent, everywhere-diffused, all-inclusive Mind which is not a mind. What we deny is the limited kind of being which is the only kind of God most human faculties can imagine. The Real, as the ultimate source of all knowing and feeling beings, cannot itself be unknowing and unfeeling. We could not deny consciousness to God without denying consciousness to humans. However, being absolute and infinite God does not know and feel in the same limited way which confines the knowledge and feelings of finite humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27

It is more correct to speak of Mind as the All-Conscious than as the unconscious. What we may rightly say is that, viewed from the side which alone is know to us, a certain phase of it appears to be unconscious. The higher teachings state that all the phases of Mind are consciousness ones. There is a curious and mysterious statement that God can gain nothing more by making Himself known to Himself, since He is already all-knowledge. Friendship cannot exist except towards rational creatures, who are capable of returning love, and communicating one with another in the various works of life, and who may fare well or ill, according to the changes of fortune and happiness; even as to them is benevolence properly speaking exercised. However, irrational creatures cannot attain to loving God, nor to any share in the intellectual and beatific life that He lives. Strictly speaking, therefore, God does not love irrational creatures with the love of friendship; but as it were with the love of desire, in so far as He orders them to rational creatures, and even to Himself. Yet this is not because He stand in need of them; but only on account of His goodness, and of the services they render to us. For we can desire a thing for others as well as for ourselves. Nothing prevents one and the same thing being loved under one aspect, while it is hated under another. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27

God loves sinners in so far as they are existing natures; for they have existence and have it from Him. In so far as they are sinners, they have not existence at all, but fall short of it; and this in them is not from God. Hence under this aspect, they are hated by Him. There is in fact an inner affinity between the law and the soul. That is why rebellion against the law makes the soul sick and distances it from God. That is why love of the law restores the soul. Law is god for the sou, is an indispensable instrument of instruction and a standard of judgment of god and evil. Walking in the law with God restores the soul because the law expresses the other of God’s kingdom and of God’s own character. That is why it converts and restores the soul. Grace is also essential, but not grace as formless spurts of permissiveness that thrust the law aside. The correct order that the soul requires for its vitality and proper functioning is found in the “royal law” of love (James 2.8), abundantly spelled out law, which he fulfilled and enables us to fulfill through constant discipleship to Him. One whose aim is anything less than obedience to the law of God in the Spirit and power of Jesus will never have a soul at rest in God and will never advance significantly in spiritual transformation into Christlikeness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27

Finally, then, transformation of our soul requires that we acknowledge its reality and importance, understand scriptural teachings about it, and take it into the yoke of Jesus, learning from one humility and the abandonment of “outcomes” to God. This brings rest to the soul. Then our soul is reempowered in goodness by receiving the law and the Word into it as the structure of our covenant fellowship with God in grace. The law is the structure of a life of grace in the kingdom of God. Other things maybe required for soul recovery in some people: perhaps special acts of deliverance or ministries of inner healing or psychological counseling. Always, the good news of Jesus is presupposed. However, the most powerful force for transformation of the soul born “from above” is to walk in righteousness upheld by grace. “The soul is deep.” What do you understand that to mean? How does it relate to intellectual and cultural tendencies of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries? To biblical teachings. How does “failure of good intentions” relate to the disorders of the soul? Why does fanaticism have such an attraction for the broken soul? What are some way you can acknowledge your own soul? How is law and obedience to law an expression of grace? #RandolphHarris 22 of 27

Does the idea of an affinity between law and the soul make sense to you? Everything, be it person, news, government, celebrity, chatter or gossip, that you set up in the place of God is an idol. In every act of such worship you commit idolatry. If divinity cannot be represented by any idol, any graven image, nether can it be described by any word. All verbal descriptions are non-descriptions. What Jesus Christ called “the only true God” is the ultimate formless reality, not the thoughts about it or the pictures of it created in human imaginations. It is an object of insight, not of sense of thought. Try as much as you can, but in the end you will find God is not something imaginable. Nobody can tell us what God looks like, for God has no form at all. God must be found as He is in reality, not as He has been in human imagination. We feel the presence of a divine power, but we are baffled by its motives. Neither thinking nor any kind of human activity can grasp the full truth about the World-Mind. Not even at the height reached by the self-actualized or adept is this possible. If God were not a mystery, He would not be God. Humans who claim to know Him need semantic correction; this said, their experience may yet be exceptional, elevating, and immaterialist. However, let God remain God, incomprehensible and untouchable. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27

God is a mystery which no human can truly understand, no language can really express, and no idea can fully embody. The one infinite life-power which reveals itself in the cosmos and manifests itself through time and space, cannot be named. It is something that is. For a name would falsely separate it from other things when the truth is that it is those things, all things. Nor would we know what to call it, since we know nothing abouts its real nature. The consciousness and nature of the World-Mind is utterly beyond the capacity and power of any human being to understand, much less to explain. “A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, one, too, will drink from the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. One will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of holy angels and of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.’ This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27

“Then I heard a voice from Heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labour, for their deeds will follow them,’” reports Revelation 14.9-13. Father, I choose faith! I choose Your unlimited grace and favour. I choose to believe that You have good things in store for me. You use me for Your glory in Jesus’s name. Amen. You must continue to bear in mind that the temporal and spiritual are blended. They are not separate. One cannot be carried on without the other, so long as we are here in mortality. We do not feel that it is possible for people to be really good and faithful Chrisitian people unless they can also be good and faith, honest and industrious people. Self-reliance implies the individual development of skills and abilities and then their application to provide for one’s own needs and wants. If further implies that one will achieve those skills through self-discipline and then, through self-restraint and charity, use those skills to bless oneself and others. The Lord expects all his children of sound mind and body to thus perform in this second estate is made clear in many scriptural passages whose central thought focuses on work—personal, earnest, life-sustaining work. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27

The Lord sets free the captives. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord raises up them that are humble; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects the strangers, God upholds the fatherless and the widow; but the way of the wicked God does confuse. The Lord shall reign forever, eternally and always. Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. Just as each individual is accountable for one’s choices and actions in spiritual matters, one is also accountable in temporal matters. Father, my finances belong to you. I thank You in advance for my financial prosperity. Lord, I know that everything that comes from You is good, so I know that by placing my finances in Your hands, You will come through for me and I will become financially stable and secure. I know that in this new year, You will bless me with my dream house and guide me to stable grounds. Dear Lord, keep me in mind of my blessings no matter how much or little I may have. Please give me the patience to save and the will power to make wise choices. Please help me see the value in building a savings for retirement and a college fund for my children. Please, God, grant me the patience and tolerance necessary to calm my spirit and bring peace and love into my home and silence. I know that you are in control of everything. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27

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A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form for us before light fell on them. The individual differentiated itself out of the infinite ocean of Mind into a distinct individuality after a long development through the diverse kingdoms of Nature. Having thus arrived at consciousness of what it is, having travelled the spiral of growth from germ to human, the result of all this effort is certainly not gained only to be throw away. Were this to happen then the entire history of the human race would be a meaningless one, its entire travail a resultless one, its entire aspiration a valueless one. If evolution were merely the complementary return journey of an involuntary process, if the evolving entity arrived only at its starting point for all its pains, then the whole plan would be a senseless one. If the journey of humans consisted of nothing more than treading a circle from the time of one’s emergence from the Divine Essence to the time of one’s mergence back into it, it would be a vain and useless activity. It would be a stupendous adventure but also an unenlightened one. There is something more than that in one’s movement. Expect in the speculations of certain theorists, it simply does not happen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

The self-consciousness thus developed will not be dissolved, extinguished, or re-absorbed into the Whole again, leaving not a trace behind. Rather will it begin a new spiral of evolution towards higher altitudes of consciousness and diviner levels of being, in which it will co-operate as harmoniously with the universal existence as formerly it collided against it. It will not separate its own goo from the general good. Here is part of the answer to this question: What are the ultimate reasons for human wanderings through the World-process? That life matters, that the Universe possesses meaning, and that the evolutionary agonies are leading to something worthwhile—these are beliefs we are entitled to hold. If the cosmos is a wheel which turns and turns endlessly, it does not turn aimlessly. Evolution does not return us to the starting point as we were. The ascent is not a circle but a spiral. Evolution presupposes that its own possibility has always been latent within the evolving entities. Hence the highest form is hidden away in the lowest one. There is development from the blindly instinctive life of animals to the consciously thinking life of humans. The blind instinctive struggles of the plant to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the self-conscious efforts of the human. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

The blind instinctive struggles of the planet to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the intelligent self-conscious efforts of the human being. Everywhere we find that evolution produces variety. There are myriads of individual entities, but each possesses some quality of uniqueness which distinguishes it from all others. Life ma be one but is multitudinous expressions do differ, as thought difference were inherent in such expression. Evolution as mentalistically defined by philosophy is not quite the same as evolution as materialistically defined by Dr. Darwin. With us it is simply the mode of striving, through rhythmic rise and fall, for an ever fuller expansion of the individual unit’s consciousness. However, the ego already possesses all such possibilities latently. Consequently the whole process, although apparently an ascending one, is really an unfolding one. Narcissism can be described as a state of experience in which only the person oneself, one’s body, one’s needs, one’s feelings, one’s thoughts, one’s property, everything and everybody pertaining to one are experienced as fully real, while everybody and everything that does not form part of the person or is not an object of one’s needs is not interest, is not fully real, is perceived only by intellectual recognition, while affectively without weight and colour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

A person, to the extent to which one is narcissistic to one has significance, while the rest of the World is more or less weightless or colorless, and because of this double standard the narcissistic persons shows severe defects in judgment and lacks the capacity for objectivity. Often the narcissistic person achieves a sense of security in one’s own entirely subjective conviction of one’s perfection, one superiority over others, one’s extraordinary qualities, and not through being related to others or through any real work or achievement of one’s own. One needs to hold on to one’s narcissistic self-image, since one’s sense of worth as well as one’s sense of identity are based on it. If one’s narcissism is threated, one is threatened in a vitally important area. When others wound one’s narcissism by slighting one, criticizing one, showing up when one has said something wrong, defeating one in a game or on numerous other occasions, a narcissistic person usually reacts with intense anger or rage, whether or not one shows it or is even aware of it. The intensity of this aggressive reaction can often be seen in the fact that such a person will never forgive someone who has wounded one’s narcissism and often feels a desire for vengeance which would be less if one’s body or one’s property had been attacked. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

“Splitting an object” refers to what happens when a person experiences more than one object where other people may be sure that there is only one. For instance, I might have split my experiences in which a way that I sometimes relate to a perfectly good mother, and sometimes bad. Where the point of a sentence is that a person’s experience of something or someone is not being shared by other people, is called a phantasy object or inner object. Phantasy, in psychodynamics, is also called expectancy. We may think of a person as passively undergoing experiences over which one has little control. However, from the experience of some regularly recurring routines, one will come to expect that the first stages of such a routine lead to the rest of a sequence. This is one way in which an organization of memory-traces becomes a dynamic structure. The experience of many individuals is that the emergence of a need—say, hunger—will lead to an expectation or an imaginative anticipation or a phantasy of something or someone coming to gratify that need: a complex concept of a gratifying person or a gratifying thing. This phantasy, once it is constructed, remains. The memory-traces persist. Even when the satisfaction does not come, the concept—the phantasy—is not wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

   So one can keep thinking about this phantasy, making up stories about it, and so on. This does not depend directly on how often the god thing actually happens. If it does not happen so very regularly, the individual can build up two phantasies of a significant object (person)—of one who is good and satisfying, and of one who is uncontrollable and is sometimes satisfying and sometimes not. The fact that the latter is sometime satisfying, helps to maintain the phantasy of a satisfying good object, and the fact that the object sometime does not being satisfaction helps to maintain the phantasy of a bad object. It, too, persists Once a nasty or frightening concept has been established, it can keep alive and dynamic, independent of whatever good experiences may also be taking place. Objects are bad by virtue of having been experienced as painful, or as not-there when they should have been there, or as there when they were not wanted, or generally causing too much tension. If an individual is not frustrated, they will register what is going on. If the transition from feeling a need to having it met was smooth and without pain, the individual may not register it, at least in the very early stages of psychic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Howling, it seems clear to me that people do register pleasant sequences of exactment and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and frustration. I believe these pleasant sequences to be important in the development of a strong, realistically trusting and optimistic personality. However, in most cases bad objects are the first to be internalized. Still instincts are the motivating power because they have built-in drives toward objectives. The super-ego is a parental image created by a mixture of the individual’s experience of one’s own anxieties and one’s experience of one’s parents’ prohibitions and threats. The super-ego is a motivating power in so far as the individual took over the parental threats and prohibitions as part of its imagery (internalization). This made the super-ego an inner object with motivating power because the individual’s instinctual drive is thought to be directed to what the parent had; the energy of this drive, should not reach its target, was thought somehow to be diverted and deflected back to the individual. Thereafter the energy was available to the individual and reinforced the individual’s acceptance of parental prohibitions and threat. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

The super-ego is the limbo of abandoned object-cathexes’, that is a collection of instinctive energies which had not been expended in gratification, because they had not reached the object(ive) to which they had been directed. Most persons are not aware of their own narcissism, but only of those of its manifestations which do not overtly reveal it. Thus, for instance, they will feel an inordinate admiration for their parents or for their children, and they have no difficulty in expressing these feelings because such behaviour is usually judged optimistically as filial piety, parental affection, or loyalty; but if they were to express their feelings about their own person, such as “I am the most wonderful person in the World,” “I am better than anyone else,” et cetera, they would be suspected not only of being extraordinarily vain, but perhaps even of not being quite sane. On the other hand, if a person has achieved something that finds recognition in the field of art, science, sports, business, or politics, one’s narcissistic attitude appears not only to be realistic and rational, but is also constantly fed by the admiration of others. In these cases one can give full rein to one’s narcissism because it has been socially sanctioned and confirmed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

The problem pf narcissism and creativity is a very complex one. In present-day Wester society there is a peculiar interconnection between the narcissism of the celebrity and the needs of the public. The latter wants to be in touch with famous people because the life of the average person is empty and boring. The mass media live from selling fame, and thus everybody is satisfied: the narcissistic performer, the public, and the fame merchants. Among political leaders a high degree of narcissism is very frequent; it may be considered an occupational illness—or asset—especially among those who owe their power to their influence over mass audiences. If the leader is convinced of one’s extraordinary gifts and of one’s mission, it will be easier to convince the larger audiences who are attracted by humans who appear to be so absolutely certain. However, the narcissistic leader does not use one’s narcissistic charisma only as a means for political success; one needs success and applause for the sake of one’s own mental equilibrium. The idea of one’s greatness and infallibility is essentially based on one’s narcissistic grandiosity, not on one’s real achievements as a human being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

However, that does not mean one is nothing but a bluff; this is true frequently enough, but not always. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, for instance, were very narcissistic persons, yet they did no lack in important political achievements. However, these achievements were not such as to justify their feeling of self-assurance and unquestionable rightness often manifested in arrogance; at the same time, their narcissism was limited in comparison with that of others. When he lost the election of 1948, that explains why Churchill did not suffer from severe mental consequences. If Roosevelt had experienced defeat, I assume the same would have been the case, although the fact must not be ignored that even after political defeat, they would have retained a great number of admirers. Wilson’s case may be somewhat different; it would be a subject for study whether his political defeat did not create serious psychic problems that interacted with one’s physical illness. Some leaders prefer to die rather than to face defeat. And yet some can do without the narcissistic inflation because of their human core—conviction, conscience, love, and faith—is not very developed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

Extremely narcissistic persons are often forced to become famous, since otherwise they might become depressed or insane. However, it takes much talent—and appropriate opportunities—to influence others to such a degree that their applause validates these narcissistic dreams. Even when such people succeed, they are driven to seek further success, since for them failure carries the danger of collapse. Popular success is, as it were, their self-therapy against depression and madness. In fighting for their aims, they are really fighting for their sanity. The precept that there is no offense without a law (Nullum crimen sine lege), and the requirements it implies, also follow from the idea of a legal system. This precept demand that laws be known and expressly promulgated, that their meaning be clearly defined, that statutes be general both in statement and intent and not be used as a way  of harming particular individuals who may be expressly named (bills of attainder), that least the more severe offenses be strictly construed, and that penal laws should not be retroactive to the disadvantaged of those to whim they apply. These requirements are implicit in the notion of regulating behaviour by public rules. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

For if, say, statues are not clear in what they enjoin and forbid, the citizen does not know how one is to behave. Moreover, while there may be occasional bills of attainder and retroactive enactments, these cannot be pervasive or characteristic features of the system, else it must have another purpose. A tyrant might change laws without notice, and punish (if that is the right word) one’s subjects accordingly, because one take pleasure in seeing how long it takes them to figure out what the new rules are from observing the penalties one inflicts.  However, these rules would not be a legal system, since they would not serve to organize social behaviour by providing a basis for legitimate expectations. Finally, there are those precepts defining the notion of natural justice. These are guidelines intended to preserve the integrity of the judicial process. If laws are directives addressed to rational persons for their guidance, courts must be concerned to apply and to enforce these rules in an appropriate way. A conscientious effort must be made to determine whether an infraction has taken place and to impose the correct penalty. Thus a legal system must make provisions for conducting orderly trails and hearings; it must contain rules of evidence that guarantee rational procedures of inquiry. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

While there are variations in these procedures, the rule of law requires some form of due process: that is, a process reasonably designed to ascertain the truth, in ways consistent with the other ends of the legal system, as to whether a violation has taken place and under what circumstances. For example, judges must be independent and impartial, and no human may judge one’s own case. The mayor, senator, governor, or majority owner of a sports team cannot influence a judge’s ruling. Trials must be fair and open, but not prejudices by public clamour. The precepts of natural justice are to insure that the legal order will be impartially and regularly maintained. Now the connection of the rule of law with liberty is clear enough. Liberty is a complex of rights and duties defined by institutions. The various liberties specify things that we may choose to do, if we wish, and in regard to which, when the nature of the liberty makes it appropriate, others have a duty not to interfere. However, if the precept of no crime without a law is violated, say by statues, being vague and imprecise, what we are at liberty to do is likewise vague and imprecise. The boundaries of our liberty are uncertain. And to the extent that this is so, liberty is restricted by a reasonable fear of its exercise. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

The same sort of consequences follow if similar cases are not treated similarly, if the judicial process lacks its essential integrity, if the law does not recognize impossibility of performance as a defense, and so on. The principle of legality has a firm foundation, then, in the agreement of rational persons to establish for themselves the greatest equal liberty. To be confident in the possession and exercise of these freedoms, the citizens of a well-0rdered society will normally want the rule of law maintained. We can arrive at the same conclusion in a slightly different way. It is reasonable to assume that even in a well-ordered society the coercive powers of government are to some degree necessary for the stability of social cooperation. For although humans know that they share a common sense of justice and that each wants to adhere to the existing arrangements, they may nevertheless lack full confidence in one another. They may suspect that some are not doing their part, and so they may be tempted not to do theirs. The general awareness of these temptations may eventually cause the scheme to break down. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

The suspicion that others are not honouring their duties and obligations is increased by the fact that in the absence of the authoritative interpretation and enforcement of the rules, it is particularly easy to find excuses for breaking them. Thus even under reasonably ideal conditions, it is hard to imagine, for example, a successful income tax scheme on a voluntary basis. Such an arrangement is unstable. The role of an authorized public interpretation of rules supported by collective sanctions is precisely to overcome this instability. By enforcing a public system of penalties government removes the grounds for think that others are not complying with the rules. For this reason alone, a coercive sovereign is presumably always necessary, even though in a well-ordered society sanctions are not severe and many never need to be imposed. Rather, the existence of effective penal machinery serves as human’s security to one another. Knowing what things the law penalizes and knowing that these are within their power to do or not to do, citizens can draw up their plans accordingly. One who complies with the announced rules need never fear an infringement of one’s liberty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

Unless citizens are able to know what the law is and are given a fair opportunity to take its directive into account, penal sanction should not apply to them. This principle is simply the consequence of regarding a legal system as an order of public rules addressed to rational persons in order to regulate their cooperation, and of giving the appropriate weight to liberty. I believe that is view of responsibility enables us to explain most of the excuses and defenses recognized by the criminal law under the heading of mens rea and that it can be serves as a guide to legal reform. The ideal theory requires an account of penal sanctions as a stabilizing device and indicates the manner in which this part of partial compliance theory should be worked out. In particular, the principle of liberty lead to the principle of responsibility. The moral dilemmas that arise in partial compliance theory are also to be viewed with the priority of liberty in mind. Thus we can imagine situations of an unhappy sort in which it may be permissible to insist less strongly on the precepts of the rule of law being followed. Any injustice in the social order is bund to take its toll; it is impossible that its consequences should be entirely canceled out. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

In applying the principle of legality we must keep in mind the totality of rights and duties that defines the liberties and adjust its claims accordingly. If we are to mitigate the loss of freedom from social evils that cannot be removed, and to aim for the least injustice that conditions allow, sometimes we may be forced to allow certain breached. Now, it is always true from the beginning to the end of the Bible, as well as of human history, that human deliverance comes from a personal relationship with God established in God’s gracious love and power. However, the law is an essential part of that relationship. The inadequacy of human effort taken by itself is simply assumed. Still, the law was given as an essential meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways. God is the only restorer of souls. When those walking in personal relationship with God take one’s law into their heart, that law, as a living principle, quickens and restores connection and order to the flagging soul. However, that never happens in the absence of the personal presence and gracious action of God with the person involved. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

Thus some of the greatest assurances of God’s personal presence are found in the Old Testament. In the book of Isaiah, for example: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water…that they may see and recognize, and consider and gain insight as well, that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it,” reports Isaiah 41.10, 18, 20. Spirit, covenant, and law always go hand in hand within the path of spiritual formation, for it is the path of one who walks with God. Rational creatures are masters of their own acts; and for this reason certain special expressions of the divine will are assigned to their acts, inasmuch as God ordains rational creatures to act voluntarily and of themselves. Other creatures act only as moved by the divine operation; therefore only operation and permission are concerned with these. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

All evil of sin, though happening in many ways, agrees in being out of harmony with the divine will. Hence with regard to evil, only one expression is assigned, that of probation. On the other hand, good stands in various relations to the divine goodness, since there are good deeds without which we cannot attain to the fruition of that goodness, and these are the subject of precept; and there are others by which we attain to it more perfectly, and these are the subject of counsel. Or it may be said that counsel is not only concerned with the obtaining of greater good; but also with the avoiding of lesser evils. Although the possibility of this discovery and awareness of God and establishment in it has always been with every human at every moment, the possibility is not. For one has to develop the equipment for maturing from the terrestrial being through human’s gathers experience to this full establishment in full union with one’s highest being. The savage may get the glimpse, and does, but this is only a beginning, not an end. We came from God and shall return to God, but that is an oversimplification which generally leads to misunderstanding. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

If not on our part then on God’s if that is the case, then all this long pilgrimage with all its sufferings becomes a senseless waste of time and an idiotic expenditure of energy. It is like banging one’s head against a wall in order to enjoy the relief which follows when the actions ends. The Infinite Being, whose Consciousness and Power is behind the Universe of history, can itself have no history, for it is beyond time, evolution, change, development, can have no purpose which is gainful to itself, cannot be made the object of human thought correctly because it utterly transcends the limitations of such thought. However, all this is not to say that the World-Mind’s activity is meaningless, Idea-less, and fruitless. The very contrary is the case. However, because the causation is shown to be illusory, and the cosmos uncreated and unending, this does not mean that our cosmology denies the truth of evolution. It denies only the conventional attitude towards evolution. For it takes all change and hence all progress out of the realm of ultimate reality and relegated them to where they belong, to the realm of immediate appearance. Just as there have been misconceptions about the role played by the personal ego and the physical ego in the life of humankind—misconceptions which have arisen by holding on to ideas which are out of their time and place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

So the question must be asked, did these egos come by a process which launched them on a path where, the dew-drop slips into the shining sea, where the ego is utterly annihilated, where the personal self is completely dissolved in a sort of mass-consciousness, where all that it has gained from experience, all that it has learned from intelligence, is to be dissolved and thrown away as futile and useless although the ages upon ages have been taken for the process? Or will there unfold a higher type of individuality, one that is free because it has earned its freedom; free to exist in harmony with the universal harmony, with the Universal Mind. If anyone finds anything in this Universe which to complain, if one criticizes its defects and deficiencies, its evils and imperfections, let one remember that a Universe which is perfect in the sense that one means does not and could not exist. Only God is perfect. Anything else, even any Universe, being distinct from God, cannot also be perfect as Go without becoming God—when it would itself vanish. Nevertheless, even if they never attain it, its divine origin and sustenance are revealed in the fact that all things and all beings in its strive for perfection. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

This is what evolution means and this is the secret spring being it—the quest for perfection. For in seeking to return to their source, they are compelled to seek its perfection too. That is, they are compelled to evolve from lower to higher states and forms, from evil conditions and characteristics to ideal ones. It is not a game of hide-and-seek that God is playing with humans, not a sport for God’s own amusement as some believe, but a process of evolvement intended to give humans insight into the Real and power for co-operative participation. It is a treasure-hunt through many Earthly lives. We murmur against the World’s obstructiveness to our aspirations: the body is our stumbling-block. Yet if we had to live always as disembodies spirits, our spiritual development would need an immeasurably longer time to accomplish itself. The sharper focus of physical consciousness quickens our pace. Humans, in their earlier phases of being, were connected with God and aware of it. However, this connection lacked one’s own control. Eventually, to fulfil the purpose of evolution, they lost this connection and reawaken this awareness by their own efforts and out of one’s own inner activity, through one’s own desiring and one’s own individual freedom. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

What has one gained by this change to compensate the loss? One’s consciousness has become more sharply focused and consequently more clearly aware. Our source is in God; our growth is but a return to God, made fully conscious as we were not before. The immediate purpose of human incarnation and evolution is to develop a true and full self-consciousness at all levels from the lowest to the highest. The human who does not know oneself beyond the physical intellectual ego is still only half-conscious. As a human truly evolves, one is more guided more and more by intelligence and consciousness. It is a false evolvement which guides one into cunning and selfishness. The idea of human perfection would mean the attainment of a static condition, but nowhere in nature do we find such condition. Every thing is in a state of becoming. Reality is motion. Becoming and motion are processes, but Being, pure consciousness, is not. In the experience of a glimpse we discover this fact, Being transcends becoming, but it is only God who lives on the plane of Being; we humans many visit it, even for long periods, but we must return.  What a happy people we should be with the knowledge we have that this Earthly probation is not to prepare us to die, but to live; that the Father’s desire for us is that we may avoid every error and receive every truth. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

By applying truth in out lives we become more like God, and become worthy to dwell with Him. We should think of it seriously because this is a serious matter. We must look into our own lives, not the lives of others, but out own lives and discover if we are prepared for the great future life, if we were called hence tomorrow whether we would be prepared to given an account for our Earthly deeds. Remember that it is the intelligence that you acquire that is eternal, the truth which you learn here and apply in your lives, the knowledge and experience you gain and profit by—these you will take with you when you go home. The thing that God has given to you that is worth more than all the rest is and the opportunity to obtain eternal life in the celestial kingdom and a gift far greater than silver and gold. God is not only of bliss, but of faithful and dedicated love, and may He be our model and our guide in our lives. Because of Jesus Christ’s righteous life, the Saviour is the perfect example to all, and His resurrection is the first assurance to humanity that, we, too, shall come forth from the tomb. At the end of my life, I put my trust in God. Ancient Wise Father, please cover me with your cloak as I walk in this valley that leads to you land. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Lord of Heaven, I greet you with arms wide open in trust as I learn to serve you in this realm. I will enter the World beyond Worlds with my eyes open and my head lifted, ready to experience its unique wonder, no loess beautiful than in this World I have known. I will go to your Land of Youth, to rest in your halls, O God of my people, to commune with the spirits of those who have gone this and who wait for me, there on the other side. The Lord has established His throne in the Heavens; and His kingdom rules over all. Let the Heavens be glad, and let the Earth rejoice; and let them say among the nations: “The Lord reigns.” The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King forever and ever. The Lord is King for ever and ever; the heathens are perished out of His land. The Lord brings the design of the heathens to naught; He makes their thoughts of no effect. Many are the thoughts in a human’s heart; but it is the Lord’s counsel that shall stand. The counsels of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations. For God spoke, and the World came into being; God commanded, and it stood firm. For the Lord hath chosen America; He has desired it for His habitation. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Cresleigh Homes

If you also have a tupperware obsession, you may have already heard the storage space at #BrightonStation Residence 4 calling your name. 😉 Shown here with our extended island option, this kitchen is perfect for everyone from home cooks to professional slime makers. 🤗

View different layouts with the interactive floor plan tool on our website. Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-4/

Stylishly spacious appointments. The Brighton Station’s residence 4 offers inviting covered entry and welcoming foyer open immediately onto the expansive great room. There is also a form dining room, and desirable large covered patio beyond. The well-designed gourmet kitchen is enhanced by a expansive center island with breakfast bar, plenty of counter and cabinet space, and generous walk-in pantry. And imagine all the possibilities you have with your private backyard!
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