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The Quality of Mercy is Not Strained, it Droppeth as the Gentle Rain from Heaven Upon the Place Beneath!
Although the World is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. Revolution does not occur when things get bad enough but when things get better—when small improvements generate rising aspirations and decrease tolerance for long-existing injustices. The “make things worse” approach is not only strategic, it is not even revolutionary—it seeks unconsciously to preserve, while at the same time discrediting, parental authority. The emotional logic behind it might be expressed as: “if things get bad enough, they will see that it is unfair.” As most people know, radical movements are always plagued with people who want to lose, want to be stopped, want in effect to be put under protective custody. The make-it-worse position is based on the same assumption as the “backlash” position, which argues that “if you go too far, they will turn against you.” Both view public opinion as a kind of judicial Good Parent, and exaggerate the importance of transient public sentiment. Both underestimate the importance, for creating change, of prolonged exposure to new ideas. There is no such thing as a situation so intolerable that human beings must necessarily rise up against it. People can bear it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
The job of the revolutionary is to show people that things can be better and to move them directly and unceasingly word that goal. The better things get the more aware people become that they need not tolerate the injustices and miseries that remain. By the same token, the worst backlash situation is always better than the pre-change condition. Backlash implies that people once accepted and then came to reject change, but this is not the case. It is merely that the significance of the change—the reality of it—was not yet understood. Backlash is simply part of the educative process—the process of learning that change means change. It is behaviour and institutions that the true revolutionary seeks to change—the good or bad opinion of those around one is of little consequence. The backlash-avoider is saying, “if we go too far, people will think badly of me.” Thus is seems probably if the privileges and powers of legislators and judges say, improve the situation of the less favoured, they improve that of citizens generally. However, procedural justice is rare, if not impossible, in cases of much practical interest. Imperfect procedural justice is exemplified by criminal trial. The desired outcome is if and only if the defendant has committed the offense which one is charged with, one should be declared guilty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
The trial procedure is framed to search for and to establish the truth in this regard. However, it seems impossible to design the legal rules so that they always lead to the correct result. The theory of trials examines which procedures and rules of evidence, and the like, are best calculated to advance this purpose consistent with the other ends of the law. Different arrangements for hearing cases may reasonably be expected in different circumstances to yield the right results, not always but at least most of the time. A trial, then, is an instance of imperfect procedural justice. Even though the law is carefully followed, and the proceedings fairly and properly conducted, it may reach the wrong outcome. An innocent person may be found guilty, a guilty person may be set free. In such cases we speak of a miscarriage of justice: the injustice springs from no human fault but from a fortuitous combination of circumstances which defeats the purpose of the legal rules. The characteristic mark of imperfect procedural justice is that while there is an independent criterion for the correct outcome, there is no feasible procedure which is sure to lead to it. By contrast, pure procedural justice obtains when there is no independent criterion for the right result: instead there is correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided that the procedure has been properly followed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
The situation of pure procedural justice is illustrated by gambling. If a number of persons engage in a series of fair bets, the distribution of cash after the last bet is fair, or at least not unfair, whatever this distribution is. I assume here that fair bets are those having a zero expectation of gain, that the bets are made voluntarily, that no one cheats, and so on. The betting procedure is fair and freely entered into under conditions that are fair. Thus the background circumstances define a fair procedure. Now any distribution of cash summing to the initial stock held by all individuals could result from a series of fair bets. In this sense all of these particular distributions are equally fair. A distinctive feature of pure procedural justice is that the procedure for determining the just result must actually be carried out; for in these cases there is no independent criterion by reference to which a definite outcome can be known to be just. Clearly we cannot say that a particular state of affairs is just because it could have been reached by following a fair procedure. This would permit far too much and would lead to absurdly unjust consequences. It would allow one to say that almost any distribution of good is just, or fair, since it could have come about as a result of fair gambles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Be not afraid of greatness: some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. What makes the final outcome of betting fair, or not unfair, is that the one which has arisen after a series of fair gambles. A fair procedure translates its fairness to the outcome only when it is actually carried out. In order, therefore, to apply the notion of pure procedural justice to distributive shares it is necessary to set up and to administer impartially a just system of institutions. Only against the background of a just basic structure, including a just political constitution and a just arrangement of economic and social institutions, can one say that the requisite just procedure exists. Suppose that law and government act effectively to keep markets competitive, resources fully employed, property and wealth (especially if private ownerships of the means of production is allowed) widely distributed by the appropriate forms of taxation, or whatever, and to guarantee a reasonable social minimum. Assume also that there is fair equality of opportunity underwritten by education for all; and that the others equal liberties are secured. Then it would appear that the resulting distribution of income and the pattern of expectations will tend to satisfy the difference principle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
In this complex of institutions, which we think of as establishing social justice in the modern state, the advantages of better situated improved the condition of the least favoured. Or when they do not, they can be adjusted to do so, for example, by setting the social minimum at the appropriate level. As these institutions presently exist they are riddle with grave injustices. However, there presumably are ways of running them compatible with their basic design and intention so that the difference principle is satisfied consistent the demands of liberty and fair equality of opportunity. It is this fact which underlies our assurance that these arrangements can be made just. It is evident that the role of the principle of fair opportunity is to insure that the system of cooperation is one of pure procedural justice. Unless it is satisfied, distributive justice could not be left to take care of itself, even within a restricted range. Now the great practical advantage of pure procedural justice is that it is no longer necessary in meeting the demands of justice to keep track of the endless variety of circumstances and the changing relative positions of particular persons. One avoids the problem of defining principles to cope with the enormous complexities which would arise if such details were relevant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
It is a mistake to focus attention on the varying relative position of individuals and to require that every change, considered as a single transaction viewed in isolation, be in itself just. It is the arrangement of the basic structure which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view. Unless we are prepared to criticize it from the standpoint of a relevant representative person in some particular position, we have no complaint against it. Thus the accepted of the two principles constitutes an understanding to discard as irrelevant as a matter of social justice much of the information and many of the complications of everyday life. In pure procedural justice, then, distributions of advantaged are not appraised in the first instance by confronting a stock of benefits available with given desires and needs of known individuals. The allotment of the items produced takes place in accordance with the public system of rules, and this system determines what is produced, how much is produced, and by what means. It also determines legitimate claims the honouring of which yields the resulting distribution. Thus in this kind of procedural justice the correctness of the distribution is founded on the justice of the scheme of cooperation from which it arises and on answering the claims of individuals engaged in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
A distribution cannot be judged in isolation from the system of which it is the outcome or from what individuals have done in good faith in the light of established expectations. If it is asked in the abstract whether one distribution of a given stock of things to definite individuals with known desires and preferences is better than another, then there is simply no answer to this question. The conception of the two principles does not interpret the primary problem of distributive justice as one of allocative justice. By contrast the allocative conception of justice seems naturally to apply when a given collection of goods is to be divided among definite individuals with known desires and needs. The goods to be allotted are not produced by these individuals, nor do these individuals stand in any existing cooperative relations. Since there are no prior claims on the things to be distributed, it is natural to share them out according to desires and needs, or even to maximize the balance of satisfaction. Justice becomes a kind of efficiency, unless equality is preferred. Suitably generalized, the allocative conception lead to the classical utilitarian view. For as we have seen, this doctrine assimilates justice to the benevolence of the impartial spectator and the later in turn to the most efficient design of institutions to promote the greatest balance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
On this conception society is thought of as so many separate individuals each defining a separate line along which rights and duties are to be assigned and scarce means of satisfaction allocated in accordance with rules so as to give the most complete fulfillment of desire. Utilitarianism does not interpret the basic structure as a scheme of pure procedural justice. For the utilitarian has, in principle anyway, an independent standard for judging all distributions, namely, whether they produce the greatest net balance of satisfaction. Institutions are more or less imperfect arrangements for bringing about this end. Thus given existing desires and preference, and the natural continuation into the future which they allow, the stateman’s aim is to set up those social schemes that will best approximate an already specific goals. Since these arrangements are subject to the unavoidable constraints and hindrances of everyday life, the basic structure is a case of imperfect procedural justice. The two parts of the second principle are lexically ordered. Thus we have one lexical ordering within another. However, when necessary, this ordering can be modified in the light of the general conception of justice. The advantage of the special conception is that is has a definite shape and suggests certain questions for investigation, for example, under what conditions if any would the lexical ordering be chosen? #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
Our inquiry is given a particular direction and is no longer confined to generalities. Of course, this conception of distributive shares is obviously a great simplification. It is designed to characterize in a clear way a basic structure that makes use of the idea of pure procedural justice. However, all the same we should attempt to find simple concepts that can be assembled to give a reasonable conception of justice. The notions of the basic structure, of the veil of ignorance, of a lexical order, of the least favoured position, as well as of pure procedural justice are all examples of this. By themselves none of these could be expected to work, but properly put together they may serve well enough. It is too much to suppose that there exists for all or even most moral problems a reasonable solution. Perhaps only a few can be satisfactorily answered. In any case social wisdom consist in framing institutions so that intractable difficulties do not often arise and in accepting the need for clear and simple principles. The “war on poverty” may have done very little to alleviate poverty and nothing at all to remove its causes, but it raised a lot of expectations, created many visions of the possibilities for change, altered a large number of people to existing inadequacies in the system and to the relative efficacy of various strategies for eliminating them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
Reform and change are thus complementary rather than antagonistic. Together they make it possible continually to test the limits of what can be done. Some people never know whether the door is unlocked because they are afraid to try it. Others, on the other hand, miss many opportunities for small advances because they are unwilling to settle for so little. There are often times conflicting forces in society. One seeks to remake the World to make it tolerable for us to live in, the other tries to cure us of our need to remake the World. Now the first task of a system is to maintain itself, and every system must therefore contain mechanisms to reactivate continually the motivational eccentricities that gave rise to it in the first place. Still, one cannot avoid a feeling of skepticism when it is proposed that institutional change alone will bring about motivational change. Closing down gambling casinos may reduce the volume of gambling but it does not end it. Only when institutions have been analyzed, discredited, disassembled, and the motivational forces that gave rise to them redirected into alternative spheres of gratification only then can change take place. When people can predict and influence their daily social encounters with greater ease, then they feel less manipulated and intruded upon. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
The longing for quiet, privacy, independence, initiative, and some open space says that something is preventing it from being gratified. These qualities are a foundation-stone of American society—of the suburbs. The total experience of the total humans then is of overcoming alienation, and of the subject-object split in perceiving the World; the uncovering of the unconscious means the overcoming of affective contamination and cerebration; it means the depression, the abolition of the split within myself between the universal human and the social humans; it means the arriving at the state of the immediate grasp of reality, without distortion and without interference by intellectual reflections; it means overcoming the craving to hold on to the ego, to worship it; it means giving up the illusion of an indestructible separate ego, which is to be enlarged, preserved and as the Egyptian pharaohs hoped to preserve themselves as mummies of eternity. To be conscious of the unconscious means to be open, responding, to have nothing and to be. If the new culture fails, it will be corrupted into a reactionary parody of itself. Much like we are seeing from many public and private institutions and people in society today. The problem is the we spend hundreds of billions of dollars ending lives and punishing people, but almost nothing to enhance the joys of living. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
Policies are rules are becoming an excuse for tyrannical force. It is like we no longer care about humanity or beautifying our communities. I recognize the desperate longing in America for stability, for some fixed reference point when all else is swirling about in endless flux. However, to cling to oppression and threats is the act of a hopeless addict, who, when one’s increasingly expensive habit has destroyed everything else in one’s life, embraces one’s destroyer more fervently than ever. The radical change I am suggesting here is only the reinstatement of stability itself. It may appear highly unappealing, like all cold-turkey cures, but nothing else will stop the spiraling disruption to which our old culture premises have brought us. Most old-cultural premises are built upon a self-deception: we pretend that through it we actually achieve social stability—that technological change can be confined within its own sphere. Yet obviously this is not so. Technological instability creates social stability as well, and we lose our way. California’s ban on gasoline powered cars by 2030 is an example. Imagine how many people and businesses that will harm. That is just nine years away. How long is it since anyone has said: “this is a pernicious invention, which will bring more misery than happiness to humankind?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Some comments occur only in horror and science-fiction films, and even there, in the face of the most calamitous outcomes that jaded and overtaxed brains can device, the audience often feels a twinge of discomfort over the burning laboratory or the lost secret. We need to develop a human-value index—a criterion that assesses the ultimate worth of an invention or a system or a product in terms of its total impact on human life in terms of ends rather than means. We would then evaluate the achievements of medicine not in terms of human-hours or prolonged (and often comatose) life, or the volume of drugs sold, but in terms f the overall increase (or decrease) in human beings feeling healthy. We would evaluate city planning and housing programs not in terms of the number of bodies incarcerated in a given location, or the number of millions given to contractors, but in terms of the extent to which people take joy in their surroundings. We would evaluate the worth of an industrial firm not in terms of the money made of the number of widgets manufactured or sold, or how distended the organizations has become, but in terms of how much pleasure or satisfaction has been given to people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
It is not without significance that we tend to appraise a nation today in terms of its gross national product—a phrase whose connotations speaks for themselves. Americans are trained by advertising media to identify immediately with the person who actually uses the new products. When one thinks of owning a flying saucer, the American imagines oneself inside it, flying about and having fun. One does not think of oneself trying to sleep and having others Americans roaring by one’s window. Nor does one think of oneself trying to enjoy peace and quiet in the country with other Americans flying above. Nor does one even think of other Americans accompanying one in one’s flight and colliding with one as they all crowd into the city. The American never thinks of other Americans at all—it is one’s most characteristic trait that one imagines oneself to be alone on the continent. Furthermore, Americas are always hung over from some blow dealt them by their technological environment and are always looking for a fix—for some pleasurable escape from what technology has itself created. All of the people packed into downtown centers now are watched by cameras and police. Because of the influx of the population, there is always construction going on and unnecessary noise. Alarms going on in the middle of the night, a leaf blower party waking them up in the morning. No parking. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
As the downtown community becomes less and less satisfying and pleasurable to be, people more and more look to escape from it. The saucers will simply extend this process further. People will take to their saucers to escape the hell of a saucer-filled environment, and the more they do the more unbearable that hell will become. How far can it go? What new inventions will be offered the staggering American to help one blow up one’s life? Will one finally flee to outer space, leaving the nest one has so industriously fouled behind one forever? Can one really find some means to propel oneself so fast that one will escape one’s own inventive destructiveness? The old-culture American needs to reconsider one’s commitment to technological “progress.” Cars have some many computers in them now that they are so expensive to buy. If we fail to kick the technology habit, we may retain our culture and lose our lives. Transitions are always fraught with risk and discomfort and insecurity, but we do not enjoy the luxury of postponement. It has taken us a long time to realize that seeking to surpass others might be pathological, and trying to enjoy and cooperate with others healthy, rather than the other way around. We continually turn to technology to save us from having to cooperate with each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
I can buy shoddy goods and poisoned food, and satisfy ersatz needs. Our refusal to recognize our common economic destiny leads to the myth that if we all overcharge each other we will be better off. This self-delusion is even more extraordinary when we consider issues of health and safety. To some extend wealthy does purchase immunity from the effects of the crimes perpetrated to obtain it. Executives can live in the country, instead of cities polluted with noise and poor air quality. However, we cannot understand the irresponsibility of some corporations without recognizing that it includes and assumes a willingness on the part of corporate leaders to endanger themselves and their families for the short-run profit of the corporation. Humans have always been able to subordinate human values to the mechanisms they create. We cannot expect, after all, that everyone will arise one morning resolved simultaneously to act on different premises, and thus miraculously change the society. Competitive environments are difficult to modify, since whoever takes the first step is extremely like to go under. Americans need to be motivated by something other than greed. People engaged in helping others, in making communities viable, in making the environment more attractive, would be able to live more comfortably if they wished. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
There is no particular reason why the United States of American could not become the center of the most beautiful, benign, and exciting culture the World has ever known. We cannot accept sayings like, “It is what it is,” or “It is a sign of the time,” we have to do better. The ability to maintain a permanent concentration of power depends upon the ability to maintain a healthy and strong population. We have to detach power from those who hate life and would rather die themselves than see others enjoying it. This involves overcoming of greed in all forms, whether it is the greed for possession, fame, or for affection; it implies overcoming narcissistic self-glorification and the illusion of omnipotence. It implies, furthermore, the overcoming of the desire to submit to an authority who solves one’s own problem of existence. Just as one has recognized that the cure of a symptom and the prevention of future symptom formations is not possible without the analysis and change of the character, one must also recognize that the change of this or that neurotic character trait is not possible without pursuing the more radical aim of a complete transformation of the person. When the achievement of idolatry, destructiveness, greed for property or fame breaks down, one’s sanity is threatened. The cure of the potential insanity lies only in the change in attitude from split and alienation to the creative, immediate grasp of and response to the World. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
Someone may be cured of a symptom, but one cannot be cured of a character neurosis. Humans are not things, humans are not a case, and the analyst does not cure anyone by treating one as an object. We must take steps to reach full enlightenment. If one candle is brought into an absolutely dark room, the darkness disappears, and there is light. However, if ten or a hundred or a thousand candles are added, the room will become brighter and brighter. Yet the decisive change was brought about by the first candle which penetrated the darkness. One person can make a difference. People usually attract like beings. Set an example. Do good and others will follow. What happens in the analytic process? A person sense for the first time that one is vain, that one is frightened, that one hates, while consciously one had believed oneself to be modest, brave and loving. The new insight may hurt one, but it opens the door; it permits one to stop projecting on others what one represses in oneself. One proceeds; one experiences the infant, the child, the adolescent, the criminal, the insane, the saint, the artist, the unity within oneself; one gets more deeply in touch with humanity, with the universal being; one represses less, is freer, has less need to project, to cerebrate. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Then one may experience for the first time how one sees colours, how one sees a ball roll, how one’s ears are suddenly fully opened to music, when up to now one only listened to it; in sensing one’s oneness and others, one may have a first glimpse of the illusion that one’s separate individual ego is something to hold on to, to cultivate to save; one will experience the futility of seeking the answer to life by having oneself, rather than by being and becoming oneself. All these are sudden, unexpected experiences with no intellectual content; ye afterwards the person feels freer, stronger, less anxious than one ever felt before. Transformation of unconscious into consciousness is the way we approach enlightenment. By becoming less strange to ourselves, we go through this process of becoming less estranged to the World; because we have opened up communication with the Universe within ourselves, we have opened up communication with the Universe outside. False consciousness disappears, and with it the polarity consciousness. A new realism dawns in which the mountains are mountains again. We throw light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualization which are necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
Ministering to one another in time of need is an important means by which the Holy Spirit mediates His grace to us. We do need each other’s help to appropriate the grace of God. “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, one’s friend can help one up. However, pity the person who falls and has no one to help one up,” reports Ecclesiastes 4.9-10. Self-sufficient independence seems to be a hallmark of western culture. However, none of us is self-sufficient—even in our personal, private relationship with God. God leads us to specific people with whom we can develop such a mutual relationship. Do not be surprised, however, if God answers your prayer for a friend or friends in an unexpected way. He may bring into your life someone whom you have not thought as a possibility. Furthermore, do not just share your struggles with your friend, and above all, do not just commiserate with one another. Remember, we are to be ministers of grace to each other. We are to seek to be avenues of the Holy Spirit to help the other person appropriate the grace of God. Do you think no one is concerned for you, no one cares for you? If so, then you need one or more friends who will be ministers of grace to you. And very likely, you need to be a minister of grace to someone else. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
We must not, however, expect, that uniformity of human actions should be carried to such a length, as that all humans, in the same circumstances, will always act precisely in the same manner, without making any allowance for the diversity of characters, prejudices, and opinions. Such a uniformity in every particular, is found in no part of nature. On the contrary, from observing the variety of conduct in different humans, we are enabled to form a greater variety of maxims, which still suppose a degree of uniformity and regularity. “And it came to pass in the fifty and fourth year there were many dissensions in the church, and there was also contention among the people, insomuch that there was much bloodshed. And the rebellious part were slain and driven out of the land, and they did go unto the king of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did endeavour to stir up the Lamanites to war against the Nephites; but behold, the Lamanites were exceedingly afraid, insomuch that they would not hearken to the words of those dissenters. However, it came to pass in the fifty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, there were dissenters who went up from the Nephites unto the Lamanites; and they succeeded with those others in stirring them up to anger against the Nephites; and they were all that year preparing for war. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
“And in the fifty and seventh year they did come down against the Nephites to battle, and they did commence the work of death; yea, insomuch that in the fifty and eight year of the reign of the judges they succeeded in obtaining possession of the land of Zarahemla; yea, and also all the lands, even unto the land which was near the land of Bountiful. And the Nephites and the armies of Moronihah were driven even unto the land of Bountiful; and there they did fortify against the Lamanites, from the west sea, even unto the east; it being a day’s journey for a Nephite, on the line which they had fortified and stationed their armies to defend their north country. And thus those dissenters of the Nephites, with the help of a numerous army of the Lamanites, had obtained all the possession of the Nephites which was in the land southward. And all this was done in the fifty and eight and ninth years of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass in the sixtieth year of the reign of the judges, Moronihah did succeed with his armies in obtaining many parts of the land; yea, they regained many cities which had fallen into the hands of the Lamanites. And it came to pass in the sixty and first year of the reign of the judges they succeeded in regaining even the half of all their possessions. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
“Now this great loss of the Nephites, and the great slaughter which was among them, would not have happened had it not been for their wickedness and their abomination which was among them; yea, and it was among those also who professed to belong to the church of God. And it was because of the pride of their hearts, because of the exceeding riches, yea, it was because of their oppression to the poor, withholding their food from the hungry, withholding their clothing from the naked, and smiting their humble brethren upon the cheek, making a mock of that which was sacred, denying the spirit of prophecy and of revelation, murdering, plundering, lying, stealing, committing adultery, rising up in great contentions, and deserting away into the land of Nephi, among the Lamanites—and because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands. However, behold, Moronihah did preach many things unto the people because of their iniquity, and also Nephi and Lehi, who were the sons of Helaman, did preach many things unto the people, yea, and did prophesy many things unto the concerning their iniquities, and what should come unto them if they did not repent of their sins. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
“And it came to pass that they did repent, and inasmuch as they did repent he did venture to lead them forth from place to place, and from city to city, even until they had regained the one-half of their property and the one-half of all their lands. And thus ended the sixty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass in this sixty and second year of the reign of the judges, that Moronihah could obtain no more possessions over the Lamanites. Therefore they did abandon their design to obtain the remainder of their lands, for so numerous were the Lamanites that it became impossible for the Nephites to obtain more power over them; therefore Moronihah did employ all his armies in maintaining those parts which he had taken. And it came to pass, because of the greatness of the number of the Lamanites the Nephites were in great fear, lest they should be overpowered, and trodden down, and slain, and destroyed. Yea, they began to remember the prophecies of Alma, and also the words of Mosiah; and they saw that they had been a stiffnecked people, and that they had set at naught the commandments of God; and that they had altered and trampled under their feet the laws of Mosiah, or what which the Lord commanded him to give unto the people. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
“And they saw that their laws had become corrupted, and that they had become wicked people insomuch that they were wicked even like unto the Lamanites. And because of their iniquity the church had begun to dwindle; and they began to disbelieve in the spirit of prophecy and in the spirit of revelation; and the judgments of God did stare them in the face. And they saw that they had become weak, like unto their brethren the Lamanites, and that the Spirit of the Lord did no more preserve them; yea, it had withdrawn from them because the Spirit of the Lord doth not dwell in unholy temples—therefore the Lord did cease to preserve them by his miraculous and matchless power, for they had fallen into a state of unbelief and awful wickedness; and they saw that the Lamanites were exceedingly more numerous than they, and expect they should cleave unto the Lord their God they must unavoidably perish. For behold, they saw that the strength of the Lamanites was as great as their strength, even humans for human. And thus had they fallen into this great transgression; yea, thus had become weak, because of their transgression, in the space of not many years,” reports Helaman 4.1-26. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Run before me into battle, Jesus Christ, protect me in my fight. Shaft of reason, light within me. Please clear sight and reason, open my eyes. Christ, please ride the storm with me. The protection of our Saviour is within me. The love of our Saviour is within my heart. Dear Lord in Heaven, pleasue guide my way. Open the way, open the way, Lord, please open the way. Disputer of passings, opener of gates, Lord, please guide me through. Open the way, Saviour. Watcher of the threshold, please guide me and guard me. Be my force and fire, strength of arms. With divine might, may Christ come. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. O Lord our God, be gracious unto Thy people of Israel and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of Israel. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. No one can more impressively set forth the truth, that only in doing God’s work can we enjoy His peace—that gift which the World can neither give nor take away is for those who know Him as the Fountain of good counsels and just works. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
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We Have No More Right to Consume Happiness without Producing it than to Consume Wealth without Producing it!
The truth is something you stumble into when you think you are going some place else. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. The basic principle underlying initiation rituals: “if I had to suffer so much pain and humiliation to get into this club, it must be a wonderful organization. To tame the savageness of humans and make gentle the life of this World is a prayer for our country and for our people. To suggest that we say a prayer for our country and our people is to acknowledge error—the fault that lies within Americans and must not be ascribed to alien, un-American influences. Nearly 50 percent of American between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than 33 percent consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.” When they were young People used to know more, not less, about geography because classroom lessons were still fresh in their minds. And 90 percent of students have no idea of the locations of four countries intimately linked to American interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The United States of America’s education system is not preparing young people for an increasingly global future. Cultural literacy is a desirable trait for a candidate in a presidential election. Many youths used to grow up and dream of being president, so that means we need to do a better job of preparing them. To raise questions about an individual’s intellectual qualifications carries more weight than anything else one can say about a person. One crucial qualification to determine if a person is competent is their intellectual ability to distinguish, in times of crises and on the daily basis, between worthwhile and worthless opinions. One of the major concerns about those who have proven themselves competent is the corruption of intellectuals by power than the potential corruption of government policy by intellectuals whom on one had elected. Many Americans rely on television as their only source of information for whatever they know about influences on government policy. At some point a devourer always overreaches oneself, like the witch or gain in folk tales who tries to drink up the sea and bursts, or like the vacuum monster in Yellow Submarine who ultimately devours himself and disappears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
As it stands, 66 percent of Americans cannot name three branches of government or come up with the name of a single Supreme Court justice. Americans who get their news primarily from television rather the newspaper know much less about the judicial system than newspaper readers. Furthermore, 66 percent of newspaper readers, but only 40 percent of television news watchers, know hat the primary mission of the Supreme Court is to interpret the United States Constitution. When people are ignorant of the high court’s constitutional mandate, it is much easier to convince them that justices are supposed to reflect public opinion—and that something has gone wrong when a court hands down a decision that contradicts popular wisdom. More than 50 percent of adults do not even know that there are nine Supreme Court justices. About half of adults—but just about 41 percent of teenagers—can name the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial). Only 25 percent of adult—but 20 percent of teenagers—know that there are one hundred U.S. senators. The vast majority of both adults and teens have no idea of when or by whom the Constitution was written (James Madison in 1787). Among teenagers, nearly 98 percent cannot name the Chief Justice of the United States (John G. Roberts). #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We are still operating under the illusions that all Americans are playing by the same rules. This is our civic present and, if nothing is done to stem the rising tide of ignorance among the young, our even more disturbing civic future is doomed. So long as our society had a common point of moral reference there was a tendency for conflict to be resolved by compromise, and this comprise had a moral as well as practical basis. People no longer learn anything for the mistakes of others, instead they repeat them and expect a good outcome. However, the enemy is too dangerous to give them the benefit of the doubt; their crimes require emergency measures. Change must therefore affect the motivational roots of a society or it is not change at all. When the mind of the country is taught to aim at low objects, it eats upon itself. Despite the steady rise in the formal educational level of the population, so many Americans seems to know less and less. Technology, our servant, has also become our master, as the information highway—potentially the greatest tool for the diffusion of learning ever devised—has, for too many, become a highway to the far-flung regions of junk thought. At times like this, people must be willing to consider ideas, and even makes changes in behaviour, that they generally preferred to avoid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
To seize the moment, Americans must recognize that we are living though an overarching crises and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think. Such a recognition has to come from ordinary citizens as well as their elected representative, from nonintellectuals and intellectuals alike. The first essential step is negative: we must give up the delusion that technology can supply the fix for a condition that, however much it is abetted by our new machines, is essentially nontechnological. That some children from affluent homes can pass undemanding standardized tests does not mean that they are learning what citizens of a functional democracy need to know. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy. However, reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe it can do it again. Americans must consider their behaviour from a different perspective. The job of higher education is not to instruct students in popular culture but to expose them to something better. Genuine intellectuals—we need to hear more, not less, from reality-based intellectual about all of the social problems that have been exacerbated by people ignorance—that is, all social problems. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
If we persist in our efforts and finally attack the dysfunction of the system at its motivational roots, we may indeed be successful. In any case, there is n such thing as “compromise”: we are either strong enough to lever the train onto a new track or it stays on the old one or it is derailed. Everything rests on the assumption that the World does not contain the wherewithal to satisfy the needs of its human inhabitants. From this it follows that people must compete with one another for these scarce resources—lie, swindle, steal, and kill, if necessary. These basic assumptions create the danger of a “war of all against all.” I do not believe that our society can long continue on its old premises without destroying itself and everything else. Nor do I believe it can contain or rest the gathering forces of change without committing suicide in the process. The nation’s memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America’s best mind. Intellectuals must be willing to step up and bring their knowledge, instead of a lust for power, to the public square; for educators devoted to teaching and learning rather than to the latest fads in pop psychology. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
None of these suggestions address the core problem created by the media—the pacifiers of the mind that permeate our homes, schools, and politics. These is little evidence to indicate that Americans have either the desire or the will to lessen their dependency on the easy satisfaction held out by the video and digital World. The old culture turned the volume down on emotional experience in order to concentrate on its dreams of glory, but the new culture has turned it up again. Too much stimulation makes the carrot hard to see. Good taste is a taste for carrots. Happy babies must learn early that the beautiful things in life are not free. It is unrealistic o expect people simply to turn off their television sets, computers, or smart phones, because infotainment addiction resembles compulsive eating rather than alcoholism or smoking: alcohol and nicotine can be eliminated, but both food and the media supply essential nutrients as well as nonessential junk. If this is truly the new American dream for the upbringing of future generations, it is painful to think about what the cultural landscape will look like a generation from now. If there is not enough resources to go around, then those who have more will use structural inequality to find ways to prolong their advantage, and even legitimate it though various devices. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The law itself, although philosophically committed to equality, is fundamentally a social device for maintaining structured systems of inequality (defining as crimes, for example, only those of theft and violence in which lower class persons engage). However, when White collar criminals steal from people, it is glorified and they usually receive less prison time, and people are less likely to kill them in their process of breaking the law because they have more money and are deemed more valuable by society. It is still considered permissible, for example, to kill someone who is stealing your property under certain conditions. This is especially true if that person is without property oneself—a wealthy kleptomaniac (in contrast to a poor looter) would probably be worth a murder trial if killed while stealing. A more trivial example can be found in the handing of noise controls. Police are called to prevent distraction by the joyous noises of laughter and song, but not to stop the harsh and abrasive roar of power saws, leaf blowers operating at illegal hours, air hammers, power mowers, snow blowers, and other baneful machines. However, do not burn your fireplace on a bad air quality day, even if you cannot afford to run the heater and need to use your fireplace, you will be fined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The rich and the poor have always been with us to some degree. However, there is a new culture that has emerged. What is significant about the new culture is that they do not necessarily care about the causes they represent, they do not even care that whatever cause they are taking up is a new trend, they are rejecting the foundation of American culture altogether. They are much given to acing out grandiose fantasies of taking society by storm, through achievement of wealth, power, and fame. Like so many of the more successful nineteenth century utopian communities (Oneida and Amana, for example), the puritans became corrupted by involvement in successful economic enterprise and the communal aspect was eroded away—another example of system being destroyed by what it attempts to ignore. Just as a plane needs to be fixed in space by at least one more pint than the two necessary to a line, so any complementary schism needs an additional referent in order to avert mutual destruction. This has usually been popularly recognized in any situation where civil warfare threatens in either the individual or social dimension. It frequently takes an external enemy to bring the individual together with oneself, to reunite the quarreling family, to being the nation together, to restructure the idea. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
However, it is not necessary that the “third force” be negative and threatening; a common goal can unite the split group or individual. And in fact that is the essential aspect even under negative pressure. The chaos and lack of discipline is what we are most afraid of confronting and that is what we are most anxious and insecure that we have ourselves created. If society remains in a state of internecine warfare, it will bring either the group or the individual to its own destruction long before its time. In our fear of burning the candle at both ends we burn it in the middle and thus fall apart sooner. One would not have neurosis if the things fought against were not sufficiently nourished by one’s environment to enable in the first place. If we were perfect, if we had the exclusive solution, there would be no anxiety, no doubt, no disease. However, in fact, there has always been something else left to be desires and in an expanding Universe one would have to have colossal conceit, superhuman knowledge and experience, to ever not feel that something remains unexplored in this Universe. Every art, every science, every system has at one time or another found itself unnecessarily limited by its own conceit and has admitted its humility or has perished. This is as much a hard fact of experience as any “hard fact” in any field of endeavour. There is little reason to believe that this state of affairs will ever change. #Randolphharris 10 of 25
For a new culture pattern does not emerge out of nothing—the seed must already be there, like the magic tricks of wizards and witches in folklore, who can make an ocean out of a drop of water, a palace out of a stone, a forest out of a blade of grass, but nothing out of nothing. Our homes are furnished as if we intended to spend the rest of our lives in them, instead of moving every few years. This perhaps represents merely a kind of technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological failure to adapt. Should Americans ever settle down, however, they will find little to do in the ways of readjusting their household furnishing habits. Much of the new culture is implicitly and explicitly “neotenous” in a cultural sense: behaviour, values, and life-styles formerly seen as appropriate only to childhood are being retained into adulthood as a counterforce to the old culture. When the system as it stands is no longer viable, however, the mechanism must be exposed for the swindle that it is; otherwise the needed radical changes will be rendered ineffectual. They key to the mechanism is the powerful human reluctance to admit that an achieved goal was not worth the unpleasant experience required to achieve it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
You tell me it is the institution, you had better free your mind instead. However, what is all the freed minds are in jail? I am afraid there are no quick solutions to the problem of the empty self, and we cannot simplify its impact on the Christian mind. The battle here will be won or lost in the area of habits. Admit the problem. First, we must admit that this is a problem and we need to inform others about it. We do ourselves or our God no good if we hide from the fact that the empty self threatens all of us. Any movement that brings about lasting changes begins with conscious raising. Start talking to your Christian friends about the value of the Christian mind. Mention the empty self in your Saturday or Sunday school class, your home Bible study, and so on. Talk to your children about developing their intellectual abilities for the service of Christ and His people. Before a problem can be solved, it must be carefully defined and clearly acknowledged. Choose to be different. Second, at some point we need to make a fundamental decision that we will be different no matter what the cost. We Christians simply must admit that we have allowed our culture to squeeze us into its mold. We must stand against the culture (including inappropriate tendencies in the evangelical subculture), resist the empty self, and eschew the intellectual flabbiness that goes along with it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Motivation is key here. I am no expert on motivation, but I do have one piece of advice, derived from several decades of ministry: Expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree and let yourself be motivated to excel intellectually by the exposure. Listen to talk shows, read the editorial page, and walk around a local university and look at bulletin boards or read the student newspaper. Get into discussion with people at work with whom you differ. The point is to spend time around those who do not simply reinforce your own ways of looking at things. There are two advantages to this. For one thing, we can learn from our critics. For another, such exposure can move us to realize just how serious the war of ideas really is and how inadequately prepared we are to engage in that contest. Change your routine. Third, for one week, note two things on a sheet of paper. First, observe your energy rhythms. When is your energy at a low point during that day and when is it vigorous? Second, note what you tend to do when you tend to do when you get home from work or just after you have finished eating dinner. Often, when our energy is low or when we get home from work or finish dinner, we go into a passive mode and turn on the television. If a person learns to limit television watching and spends more time getting physical exercise, I believe that an intellectual life is easier to develop. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
I do not think I have to defend limiting television watching in this regard, but what about exercise? If you are in good shape, your mind becomes more alert and you have more energy to be proactive. I tell my graduate students that if they want to get the most out of the intellectual opportunities of graduate school, then they must learn to use low-energy times, or moments like after work or diner, as occasions to engage in physical exercise. Try something. After dinner go for a walk instead of turning on the TV. When you get back, sit down for thirty minutes to an hour and read an intellectually challenging book. The important thing here is to get out of passive ruts, especially those passive couch hamburger moments, and replace old habits with the new ones that create energy to read, reflect, and be more proactive. Develop patience and endurance. Fourth, learn how to duffer and develop patient endurance. A life of intellectual cultivation takes effort. And it can be painful. The mind is like a muscle: it needs to be stretched beyond itself. I often read books that are a little over my head so I can develop my intellectual strength. Also, it often takes time to work through an important topic with sufficient care and attention. One needs to take a long-term perspective toward reading and study. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
However, such a perspective will require endurance in staying put in a chair, with pen in hand, long enough to read deeply and widely. This requires a spirit of quietness and an absence of distraction. If you are fidgety and have to get up every fifteen minutes, you must get control of yourself. And gaining such control will require self-denial, suffering, and endurance. The intellectual life is both a means to and a result of a life of discipline, self-control, and endurance. The best way to develop these traits is to practice the spiritual disciplines, especially solitude and fasting. Through solitude, I am learning to be quiet, alone, and focused. Through fasting, I am learning to say no to immediate gratification and bodily distraction and control of myself. The spiritual disciplines can facilitate endurance, patience, discipline, and self-control—virtue that constitute the soil in which the cultivation of the Christian mind takes place. Develop a good vocabulary. Fifth, keep a dictionary handy and get in the habit of looking up words that you do not understand. The development of a good vocabulary is an important tool in the cultivation of the Christian mind. The ubiquitous and egregious (look them up!) avoidance of the dictionary today is no help to the person who wishes to love God with one’s mind. Set some intellectual goals. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
It is important for you to set some study goals on a yearly basis. I suggest you team up with another person in your church who has similar study interest and commit yourselves to mutually accountable reading program, like Reese’s Book Club, for example. For six years now, I have met every Friday morning for breakfast with a study partner. My friend and I read books in philosophy, psychology, contemporary culture, spiritual formation, and so on. We meet to discuss our reading. Also, we subscribe to important Christian periodicals (for example, Christian Today) and regularly browse in secular and Christian bookstores. We come together and share our discoveries each week, and our times together are rich! Find a plan that works for you and just do it! Sometimes one of our friends or loved ones have become a spiritual paralytic. The affliction or trial one has undergone has virtually immobilized the person spiritually. One is unable to help oneself. Not only that, but the spiritual “mat” one is lying on—that is, faith in God and trust in His promises—is no more than the equivalent of a thin, straw-filled mattress. If you try to encourage one through Scripture, one will look at you blankly and tell you Scripture just does not mean anything to one anymore. One has tried to claim God’s promises, but nothing “works.” God just is not there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
This person has become an awkward, heavy spiritual burden. You cannot pray with one, you can only pray for one. However, just as the paralytic’s friends persisted until they brought him to Jesus, so we too must persist in bringing this person to the throne of grace until God heals one spiritually. Of course, the spiritual paralytic is an extreme case. More often than not, the person to whom we are called to be a minister of grace can still go to the throne of grace oneself. However, we are still called to really around that person in prayer. God can, and often does, answer our individual prayers, but the general tenor of Scripture is that God desires we support each other in prayer. Beyond prayer, we must in some way receive permission to be a minister of grace to the person in need. One of the best ways we can do this is to demonstrate that we care. The first thing the person requiring grace needs from you is the assurance and demonstration that you care. We want to help that person come to the place where one can cast that hurt on God, truly believing God does care. So often, though, our perception of other people’s care. If we see care demonstrated in our friends, it is easier for us to believe God cares. If should not be this way; we should not gauge the care of God by the care of fallible, sinful human beings. However, we do. And often, God wants us to be the tangible evidence of His care. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
How can we demonstrate that we care? Obviously the first thing we must do is to make contact. If you live in the same city, invite the person to lunch or coffee, or in some way establish personal contact. Based on my own experience after the death of my first wife, and confirmed by several friends who have lost loved ones, this is where we so often fail each other. Apparently because we feel awkward and do not know what to say, we do not say anything. In fact, we may even avoid the hurting person. One friend, whose wife died some months after mine, said to me, “William, where are my friends?” Another told me of someone, who was one of his best friends, avoiding him after the death of a child. If you have failed to make contact back you did not know what to day, allow me to offer a suggestion. Just tell the person, “I know you must be hurting badly, and I do not know what to say, but I just want you to know I care.” Then, if appropriate you could add, “If it would help, I would like to have lunch [or whatever] with you, and just listen to you. I would like to know how you are really doing.” Above all, do not ask the person merely in passing at church or somewhere else “How are you doing?” Though you may not intend this, it communicates to the hurting person that you are expecting the typical cultural response, “Oh, just fine!” Speaking as one who has “been there,” this is taken as more of an indication that you do not care than that you do. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
When you have demonstrated to the other person that you do care—be sensitive to determine when the other person believes this—you can begin to ask gently probing questions, such as, “How are you and God getting alone during this time?” “Are you able to get any comfort from the Scriptures, or are they just dead to you right now?” Ask questions in a way that communicates you will not be shocked by negative answers. “And now it came to pass in the forty and third year of the reign of the judges, there was no contention among the people of Nephi save it were a little pride which was in the church, which did cause some little dissensions among the people, which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year. And there was no contention among the people in the forty and fourth year; neither was there much contention in the forty and fifth year. And it came to pass in the forty and sixth, yea, there was much contention and many dissensions; in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even the did spread forth int all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land wad desolate, save it were for timbers; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate. And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole Earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east. And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. And it came to pass that there were many of the people of Ammon, who were Lamanites by birth, did also go forth into this land. And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them. However, behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work. However, behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have kept chiefly by the Nephites. And they have been handed down from one generation to another by the Nephites, even until they have fallen into transgression and have been murdered, plundered, and hunted, and driven forth, and slain, and scattered upon the face of the Earth, and mixed with the Lamanites until they are no more called the Nephites, becoming wicked, and wild, and ferocious, yea, even becoming Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And now I return again to mine account; therefore, what I have spoken had passed after there had been great contentions, and disturbances, and wars, and dissensions, among the people of Nephi. The forty and sixth year of the reign of the judges ended; and it came to pass that there was still great contention in the land, yea, even in the forty and seventh year, and also in the forty and eighth year. Nevertheless Helaman did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did observe to keep the statues, and the judgments, and the commandments of God; and he did do that which was right in the sight of God continually; and he did walk after the ways of his father, insomuch that he did prosper in the land. And it came to pass that he had two sons. He gave unto the eldest the name of Nephi, and unto the youngest, the name of Lehi. And they began to grow up unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the wars and contentions began to cease, in small degree, among the people of the Nephites, in latter end of the forty and eighth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the forty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, there was continual peace established in the land, all save it were the secret combinations which Gadianton the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land, which at the time were not known unto those who were at the head of government; therefore they were not destroyed out of the land. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And it came to pass that in this same yea there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church, insomuch that there were thousands who did join themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance. And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure. And it came to pass that the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, any souls, yea, even tends of thousands. Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his hoy name. Yea, this we see that the gate of Heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the humans of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—and land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of Heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And in this year there was continual rejoicing in the and of Zarahemla, and in all the regions round about, even in the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And it came to pass that there was peace and exceedingly great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year; yea, and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges. And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were the pride which began t enter into the church—not into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God—and they were lifted up in pride, even to the persecution of many of their brethren. Now his was a great evil, which did cause the more humble part of the people to suffer great persecutions, and to wade through much affliction. Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification of their hearts unto God. And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their prosperity in the land; and it did grow upon them from day to day. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
Winchester Mystery House
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Anger is a Brief Madness–Once a Word Has Been Allowed to Escape, it Cannot be Recalled!
We sleep live in different countries, sleep in separate houses, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations—we are doing everything we can to keep our marriage together. Although we live in the most affluent society ever known, the sense of deprivation and discomfort that pervades it is also unparalleled. Writers are engineers of human souls and they do this for the sake of being able to walk around with a clearer conscience about the World we are bequeathing to the next generation. The dizziness of freedom should never be underestimated. Anxiety is always the first payment towards the price of freedom. Yet the longer the first step is postponed the more difficult it may appear to be to take it. And the main point is overlooked, anyway. The stupidity and madness of totalitarian discipline lie in the fact that in the hysterical haste to regulate and constantify life one loses sight of the truth that life contains in itself sufficient limitation and self-discipline as to obviate the need for regulation if given half a chance. Life itself is its own discipline, contains its own order, is self-regulating. More order in and of itself within the life structure is unnecessary. The more time people spend before the computer scree or any screen, the less time and desire they have for two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The nature of relationship seems to have something to do with energy: “civilized” people are usually described as more energetic or restless than their nonliterate counterparts. This does not mean that they possess more energy: even given the same diet the correlation will appear. The difference we are concerned with here lies in the utilization of energy. There appears to be, in other words, some difference in motivation. The screen media invades, and in many instances destroys altogether, the silence that promotes reading and the free time required for both solitary thinking and social conversation. Above all, screen media extend their domination of cultural life by lowering the age at which children’s minds—boy brains and girl brains alike—are exposed to large and continuously increasing doses of packaged entertainment. Television may actually impede language development in children between the ages of eight and sixteen months. Researchers found that for every hour infants watched videos, they understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who were not exposed to video at such an early age. However, if marketers have it their way, there will soon be no control group of infants who have not become hooked on video long before they can walk or talk. The lives of the past two decades have produced an explosion of what are called conversation avoidance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
One particularly dismaying finding by the Kaiser Foundation is that children under six now spend an average of two hours a day viewing screen media, while they spend only thirty-nine minutes a day reading or listening to their parents and read to them. There is really no need to make a case for the proposition that video watching displaces reading for pleasure. When 40 percent of adults read no books at all (fiction or nonfiction) in the course of a year, and more than half read no fiction, the facts speak for themselves. People are reading less because there are only so many hours in the day. If reading were the only cultural pursuit to show declining numbers, there might be cause for alarm. As long as reading books remains part of our cultural diet, as long as the new popular forms continue to offer their own cognitive rewards, we are not likely to descend into a culture of mental atrophy anytime soon. Reading is part of what is necessary to expand and enrich living, to being more into the scope of living. If we deliberately cut off the paths to the future by distracting attention to the internal disorder which is disordered only by our misunderstanding and fear and by the unconsidered vagaries of existence which have induced or elicited it, this will not likely occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
We are reading less because there are only so many hours in a day, but the other half of the explanation is that growing numbers of people, especially the young, prefer to spend those hours engaged in various forms on noninteractive screens, as well as the more cognitively challenging, interactive offerings of devilishly sophisticated video games, social media, digital streaming. Many people are less interested than their parents were not just in literary reading but in all performing arts, including classical music. The whole point of these fancy mobile phones that cost $500 to $2,000, plus monthly service charge, is that they are computers that also allow you to make phone calls and their availability allows them to be more of a distraction that can literally be held in the palm of one’s hand and will surely reduce whatever part of personal time that is still devoting to reading. You will never walk alone. When television news executives believe that they will lose their audience’s attention if a sound bite lasts more than eight seconds, why should magazines editors believe that readers will sit still for lengthy article that might take a half hour, or even fifteen minutes, to read? Creativity and invention, although they restructure the experience at hand, do so only because of the additional experience of other sorts which create new contexts and dimensions of experience. They do not come from more of the same for all that provides are permutations and combinations of what one already has. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
However, newspapers and TV news media fret and worry over the future of print while they dismantle the section of the paper and reports which deals most closely with two things which have kept them alive since the dawn of printing presses: the public’s hunger for knowledge and the written word. This insufficient intellectual content has led only to boredom, impoverishment, and destruction of content worth reading or watching. What newspapers and screen media are now doing is they are engaged in—like birds of pray looking for their next meal—a process of swooping around with an eye out for certain kinds of sensational information. It is clear that a human will work hard for food so long as it is scarce. However, what about when one has a full belly? In order to ensure a steady output of energy we must create some sort of artificial scarcity, for it is, paradoxically, only through such scarcity that an abiding surplus of energy can be assured. For instance, when many of your parents, grandparents, great grandparents or maybe even some of you were young, the lure of the black-and-white TV screen was so strong that people would put a TV in their formal dinning room and turn in on while eating meals. Television was still relatively new and not everyone has one, so people loved to watch them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
People were more likely to talk about what was happening on the screen rather than wat was going on in their own lives because they were more fascinated by it. Therefore, if you cannot create content that people crave and desire more of an audience, flooding them with junk news will more than likely turn them off. Intellectuals do not watch the brawls on Jerry Springer, they are usually the ones who tune in for educational information, therefore if your news is junk, they are not going to watch. Cutting back the number of hours news is on the three big networks might back more people inclined to tune in when it is on because it has become scarce. For quality conversations and information, many intellectuals are actually reading more books because they want to learn things that will expand their minds. At its hear, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation—and the conversation begins at birth. If the family dinner table once provided the first face-to-face setting for the semiformal pleasure of social conversation, it was quickly followed by the school lunchroom, sleepovers at friends’ houses, late-night dormitory bull sessions, coffeehouses, and juice bars—any setting that offered the chance foe friends to exchange ideas and personal confidences. However, personal social contact, outside as well as inside the family, is another casualty of the culture of distraction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Adults of all ages report that they have fewer friends, and fewer people with whom they discuss important matters, than they did twenty years ago. One 25 percent of Americans say that they have no one to talk to about important subjects—more than double the percentage in 1985. The greatest drop occurred in social contacts with nonfamily members: 43 percent of Americans talked about important matters with friends in 1985, but only 20 percent did so in 2004. The playdates and evening conversations women used to have with their friends have been replaced mobile phones packed with games and social media and with programs like Gossip Girl that would make a feminist weep, since it is a television show based of beautiful, high class rich young women who can do nothing but deceive, undermine, and fight with one another for the most eligible bachelor. As the art of live conversation continues its decline, people are crying out for a glimpse of the way intellectuals used to talk, not only to one another but to anyone else who happened to be within range. Having a passionate intellectual conversation, with genuine learnedness, with the intensity, the sense of communication is so rare that when it happens it is a lot like falling in love for the first time when you are actually old enough to understand another human being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
With the triumph of the culture of distraction, conversations that begin with the printed word and end with a World of knowledge are becoming a blast from the past. Empty selves are a danger to Society and the church. A society filled with empty selves is a morally bankrupt, intellectually shallow society. The empty self is also the enemy of the Christian mind and its cultivation. Try to think about what a church filled with empty selves would look like in a culture. What would be the theological understanding, the reading habits, the evangelistic courage, the articulate cultural penetration of such a church? Pretty inadequate, I am afraid. If the interior life does not really matter all that much, why spend the time reading and trying to develop an interior, intellectual, spiritually mature life? If someone is basically passive, one will just not make the effort to read, preferring instead to be entertained. If a person is sensate in orientation, music, magazines filled with pictures, and visual media in general will be more important that mere words on a page or abstract thoughts. If one is hurried and distracted, one will have little patience for theoretical knowledge and too short of an attention span to stay with an idea while it is being carefully developed. Instead, there will be a rush to get to the bottom line, an overemphasis on practical application and how-tos, a Reader’s Digest approach to sermon evaluation or reading selection. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
And, if someone is overly individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic, what will that person read, if one reads at all? Such a person will read Christian self-help books that are filled with self-serving content, many slogans, simplistic moralizing, a lot of stories and pictures, and inadequate diagnosis of issues that place no demand on the reader. Books about Christian celebrities will be selected to allow the reader to live vicariously through the celebrity. What will not be read are books that equip people to engage in “destroying speculations….raised up against the knowledge of God,” (2 Corinthians 10.5), develop a well-reasoned, theological understanding of the Christian religion, and fill their role in the broader kingdom of God for the common good and the cause of Christ. Eventually a church without readers or with readers with the tastes just listed will become a marginalized, easily led group of Christians impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be tempted to measure her success largely in terms of numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves. In this way, as Os Guinness has reminded us, the church will become her own grave excavator; her means of short-term “success” will turn out to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Romantic love is one scarcity mechanism that deserves special comment. Indeed, its only function and meaning is to transmute that which is plentiful into that which is in short supply. This is done in two ways: first, by inculcating the belief that only one object can satisfy a person’s heart and affectional desires; and second, by fostering a preference for unconsummated, unrequited, interrupted, or otherwise tragic relationships. Although romantic love always verges on the ridiculous (if a man died of starvation because he could not obtain any brussels sprouts, we would find it comic) Western peoples generally and Americans in particular have shown an impressive tendency to take it seriously. Why is this so? Why is love made into an artificially scarce commodity, like diamonds or “genuine” pearls (“true” love)? To ask such a question is to answer it. We make things scarce in order to increase their value, which in turn makes people work harder for them. Who would spend their lives working for pleasures that could be obtained any time? Who would work for love, when people give it away? However, if we were to make some form of it somehow rare, unattainable, and elusive, and to devalue all other forms, we might conceivably inveigle a few rubes to chase after it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Romantic love is rare in primitive communities simply because bonds are more casual. Children grow up with many caretakers and be sensitive to the fact that there exist many alternative suppliers of love and they apply this belief to their adult relationships. The modern Western child, brought up in a small detached household does not share this sense of substitutability. One’s emotional life is heavily bound up in a single person, and the process of spreading this involvement over other people as one grows up is more problematic. Americans must make a life task out of what happens effortlessly (insofar as it need happen at all) in many societies. Most Western children succeed in drawing enough money out of their emotional and spiritual bank to live on, but some need more. Most of us learn early that there is one relationship that is more vital than all the others put together, and that is our relationship with God. Some people are “married to the job,” and they betray their unconscious understanding of the motivational roots of their striving. People who purse these ephemeral goals are those with most of their emotional funds tied up in some spiritual deficit. They may amass great wealth, but still have little spending money for daily pleasures and not satisfied with ordinary love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Society creates empty people by exposing them to pleasure of the flesh at a young age, or by training children in our competitive value system that it is moral to hurt one another and immoral for them to be kind and loving and accepting to others. The mass screen media depends heavily upon its population being angry and discontented; the renunciation of violence endangers our society as we know it. The notion of sin must be affected by the explanation of original sin. If original sin is simply humans’ necessary passage from essence to existence, sin can no longer be understood in terms of disobedience to a law. Morality is illumined in new and perhaps unexpected ways by the Christology of the New Being. Once faith is understood as Ultimate Concern, as commitment to the Unconditional, a new ethical dimension is disclosed. If it did not determine the entire range of a human’s activities, no concern would be ultimate or unconditional. The dogma that Christ’s death atoned for our sins is symbolic of the ethical dimension of faith in the New Being. The New Being in the Christ is redeemed. It has risen above the equivocation of the desire for holiness and the inevitability of temptation. Behaviour and its conformity to standard are inseparable from an ethical of law. Morality is treated in terms of love rather than of law. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Obedience to any law fosters self-righteousness because it stresses the merits of good works rather than undeserved grace. Life is not only creativity; it is also destructiveness. Every life-process unites a trend towards separation with a trend toward reunion. So does moral life. There is no good action without renunciation of a better one. Not only is evil exclusive of good; good itself is exclusive of better. In other words, good and evil are only relative values. An objective ethics, that claims absoluteness for its categories, is misleading. The lasting element of any code of morality is not to be found in its classification of good and bad. Rather, ethics is valuable through its relationship to the Unconditional. Because of this there can be, ultimately, no secular ethics. An ethics can come to fulfilment only as a religious ethics. The quest for salvation and mortality is not a quest for law, but for transcendence above all law. It is a quest for a paradoxical reconciliation of creativity and destructiveness in life for a harmony of better, good and evil. The answer to the moral question is not moral; it is transmoral. The Unconditional which we recognize in the experience of the New Being in Christ must be acknowledged not only in ourselves but also in other human beings, or it would be an illusion. The ethical realm of personal behaviour must be transcended in an attitude that embraces the Unconditional both in myself and in others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There is no depth of life without the depth of common life. Thus, the quest for morality arises as a search for the unity of the personal and Unconditional, or of the ethical and the religious. The ethics of the New Being is neither objective nor subjective. It must transcend subjectivity and objectivity. The only human experience in which both are transcended, because they are untied in a higher synthesis, is love. Ultimately, therefore, Christian ethics must be an ethics of love. It is a dynamic concept: the law is God’s own rule for humans to follow. Having presided over creation, this law left its mark on human’s nature. Being itself an aspect of the Word of God, it was confirmed by the Incarnation. Revealed law, in this line of thought, is not superadded to the law of nature. Rather, it opens human’s nature to the full meaning of the law. Existence in humans tries to mould itself on essence as it is thought out in God. The Universe is therefore a hierarchy of values on the model of the eternal laws in God’s mind. Between the Universe and God, between existence and essence, the Church mediates: “The Church, itself a hierarchical system, teaches this system, educates for it, fights for its political realizations, defends it against new systems. We are to pray for one another, encourage one another, teach and admonish one another, spur one another on, carry each other’s burdens, share with one another, and so on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Truly the Body of Christ should be constantly alive with this reciprocal ministry to one another. We also may need to pray, “Lord, help me to be transparent and open to my friend, even though doing so seems humiliating to me right now. And please make my friend a minister of Your grace to me.” All of us, if we are exploiting this avenue of God’s grace, should find ourselves at various times on both the receiving and the giving end. To borrow a principle of reciprocity from Paul’s teaching on giving, “At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need,” reports 2 Corinthians 8.14. How, then, can we be minsters of grace to others? Well, obviously in the same three basic ways they can be ministers to us: prayer, the word of God, and help in submitting to God’s providence. However, there is a crucial difference between receiving and giving. In receiving we must give permission to the other person to share Scripture with us and to help us submit to God’s providence. In giving, we must receive permission. Usually this means we must first earn the right to minister to the person through a relationship of mutual sharing, openness, and trust that we have already established. The one area where we do not need to give or receive permission is, of course, in praying for one another. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
However, even in prayer, if you have not been willing to share with another person what is going on in your life, for them to pray for your specific needs may be kind of challenging. There are some difficult or tragic events such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or a debilitating disease or accident, that results in certain obvious needs we can pray for. However, even in these areas, each of us responds to those events in ways distinctive to us, and in these areas of individual response we need to share and receive specific prayer requests with the close circle of friends we have cultivated. Prayer is probably the most important way we can be a minister of grace to someone else. We have already considered God’s gracious invitation to approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need. However, sometimes brothers or sisters in Christ are so discouraged about their adversity and God’s seeming silence over a prolonged period, they just do not have the spiritual strength even to approach the throne of grace. To them the doors of Heaven are shut and God just does not seem to “be there.” At these times we need to “carry” that person to the throne of grace by our prayers. Generally speaking, feelings and emotions are fostered and sustained by the ideas and images, though social or bodily conditions also factor in. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Hopelessness and rejection (or worthlessness and “not belonging”) live on images—often of some specific scene or scenes of unkindness, brutality, or abuse—that have become a permanent fixture within the mind, radiating negativity and leaving a background of deadly ideas that take over hoe we think and structure our whole World. Such images also foster and sustain moods. What we call “moods” are simply feeling qualities that pervade our selves and everything around us. They are, of course, extremely hard to do anything about precisely because one cannot stand outside of them. Clinical depression is an extreme form of a “bad mood,” but dread, deprivation, and deficiency, as well as simple anger, fear, or pain, can become moods of the negative type because of the capacity of feelings to spread and pervade everything they touch. On the beneficial side, there are feelings and moods associated with confidence, worthiness of good, being acceptable and “belonging,” purposefulness, love, hope, joy, and peace. Being “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1.6) is the humanly indispensable foundation for the reconstruction of all these optimistic feelings, mood, and their underlying conditions. We must be very clear on how the negative feelings rest on ideas and images. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Those feelings can themselves be transformed by discipleship to Christ and the power of the gospel and the Spirit, through which the corresponding ideas and images are changed to beneficial ones. And we must be clear that the person given to moods faces special difficulties, though not insurmountable ones, in spiritual formation. “And it came to pass in the forty and second year of the reign of the judges, after Moronihah had established again peace between the Nephites and the Lamanites, behold there was no one to fill the judgment-seat; therefore there began to be a contention again among the people concerning who should fill the judgment-seat. And it came to pass that Helaman, who was the son of Helaman, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, by the voice of the people. However, behold, Kishkumen, who had murdered Pahoran, did lay wait to destroy Helaman also; and he was upheld by his hand, who had entered into a covenant that no one should know one’s wickedness. For there was one Gadianton, who was exceedingly expert in many words, and also in one’s craft, to carry on the secret work of murder and robbery; therefore he became the leader of the band of Kishkumen. Therefore he did flatter them, and also Kishkumen, that if they would place him in the judgment-seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people; therefore Kishkumen sought to destroy Helaman. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And it came to pass as he went forth towards the judgment-seat to destroy Helaman, behold one of the servants of Helaman, having been out by night, and having obtained, through disguise, a knowledge of those plans which had been laid by this band to destroy Helaman—and it came to pass that he met Kishkumen, and he gave unto him a sign; therefore Kishkumen made known unto him the object of his desire, desiring that he would conduct him to the judgment-seat that he might murder Helaman. And when the servant of Helaman had known all the heart of Kishkumen, and how that it was his object to murder, and also that it was his object to murder, and also that it was the object of all those who belonged to his brand to murder, and to rob, and to gain power, (and this was their secret plan, and their combination) the servant of Helaman said unto Kishkumen: Let us go forth unto the judgment-seat. Now this did please Kishkumen exceedingly, for he did suppose that he should accomplish his design; but behold, the servant of Helaman, as they were going forth unto the judgment-seat, did stab Kishkumen even to the hearts, that he fell dead without a groan. And the ran and told Helaman all the things which he had seen, and heard, and done. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And it came to pass that Helaman did send forth to take his band of robbers and secret murders, that they might be executed according to the law. However, behold, when Gadianton had found that Kishkumen did not return he feared lest that he should be destroyed; therefore he caused that his band should follow him. And they took their flight out of the land, by a secret way, into the wilderness; and this when Helaman sent forth to take them they could nowhere be found. And more of this Gadianton shall be spoken hereafter. And thus ended the forty and second year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And behold, in the end of this book ye shall see that this Gadianton did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi. Behold I do not mean the end of the book of Helaman, but I mean the end of the book of Nephi, from which I have taken all the account which I have written,” Helaman 2.1-14. God, please shield the people, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Divider of time, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Father of nations, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Granter of prophecy, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Seeker of lore, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Bestower of sovereignty, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Knower of secrets, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Encompasser of Worlds, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Mystery of mysteries, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of honor, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of praise, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of honor, praise, and worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of praise, worthy of worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Thou causest the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Thou sustainest the living with lovingkindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keepest faith with those that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Who maybe compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest Thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to life everlasting. Holy art Thou and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Human History Becomes More and More a Race Between Education and Catastrophe!
The Christian life is not a way “out” but a way “through” life. Americans are so tense and keyed up that it is impossible even to put them to sleep with a sermon. However, it is easy to sell anti-rationalism, because junk thought always involves a shortcut—whether a diet requiring no reduction in calorie intake; a responsibility-evading bogus apology for bad behaviour (“I am sorry that you were hurt” instead of “I am sorry that I hurt you”); or a cure that depends largely on whether a sick patient has an optimistic attitude. The virulent outbreak of anti-rationalism in America is also rooted in a much older, nonpolitical tendency in American thought—a chronic suspicion of experts that dovetails with the folk belief in the superior wisdom f ordinary people. Ironically but perhaps predictably, the upsurge in mistrust of expert authority followed several decades in which public deference to scientific and technological authority, a deference so great that is was sometimes exaggerated and misplaced, stood at an all-time high. The inseparability of junk science from junk thought is evinced by the telltale marks of endemic illogic coupled, in many instances, with deliberate manipulativeness. The first and most fundamental warning sign is an inability to distinguish between coincidence and causation—a basic requirement for scientific literacy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The anti-vaccination movement is rife with conspiracy theories tied both to the right wing’s distrust of government and the left’s distrust of traditional medicine—the latter a heritage of the extreme wings of the holistic healing ad New Age movements of the late sixties and seventies. Currently, 50 percent of Americans and 49 percent of people in Japan report they are unwilling to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it is produced because they are fearful of adverse side effects from a procedure that has never been tried on large numbers of people. Opponents of compulsory immunization believe, with a near-religious fervor, that no child should ever be subjected by government fiat to the slightest risk—and all drugs, as is well known, have some risk of negative side effects. A decline in population, however, may actually be good for some countries. China’s economic development, for example, could not have taken place had population growth not been checked by measures, including a mandatory limit of one child per family, that are draconian and anti-democratic from a New World point of view. Social scientists, including demographers, use many of the tools of the physical sciences (including measurement and mathematics), but when they draw conclusions about future behaviour of the human species on the basis of past behaviour, their reasoning is often highly unscientific. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
A psychologist studying reactions to “interpersonal problems,” like a demographer studying lifestyles choices, can only tell us how human beings have behaved in the past—not how they might behave under radically altered future conditions. Predictions should be made, and received, in the same spirit as the warning from the Ghost of Christmas Present, who told Scrooge that he foresaw the death of Tiny Tim if the shadow of the future remained unaltered. The show of the future predicted by many psychologists is often altered—by a person’s religious beliefs, work history, medical conditions, delays in starting a family, and the recognition that drug, alcohol use, pleasures of the flesh, and too many children are a burden rather than an asset in postindustrial economies. In the United States of America is not among the worst-performing countries but is merely mediocre, fourteenth among twenty-five nations studied. This is not to suggest that Americans are unique in their mathematical and scientific illiteracy but that there is a unique gap between America’s image of itself as the World’s leader in science and technology and the reality of a nation in which more students are spending more years in school while falling behind the most developed nations of Europe and Asia. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
In Turkey and Mexico, people are not constantly told that they are, or ought to be, “number one.” Moreover, public ignorance in large and powerful counties is particularly dangerous to the rest of the World precisely because of the capacity of powerful states to inflict damage on the weak. Parents often believe deep in their hearts, that if they did their job well enough all of their children would be creative, intelligent, kind, generous, happy, brave, spontaneous, and good—each, of course, in one’s own special way. At a study by the Urban Institute reported that in Boston schools, 104 European American girls finished high school for every 100 boys—a gap but hardly a crisis. Among African Americans, the gap is 139 to 100. That is a real calamity, but it seems preposterous to attribute the gap to a “biologically disrespectful” school system that works quite well for upper-middle-class European Americas of both genders. Nationwide, more than half of American-American boys drop out of high school—a statistic with deeply rooted social causes that have been explored by a host of African American writers and scholars of varying political persuasions, including National Public Radio’s Juan Williams, Newsday’s Les Payne, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, the conservative author Shebly Steele, the sociologist Orlando Patterson, and the historian Henry Louis Gates. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Unlike the European Americans enamored of the “boy crisis,” none of these American-American commentators focused on genetics or the supposedly different learning styles of girls and boys. Instead they examine a street culture that glorifies violence as proof of manhood and denigrates learning, as well as the absence of a father in so many less affluent African-American homes. A similar pattern is evident in less affluent Hispanic neighbourhoods and less affluent European American homes, for whom the divorce rate is also much higher than it is among more affluent European-Americans. Nonetheless, some African Americans and Hispanics do excel, and they know who they are is better than a negative stereotype. The reason why girls do better than boys, even in the subcultures permeated by violence and poverty, surely have something to do with the greater susceptibility of boys to malign influences—including drug, gangs, and probably poor parenting skills because in many single family homes with one parent, or a step-father, boy are looked at as expendable because they are male and someone else’s heir. Therefore, there is a lack of a beneficial, disciplined adult male role model in their lives. While girls hold more value because they are female and can also be used for pleasures of the flesh. A man does not want to help someone else’s son become better than he is, and therefore he is deemed a threat. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Yet (go figure!) American academics and members of the media are more interested in looking at the way boys brains and girls brains differ in “verbal processing.” The simplistic slogans of junk though are perfectly suited to modern mass media, which must fixate on novelty in order to catch the eyes and ears of public with an increasingly short attention span. It seems that the portion of the brain, the amygdala, where emotions are processed is poorly connected in boys to the part of the brain that expresses emotions in words; ergo, boys need to be taught to read and write in different ways from girls. According to this logic, the amygdalas of women before the eighteenth century must also have had a screw loose, given that nearly all great writers were men. Or could it be that women in pre-Enlightenment societies were rarely taught to read and write and systematically discouraged from intellectual pursuits? Because of the distress, both physical and psychologically that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptive systems and its decision-making processes, some people believe that government allowances for a parent otherwise compelled to work is a good idea, on the grounds that it would save money in the end—thus implying that only a full-time parent can avoid bringing up a child who is a social problem. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
If at least one parent realizes clearly how vital this kind of care is to a child, it may make it easier for one to decide that the extra money one might earn, or the satisfaction one might receive from an outside job, is not so important after all. You have the capacity to rear a genius, a masterpiece. Such an activity is the most important thing you can do and should therefore rightfully absorb all of your time and energy. Given such an attitude it is relatively easy to expand child-rearing into a full-time job. However, some parents like to be friends with their children and share their problems with their children, but since a parent is supposed to be molding them into superior beings one cannot lean too heavily upon them for one’s own needs, although one is sorely tempted to do so because a child may not be able to tolerate such massive inputs of one person’s personality. The mission in middle-class America is to create a near-perfect being. This means that every parental quirk, every parental hang-up, and ever parental deprivation will be experienced by the child as heavily amplified noise from which there is no respite. Our society is presently founded on overstimulation—on the generation of needs and desires which cannot be directly gratified, but which ensure a great deal of striving and buying in an effort to gratify them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The goal is commercialize America, make everyone and everything into a brand or a product in an infinite number of ways to create and endless demand for goods and services. However, there is a limit, in any case, to the amount of emotional crippling that can be borne. When we realize that horrors of turning a child into a product, we begin to see why this child will encounter some resentment when one grows up. The child is not really responsible for the bad bargain the parents have made with each other (and with themselves), but one lends moral credit to it. Indeed, “for the children” is a kind of priest’s blessing or notary seal given to all bad marital bargains. And since the child is the sanction for the parents’ neurotic division of labour, they cannot help but blame the child when they begin to suffer from it. Furthermore, as the suffering increases, this sanction tends more and more to be the only force holding them to it. The husband’s ambition and the wife’s domesticity originally promised their own rewards and did not need to be buttressed by thoughts of the child’s future—just as a voluntary and mutually profitable deal between two business people does not initially require a written contract. However, such a contract binds them if there is a change of heart, at which point one of them might say, “if it were not for the contract, I would not go on with this.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Similarly, as ambition and domesticity fail to bring happiness to husband and wife, respectively, both begin to say, “if it were not for the children, I might chuck this and do something more interesting (enjoyable, fulfilling, exciting, relaxing).” One can admit wanting to tear up a contract, however, and one cannot admit wanting to tear up a child. Nor is it easy for parents to admit their initial error (if needed they can even comprehend it). This means that the child is not only a scapegoat but a scapegoat that cannot be attacked. The result is a free-floating resentment with a vague tropism toward youth—a resentment with roots in the parents’ discontent with their own lives. This condition would seem ideally suited to product anger toward young people who show tendencies to live differently and more pleasurably than did the parental generation. This is not to say that parents do not in fact make sacrifices for their children—in a child-oriented society like ours such sacrifices are resented. Parents in many societies make severe sacrifices for their children which never cause any hostile reaction later on, largely because the sacrifices “pay off” in some way, or lead to some predictable outcome. In our society parents never know exactly what their sacrifices will lead to, although they have many fantasies about it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
In the recent past, for example, and in working-class families today, parents sacrificed in order to prepare their children to be economically and socially better off than the parents were, and often hated them for fulfilling this goal and leaving the parents behind. Now middle-class parents sacrifice in order to prepare their children to be emotionally better off—more loving, expressive, creative, cooperative, honest—and once again, resent being outdistanced. In both cases the parents feel left out of the triumphs they made possible; and the children feel ashamed of the parents who wanted them to be superior. The parents want their fantasies of vicarious success fulfilled but never seem to recognize that both kinds of success involve a change to a new milieu from which the parents are automatically excluded. The earlier group of parents wanted their children to become rich and respectable and still remain somehow part of the working-class milieu. The later group want their children to be more cultures, less money-grubbing, more spontaneous and creative, yet still somehow willing to remain on the same treadmill with the parents. And this is why some children will do things like pay to have a parents fence repaired. Also, most parents do not want to be in a nursing home when they get old and realize rich kids can pay for their homecare. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Furthermore, while raising children, parents do not reveal pleasures of the flesh to children because their primary function is to control such impulses. Still many people spend a great deal of trying not to “cop out” in a society whose corruption generates moral dilemmas that compel a hundred cop-outs a day even for the most obsessionally pure radical. And all of this, of course, makes them extremely vulnerable to moral contamination: when confronted with situations in which they took the easy way out they are usually demoralized. God ministers His grace to us through the ministry of other believers. This truly is a primary means God uses, because He has ordained that in the Body of Christ all the members “should have equal concern for each other,” reports 1 Corinthians 12.25. Of course, this is to be a reciprocal ministry. We should be channels of grace to one another. Let me deliberately misuse a statement of Scripture to make a point: this is one area where most of us feel it is indeed “more blessed to give than to receive,” reports Acts 20.35. That is, we are more inclined to be minister of grace to others than to allow others to be ministers of grace to us. Our problem is we are reluctant to be transparent and vulnerable to each other. We humans do not like to admit we have problems. This is perceived as a sign of weakness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
We want to appear that we have life under control. We want to appear that we are successfully dealing with temptations to sin, and that we are successfully dealing with the difficult circumstances of life. We are just as unwilling to let others know how we have been passed over for promotion at work as to admit we are having lustful thoughts about the legal secretary in the next office. The times when we need an extra measure of God’s grace are often the times when we are most reluctant to let other people know we need it. This leads to an important principle regarding the ministry of grace. Each of us needs to cultivate a small group of friends with whom we can be transparent and vulnerable. This might be on an individual or small group basis. However, we need a few people—including our spouse, if we have one—with whom we feel free to share our failures, hurts, and sorrows. The Puritans used to ask God for one “bosom friend” with whom they could share absolutely everything. That is a good goal for us today. We should store up God’s word in our heart against a time of future need. We also should “store up” a few bosom friends against the day when we need them to be God’s ministers of grace to us. Usually when we think of the ministry of grace to one another, we think of the initiative being with the person who will be the minister. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
However, the initiative is often with the one who has a need. We have to admit our need and give the other person “permission” to minister to us. We have to, in some way, communicate that we are not only willing to share our needs but are willing to be ministered to. What are some ways in which we can asked others to be ministers of grace to us? In answering, we need to keep in mind that we are asking the person to be an avenue for God’s Spirit to pour out His grace to us. We are asking the person, or persons, to help strengthen our contact with the Holy Spirit so that we can better receive the divine assistance He has promised to give. We are not asking, at this point, for practical assistance or human counsel. That may be appropriate at the right time. However, for now, we are thinking of our need for grace, for God’s divine power to come to help us in our time of need. That being true, the first thing we need from others is prayer support. It is instructive how often Paul asked the recipients of his letters to pray for him, even when he did not seem to have extremely pressing needs. So certainly, in our times of need we should ask others to pray for us. However, if they are to pray effectively for us, we must be willing to share what our real needs are. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The second thing we need is their help in accepting and applying Scripture to our specific needs. We might say, “Here is my problem. What Scriptures do you think might help me?” I realize this is a radical suggestion, because so often, when we are experiencing adversity, the last thing we want is for someone to give us a pat answer in the form of a Scripture verse. However, if we have developed the kind of friendship where we can be transparent and vulnerable with one another, then we are no going to be giving each other pat answer type responses. Third, we can ask the other person to be a minister of grace to us by helping us see our situation with a better, more objective, perspective. We all know our tendency to magnify problems, or perhaps put the worst construction on events affecting us. The other person can be the Holy’s Spirit’s agent to help us see our circumstances more objectively. That better perspective may help us to more readily humble ourselves under God’s hand. You will recognize that, all another person can do is facilitate our own contact with the Holy Spirit. All another can be is an avenue of God’s grace. We have nothing to offer each other just from ourselves. We cannot deprive Christ of his finite freedom; for a transmuted being does not have the freedom to be other than divine. Let Christ work through you and keep your faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Faith in the Resurrection of Christ has traditionally been a touchstone of orthodox Christology. Christ resurrected himself because, being God, he could do it; and he had occasion to rise from the dead only because, being fully man, he had died. The Resurrection is thus the biblical ground of the dogma of Chalcedon. Whatever disturbs that Chalcedonian balance must necessarily alter the scriptural data on the Resurrection. Faith is only committed to the Resurrection itself, as symbol and as event. If Christ has not risen from the dead, vain is our faith. The Resurrection is a mysterious experience. Christ rose form the tomb on the third day. This can obviously only mean that he rose with his own body. The disciple realized the Jesus was dead, and yet they knew that, being the Christ, the New Being, he must have power beyond death. If God had not been incarnated in the flesh, there would be little basic for a resurrection of Christ in the flesh. Resurrection is not something added to the death of him who is the Christ; but it is implied in his death. No longer is the Universe subjected to a higher law, to the law of life out of death by the death of one who represents eternal life. The tombs were opened and bodies were raised when one man in whom God was present without limits committed his spirit into his Father’s hands. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
“And now behold, it came to pass in the commencement of the fortieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, there began to be a serious difficulty among the people of the Nephites. For behold, Pahoran had died, and gone they way of all the Earth; therefore there began to be a serious contention concerning who should have the judgment-seat among the brethren, who were the sons f Pahoran. Now these are their names who did contend for the judgment-seat, who did also cause the people to contend: Pahoran, Paanchi, and Pacumenia. Now these are not all the sons of Pahoran (for he had many), but these are they who did contend for the judgment-seat; therefore, they did cause three divisions among the people. Nevertheless, it came to pass that Pahoran was appointed by the voice of the people to be chief judge and a governor over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that Pacumeni, when he saw that he could not obtain the judgment-seat, he did unite with the voice of the people. However, behold, Pannchi, and that part of the people that were desirous that he should be their governor, was exceedingly wroth; therefore, he was about to flatter away those people to rise up in rebellion against their brethren. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“And it came to pass as he was about to do this, behold, he was taken, and was tried according to the voice of the people, and condemned unto death; for he had risen up in rebellion and sought to destroy the liberty of the people. Now when these people who were desirous that he should be their governor saw that he was condemned unto death, therefore they were angry, and behold, they sent forth one Kishkumen, even to the judgment-seat of Pahoran, and murdered Pahoran as he sat upon the judgment-seat. And he was pursued by the servants of Pahoran; but behold, so speedy was the flight of Kishkumen that no human could overtake him. And he went unto those that sent him, and they all entered int a covenant, yea, swearing by their everlasting Maker, that they would tell no human that Kishkumen had murdered Pahoran. Therefore, Kishkumen was not known among the people of Nephi, for he was in disguise at the time that he murdered Pahoran. And Kishkumen and his band, who had covenanted with him, did mingle themselves among the people, in a manner that they all could not be found; but as many as were found were condemned unto death. And now behold, Pacumeni was appointed, according to the voice of the people, to be a chief judge and a governor over the people, to reign in the stead of his brother Pahoran; and it was according to his right. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And all this was done in the fortieth year of the reign of the judges; and it had an end. And it came to pass in the forty and first year of the reign of the judges, that the Lamanites had gathered together an innumerable army of humans, and armed them with swords, and with cimeters and with bows, and with arrows, and with head-plates, and with breastplates, and with all manner of shields of every kind. And they came down again that they might pitch battle against the Nephites. And they were led by a man whose name was Coriantumr; and he was a descendant of Zarahemla; and he was a dissenter from among the Nephites; and he was a large and a might man. Therefore, the king of the Lamanites, whose name was Tubaloth, who was the son of Ammoron, supposing that Coriantumr, being a mighty man, could stand against the Nephites, with his strength and also with his great wisdom, insomuch that by sending him forth he should gain power over the Nephites—therefore, he did stir them up to anger, and he did gather together his armies, and he did appoint Coriantumr to their leader, and did cause that they should march down to the land of Zarahemla to battle against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
And it came to pass that because of so much contention and so much difficulty in the government, that they had not kept sufficient guards in the land of Zarahemla; for they had supposed that the Lamanites durst not come into the heart of their lands to attack that great city Zarahemla. However, it came to pass that Coriantumr did march forth at the head of his numerous host, and came upon the inhabitants of the city, and their march was with such exceedingly great speed that there was no time for the Nephites to gather together their armies. Therefore Coriantumr did cut down the watch by the entrance of the city, and did march forth with his whole army into the city, and they did slay every one who did oppose them, insomuch that they did take possession of the whole city. And it came to pass that Pacumeni, who was the chief judge, did flee before Coriantumr, even to the walls of the city. And it came t pass that Coriantumr did smite him against the wall, insomuch that he died. And thus ended the days of Pacumeni. And now when Coriantumr saw that he was in possession of the city of Zarahemla, and were marching through the most capital parts of the land, slaying the people with great slaughter, both men, women, and children, taking possession of many cities and of many strongholds. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“However, when Moronihah had discovered this, he immediately sent forth Lehi with an army round about to head them before they should come to the land Bountiful. And thus he did; and he did head them before they came to the land of Bountiful, and gave unto them battle, insomuch that they began to retreat back towards the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that Moronihah did head them in their retreat, and did give unto them battle, insomuch that it became an exceedingly bloody battle; yea, many were slain, and among the number who were slain Coriantumr was also found. And now, behold, the Lamanites could not retreat either way, neither on the north, nor on the south, nor on the east, nor on the west, for they were surrounded on every hand by the Nephites. And thus had Coriantumr plunged the Lamanites into the midst of the Nephites, insomuch that they were in the power f the Nephites, and he himself was slain, and the Lamanites did yield themselves into the hands of Nephites. And it came to pass that Moronihah took possession of the city of Zarahemla again, and caused that the Lamanites who had bee taken prisoner should depart out of the mand in peace. And thus ended the forty and first year of the reign of the judges,” reports Helaman 1.1-34. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Father of all, we praise you, we praise you. Earth beneath us, we praise you, we praise you. King of kings, we praise you, we praise you. Love of our Lord, we praise you, we praise you. Shining Father, we praise you, we praise you. Giver of wisdom, we praise you, we praise you. Open0handed one, we praise you, we praise you. May Your great name be blessed forever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest loving-kindness and possesses all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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In a Moment, in the Twinkling of an Eye, at the Last Trump!
We need this person of action, this person of accomplishment, this person of experience, this person of courage; we need this person of faith in America….who has brought us to the threshold of peace. The youth culture derived its immense power precisely from its capacity to transcend social and ideological boundaries that Americans had long taken for granted, and that transcendence was made possible by the huge young demographic and a completely apolitical marketing machines eager to meet every desire of those under the magical mark of thirty. Youth preference in fashion, movies, digital streaming, car design, television programs, poetry (remember Rod McKuen?), and, above all, music became indistinguishable from popular culture as a whole. Music and art are a whole spiritual World in Russian. When people go to a concert, they do not go to it as an attraction, as an entertainment, but to feel life. For them art is bread. That may be something people in Russian and in the United States of America have in common. Musical performances and fashion concerts tend to be full of life and very exciting. Another thing Russia and America have in common is they take academics very seriously. Many parents are requesting the primary schools, secondary colleges and centers of higher learning beef up their science, English, history and mathematics departments to ensure that America will remain a top competitor in the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The culture of celebrity, defined by the media’s circular capacity to create stars who shine not because of specific deeds but mainly because they are objects of media attention is why Paris Hilton became famous. People respect famous people—they are automatically interested in what they have to say. Imagine how powerful it would be to get a star to endorse education. For the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction. All historians know this in their souls. Conceptions of the past are far from stable, and when new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s spotlight shifts, probing now into the shadows, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. Abandonment to feeling, allowing oneself to be “carried away” by feeling, is actually sought by many, and a regular basis. That is a testimony to our epidemic deadness of soul. People want to feel, and to feel strongly, and in the very nature of life they need to do so. The opposite of peace is really not war, but deadness. The “dead soul” is one waiting to explode or fall apart, and one that will seek out trouble for reasons it cannot understand. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
In its desolate life away from God, there is no drama to provide constructive feeling tones that would keep life from being a burden. Such persons really have no hope. This is the key to those “lives of quiet desperation” Thoreau attributed to “most humans.” Feeling will then be sought for its own sake, and satisfaction in feeling alone always in turn demands stronger feeling. It cannot limit itself. This simple point is what explains the powerful grip of addiction to praise. Addiction is a feeling phenomenon. The addict is one who, in one way or another, has given in to feeling of one kind or another and has placed it in the position of ultimate value in one’s life. Of course addicts may also hold other things to be very valuable, and their life may be (usually will be) torn and even tragic because of conflicts. However, they nevertheless have inwardly conceded the final word to some feeling—emotion, sensation, or desire. It may be that they have come to fear or even hate that feeling and that in their present condition their mind is blinded and they see no way out. At this point suicide sometimes occurs. However, in their heart of hearts they have accepted the rule of the feeling and have conceded its right to satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic, very close to energy and enthusiasm, but nevertheless bearing a distinctive and important nuance, is wholeheartedness: “Slaves, obey your Earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not humans, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good one does, whether one is slave or free,” reports Ephesians 6.5-8. If you have ever observed a gym class doing push-ups, you will understand the sense of this verse. The coach orders everyone down and begins to intone “up-down, up-down,” and all are following until he looks to the right, because in that moment the half on the left go on “hold,” until one’s gaze begins to move back to the left, whereupon they begin to do proper push-ups again, and those on the right go on “hold.” There are employees who are all action when their boss is around, but otherwise loll around the Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine. Out of one’s eye there is no energy, no enthusiasm, no heart. The cheerful wholeheartedness recommended here comes, as before, when one’s work is done for the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Humans, we are to work as we did as children when we knew our father was watching, because He is always! Our work must be done with an eye to excellence. Many Churches in our time have forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work. Work that is truly Christian is work well done. Genesis 1 logs God’s commitment to excellence when it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” reports Genesis 1.31. Christians should always do good work. Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the best integrity, and be the best in dependability. If what the pollsters tell us is true—that there is little difference in the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians—we have cause for alarm. If there is no difference, then large numbers of God’s children have succumbed to the extremes of laziness and overwork which characterize today’s work force. It also means that vast numbers of Christian lives are spiritually dysfunctional, for it is impossible to dedicate over half of one’s waking hours (some 80- to 100,000 hours in an average lifetime) to a sub-Biblical work ethic and not suffer immense spiritual trauma. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We must recover the Biblical truth—the Reformation truth—that our vocation, be it ever so humble, is a divine calling and thus be liberated to do it for the glory of God. This alone will take the Church out into the World. Humans, if you sense your deficient, you need to do three things. First, take an honest assessment of your life, using the Scriptures as a standard as you answer the questions: Do I do my work for the glory of God? Do I honestly work hard? Do I work with enthusiasm? Do I work wholeheartedly? Do I do excellent work? Second, after honest evaluation confess your sins. And, thirdly, commit your work life to the glory of God alone. Will you do this? “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Thus the Heavens and the Earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work,” reports Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 2.1-2. What do we learn about the example God sets as a worker? How should what you see there be applied to your working life? “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of your; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” reports Genesis 3.17-19. What does Genesis 3.17-19 tell us about the current nature of work? Does this mean it is useless to seek fulfillment or usefulness or success in our business, family, and church labours? If not, why not? “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. What is the origin of this work? Its purpose? What must you do to experience this work in your life? Do you agree with Martin Luther that “Your work is a very sacred matter”? What can you do to remind yourself that your work matters to God? What is the relation between a healthy work ethic and wholeheartedness? “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that one who is both their Master and yours is in Heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him,” reports Ephesians 6.9. It is difficult for us to see God’s hand of love in the adversities and heartaches of life because we persist in thinking, as the World does, that happiness is the greatest good. Thus we tend to evaluate all our circumstances in terms of whether or not they produce happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Holiness, however, is a greater good than happiness, so God arranges ad orchestrated circumstances to produce holiness before happiness. He is more concerned about our eternal than our temporal welfare and more concerned about our spiritual than our material welfare. So all the trials and difficulties, all the heartaches, disappointments, and humiliations come from His loving hand to make us partakers of His holiness. John Newton expressed this intent of God in our trials and afflictions in his hymn “Prayer Answered by Crosses”: I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know, and seek more earnestly his face. ‘Twas he who taught me thus to pray; and he, I trust, has answered prayer; but it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair. I hoped that, in some favoured hour, at once he would answer my request, and by his love’s constraining power subdue my sins, and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds, and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembling cried; wilt thou pursue this worm to death? #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
“This is the way, the Lord replied I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I now employ from self and pride to set three free, and break they schemes of Earthly joy, that thou may’st seek thy all in me.” However, it is not enough to see God’s mighty hand behind the immediate causes of all our adversities, nor to see it as the hand of a loving Father discipling His children. I have seen the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Scriptures for so many years that I instinctively see his hand behind every circumstance. And I have come to the place where I acknowledge, almost reluctantly sometimes, that all hardship is God’s discipline, either corrective or remedial. The rub comes in submitting to it. Sometimes we resist it. However, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our trial, we must first submit to His hand, which brought the trial. God gives grace only to the humble, to those who are not only humble toward other people, but are humble, or submissive, under His mighty hand. John Lillie expressed this idea so well. He said, “’Humble yourselves, therefore,’ receiving in silent, meek submission whatever humiliation it [God’s hand] may now lay upon you. For this is your time of trial, and, when paternal rod meets thus with the child-like spirit, will be surely followed by another time of healing and joy.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Then Dr. Lillie added an important word of exhortation: “See that you do not frustrate the gracious purpose of God and lose the blessing of sorrow. Rather make that purpose yours also.” Lord, I am willing to receive what You give, to lack what You withhold, to relinquish what You take, to suffer what You inflict, to be what You require. We must have that spirit if we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and receive the grace He has promised to give. However, there is still one more essential element in this exercise of humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. We must not only submit, we must also do so in faith that He will lift us up in due time. The “due time,” is when the adversity has accomplished its purpose. As the prophet Jeremiah said, “For humans are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love,” reports Lamentations 3.31-32. God will not leave His heavy hand of adversity on us one moment more than is necessary to accomplish His purpose: “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of humans,” Lamentations 3.33. The empty self is filled up with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The empty self experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning, a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. In their uncompromising determination to proclaim truth, Christians must avoid the intellectual flabbiness of the larger society. They must rally against the prevailing distrust of reason and the exaltation of the irrational. Emotional self-indulgence and irrationalities have always been the enemies of the gospel, and the apostles warned their followers against them. If we spend all of our time trying to look directly at ourselves, our lives dart around, become unstable, and get drastically out of focus. However, if we deny ourselves daily for Christ’s sake (Matthew 16.24)—that is, if we gaze past ourselves and stare at Him with dedication and affection—as a byproduct we come into focus and stabilize in the foreground. This sort of self-denial actually requires a strong, integrated self. An immature, fragmented, narcissistic person cannot bring oneself to live with this sort of focus and discipline. The intellectual life requires the same sort of self-denial and dedication to be part of a larger life of spiritual power and productivity for the kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
For Christians, the intellectual life of cultivating the mind and valuing rationality makes sense and receives its proper motivation and balance when seen as part of an overall view of what life is all about. The purpose of life is to bring honour to God, to know, love, and obey Hum, to become like Him, and to live for His purposes in this World as I prepare to live in the next one. A life that is intentionally lived for this purpose will be characterized by certain attitudes and action. For one thing, if I am to progress in this sort of life, I must regularly live for a larger whole. I must live for the kingdom of God and be involved aggressively in the war between that kingdom and the kingdom of darkness. Further, while self-interest and personal joy are important components of Christian motivation, they are not adequate in and of themselves to carry the weight of a skillful Christian life. I must also seek to live for others. Among other things, this means that I need to discover my vocation, my overall calling in life, composed of my talents, spiritual gifts, historical circumstances, and so forth. And I should passionately seek to occupy my vocational place for the good of believers and unbelievers alike. This would be my understanding of the good life. Make no mistake. Such a life is not easy. It involves discipline, hard work, suffering, patience, and endurance in forming habits conducive to and characteristic of this kind of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
It requires taking a long-haul view of my life and learning to defer intellectual and moral virtues and habits before I can become fully skilled at living this way. Unfortunately, the intellectual life, the life of intentional, habitual cultivation of my mind under Christ’s lordship, can be valued and entered into only as a part of the overall approach to life just described, and this approach runs contrary to the conditions that define our modern lifestyles. Many people today, including many Christians, simply do not read of think deeply at all. And when believers do read, they tend to browse self-help books or other literature that is not intellectually engaging. I once wrote a piece for what is most likely the top Christian periodical of the last thirty years, and I was warned to keep my prose to about an eighth-grade level. How far we have come since the time of Joseph Butler (1692-17520 when, as one historian put it, the church could still out-think her critics. Butler was an Anglican minster at Rolls Chapel in England. His fifteen-part sermon series on ethics is regarded as one of the finest pieces of moral reasoning in the history of philosophy and has, in the words of philosopher Stephen L. Darwall, “influenced moral philosophy ever since.” The mind is like a muscle. If it is not exercised regularly and strenuously, it loses some of its capacities and strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
We modern evangelicals often feel small and without influence in the public square. If we are to present to our brothers and sisters, our children, and post-Christian culture a version of Christianity rich and deep enough to challenge the dehumanizing structures and habits of thought of society gone mad, we must recapture our intellectual heritage. To do this, we must change our reading habits; indeed, we must alter our entire approach to the life of the mind as part of Christian discipleship. “And now it came to pass that when Moroni has received this epistle his heart did take courage, and was filled with exceedingly great joy because of the faithfulness of Pahoran, that he was not also a traitor to the freedom and cause of his country. However, he did also mourn exceedingly because of the iniquity of those who had driven Pahoran from the judgment-seat, yea, in fine because of those who had rebelled against their country and also their Gd. And it came to pass that Moroni took a small number of humans, according to the desire of Pahoran, and gave Lehi and Teancum command over the remainder of his army, and took his march towards the land of Gideon. And he did raise the standard of liberty in whatsoever place he did enter, and gained whatsoever force he could in all his march towards the land of Gideon. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
“And it came to pass that thousands did flock unto his standard, and did take up their swords in the defence of their freedom, that they might not come into bondage. And thus, when Moroni had gathered together whatsoever men he could in all his march, he came to the land of Gideon; and uniting his forces with those of Pahoran they became exceedingly strong, even stronger than the men of Pachus, who was the king of those dissenters who had driven the free humans out of the land of Zarahemla and had taken possession of the land. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran went down with their armies into the land of Zarahemla, and went forth against the city, and did meet the men of Pachus, insomuch that they did come to battle. And behold, Pachus was slain and his men were taken prisoners, and Pahoran was restored to his judgment-seat. And the humans of Pachus received their trial, according to the law; yea, those humans of Pachus and those king-men, whosoever would not take up arms in the defence of their country, but would fight against it, were put to death. And thus it became expedient that this law should be strictly observed for the safety of their country; yea, and whosever was found denying their freedom was speedingly executed according to the law. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
“And thus ended the thirtieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; Moroni and Pahoran having restored peace to the land of Zarahemla, among their own people, having inflicted death upon all those who were not true to the cause of freedom. And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, Moroni immediately caused that provisions should be sent, and also an army of six thousand humans should be sent unto Helaman, to assist him in preserving that part of the land. And he also caused that an army of six thousand humans, with a sufficient quantity of food, should be sent to the armies of Lehi and Teancum. And it came to pass that this was done to fortify the land against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran, leaving a large body of humans in the land of Zarahemla, took their march with a large body of men towards the land of Nephihah, being determined to overthrow the Lamanites in that city. And it came to pass that as they were marching towards the land, they took a large body of men of the Lamanites, and slew many of them, and took their provisions and their weapons of war. And it came to pass after they had taken them, they caused them to enter into a covenant that they would no more take up their weapons of war against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“And when they had entered into this covenant they sent them to dwell with the people of Ammon, and they were in number about four thousand who had not been slain. And it came to pass that when they had sent them away they pursued their march towards the and of Nephihah, they did pitch their tents in the plains of Nephihah, which is near the city of Nephihah. Now Moroni was desirous that the Lamanites should come out to battle against them, upon the plains; but the Lamanites, knowing of their exceedingly great courage, and beholding the greatness of their numbers, therefore they durst not come out against them; therefore they did not come to battle in that day. And when the night came, Moroni went forth in the darkness of the night, and came upon the top of the wall to spy out in what part of the city the Lamanites did camp with their army. And it came to pass that they were on the east, by the entrance; and they were all asleep. And now Moroni returned to his army, and caused that they should prepare in haste strong cords and ladders, to be let down from the top of the wall into the inner part of the wall. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his men should march forth and come up the top of the wall, and let themselves down into that part of the city, yea, even on the west, where the Lamanites did not camp with their armies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“And it came to pass that they were all let down into the city by night, by the means of their strong cords and their ladders; thus when the morning came they were all within the walls of the city. And now, when the Lamanites awoke and saw that the armies of Moroni were within the walls, they were affrighted exceedingly, insomuch that they did flee out by the pass. And now when Moroni saw that they were fleeing before him, he did cause that his men should march forth against them, and slew many, and surrounded many others, and took them prisoners; and the remainder of them fled into the land of Moroni, which was in the borders by the seashore. Thus had Moroni and Pahoran obtained the possession of the city of Nephihah without the loss of one soul; and there were many of the Lamanites who were slain. Now it came to pass that many of the Lamanites that were prisoners were desirous to join the people of Ammon and become a free people. And it came to pass that as were desirous, unto them it was granted according to their desires. Therefore, all the prisoners of the Lamanites did join the people of Ammon, and did begin to labour exceedingly, tilling the ground, raising all manner of grain, and flocks and herds of every kind; and thus were the Nephites relieved from a great burden; yea, insomuch that they were relieved from all the prisoners of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“Now it came to pass that Moroni after he had obtained possession of the city of Nephihan, have taken many prisoners, which did reduce the armies of the Lamanites exceedingly, and having regained many of the Nephites who had been taken prisoners, which did strengthen the army of Moroni exceedingly; therefore Moroni went forth from the land of Nephihah to the land of Lehi. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moron was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moroni was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army did pursue them from city to city, until they were met by Lehi and Teancum; and the Lamanites fled from Lehi and Teancum, even down upon the borders by the seashore, until they came to the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one body in the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites, was also with them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And it came to pass that Moroni and Lehi and Teancum did encamp with their armies round about in the borders of the land of Moroni, insomuch that the Lamanites were encircled about in the borders by the wilderness on the south, and in the borders by the wilderness on the east. And thus they did encamp for the night. For behold, the Nephites and the Lamanites also were weary because of the greatness of the march; therefore they did not resolve upon any stratagem in the night-time, save it were Teancum; for he was exceedingly angry with Ammoron, insomuch that he considered that Ammoron, and Amalickiah his brother, had been the cause of this great and lasting war between them and the Lamanites, which had been the cause of so much war and bloodshed, yea, and so much famine. And it came to pass that Teancum in his anger did go forth into the camp of the Lamanites, and did let himself down over the walls of the city. And he went forth with a cord, from place to place, insomuch that he did cast a javelin at him, which did pierce him near the heart. However, behold, the king did awaken his servants before he died, insomuch that they did pursue Teancum, and slew him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Now it came to pass that when Lehi and Moroni knew that Teancum was dead they were exceedingly sorrowful; for behold, he had been a man who had fought valiantly for his country, yea, a true friend to liberty; and he had suffered very many exceedingly sore afflictions. However, behold, he was dead, and had gone the way of all the Earth. Now it came to pass that Moroni marched forth on the morrow, and came upon the Lamanites, insomuch that they did slay them with a great slaughter; and they did drive them out of the land; and they did flee, even that they did not return at that time against the Nephites. And thus ended the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; and this they had had wars, and bloodsheds, and famine, and affliction, for the space of many years. And there had been murders, and contentions, and dissensions, and all manner of iniquity among the people of Nephi; nevertheless for the righteous’ sake, yea, because of the prayers of the righteous, they were spared. However, behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And it came to pass that after Moroni had fortified those parts of the land which were most exposed to the Lamanites, until they were sufficiently strong, he returned to the city of Zarahemla; and also Helaman returned to the place of his inheritance; and there was once more peace established among the people of Nephi. And Moroni yielded up the command of his armies into the hands of his son, whose name was Moronihah; and he retired to his own house that he might spend the remainder of his days in peace. And Pahroan did return to his judgement-seat; and Helaman did take upon him again to preach unto the people the word of God; for because of so many wars and contentions it had become expedient that a regulation should be made again in the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth, and did declare the word of God with much power unto the convincing of many people of their wickedness, which did cause them to repent of their sins and to be baptized unto the Lord their God. And it came to pass that they did establish again the church of God, throughout all the land. Yea, and regulations were made concerning the law. And their judges, and their chief judges were chosen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to multiply and to wax exceedingly strong again in the land. And they began to grow exceedingly rich. However, notwithstanding their riches, or their strength, or their prosperity, they were not lifted up in the pride of their eyes; neither were they slow to remember the Lord their God; but they did humble themselves exceedingly before him. Yes, they did remember how great things the Lord had done for them, that he had delivered them from death, and from bonds, and from prisons, and from all manner of afflictions, and he had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies. And they did pray unto the Lord their God continually, insomuch that the Lord did bless them, according to his word, so that they did wax strong and prosper in the land. And it came to pass that all these things were done. And Helaman died, in the thirty and fifth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 62.1-51. God is the One who sits in protection over the World, who spreads His wings over us as a shield: King God, You are the One I praise! He is the one who is the throne of Kings, who established governments and maintains them in power: King God, you are the One I praise! #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
God is the One who rises from the sea in glory, who rocks the cradle with his own hand: King God, you are the one I praise! God is the one who is King of the Universe, who created the World. God, You are the one I praise. True and certain it is that there is one God, and there is none like unto Him. It is He who redeemed us from the might of tyrants, and executed judgment upon all our oppressors. Great are the things that God hath done; His wonders are without number. He causes us to triumph over our enemies, and raises up our glory above our foes. Wondrously He visited judgment upon Pharaoh, performing signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. He brought forth the children of Israel from bondage, and delivered them from slavery unto freedom. In every age the Lord hath been our hope; He rescued us from enemies who sought to destroy us. May He continue His protecting care over the Universe and beyond, and guard all His children from disaster. When the children of Earth beheld the might of the Lord, they gave thanks unto Him and praised His name. They accepted His Sovereignty willingly, and sang a song unto Him. Moses and the Children of Israel exultingly proclaimed: Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
When Thou didst rescue Israel at the Red Sea, Thy children beheld Thy supreme power. This is my God! they exclaimed, and said: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. As Thou didst deliver Israel from a power mightier than he, so mayest Thou redeem all Thy children from oppression. Blessed art Thou, O Lord Redeemer of the Universe and beyond! Cause us, O Lord our God, to lie down in peace, and rise us up again, O our King, unto life. Please spread over us They tabernacle of peace. Direct us aright through Thine own good counsel. Save us for Thy name’s sake. Be Thou a shield about us. Please remove from us every enemy, pestilence, sword, famine and sorrow. Please help us, O Lord, to resist temptation. Please shelter us with Thy protecting love for Thou art our guardian and deliverer. Yea, Thou God and King art gracious and compassionate. Guard our going out and our coming in unto life and peace, henceforth and forevermore. Yea, do Thou spread over us the tabernacle of Thy peace. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who spreadest the tabernacle of peace over us, over Earth and the Universe and Beyond. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,” reports Revelation of St. John 22.13. If a teacher must put into finite phrases every communication from one’s inner being to a pupil, if one must use material means for every transmission of one’s own thought, then the being yet ready to be a disciple. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room. The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!
The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25
We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.) We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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You cannot have a constitutional right to do something that is illegal. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others. Furthermore, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and also attached to positions and offices open to all. There are two ambiguous phrases in the second principle, namely “everyone’s advantage” and “open to all.” Determining their sense more exactly will lead to a second formulation of the principle. The final version of the two principles considers the rendering of the first principle. By way of general comment, these principles primarily apply to the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. As their formulation suggests, these principles presuppose that the social structure can be divided into two more or less distinct parts, the first principle applying to the one, the second to the others. They distinguish between those aspects of the social system that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship and those that specify and establish social and economic inequalities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights. The second principle applies, in the first approximation, to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth and incomes need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits. These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior to the second. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages. The distribution of wealth and income, and hierarchies of authority, must be consistent with both the liberties of equal citizenship and equality of opportunity. It is clear that these principles are rather specific in their content, and their acceptance rests on certain assumptions that I must eventually try to explain and justify. A theory of justice depends upon a theory of society in ways that will become evident as we proceed. For the present, it should be observed that the two principles (and this holds for all formulations) are a special case of a more general conception of justice that can be expressed as follows: All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. The illegal begins immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. Of course, this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
As a first step, suppose that the basic structure of society distributes certain primary goods, that is, things that every rational human is presumed to want. These goods normally have a use whatever a person’s rational plan of life. For simplicity, assume that the chief primary goods at the disposition of society are rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth. (Later on in Part Three the primary good of self-respect has a central place.) These are the social primary goods. Other primary goods such as health and vigor, intelligence and imagination, are natural goods; although their possession is influenced by the basic structure, they are not so directly under its control. Imagine, then, a hypothetical initial arrangement in which all the social primary goods are equally distributed: everyone has similar rights and duties, and income and wealth are evenly shared. This state of affairs provides a benchmark for judging improvements. If certain inequalities of wealth and organizational powers would make everyone better off than in this hypothetical starting situation, then they accord with the general conception. Now it is possible, at least theoretically, that by giving up some of their fundamental liberties humans are sufficiently compensated by the resulting social and economic gains. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
The general conception of justice imposes no restrictions on what sort of inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be improved. We need not suppose anything so drastic as consenting to a condition of slavery. Imagine instead, when the economic returns are significant and their capacity to influence the course of policy by the exercise of these rights would be marginal in any case, that humans forego certain political rights. It is this kind of exchange which the two principles as stated rule out; being arranged in serial order they do not permit exchanges between basic liberties and economic and social gains. The serial ordering of principles expresses an underling preference among primary social goods. When this preference is rational so likewise is the choice of these principles in this order. In developing justice as fairness, I shall, for the most part, leave aside the general conception of justice and examine instead the special case of the two principles in serial order. The advantage of this procedure is that from the first the matter of priorities is recognized and an effort made to find principles to deal with it. One is led to attend throughout to the conditions under which the acknowledgement of the absolute weight of liberty with respect to social and economic advantages, as defined by the lexical order of the two principles would be reasonable. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Offhand, this ranking appears extreme and too special a case to be of much interest; but there is more justification for it than would appear at first sight. Or at any rate, so I shall maintain. Furthermore, the distinction between fundamental rights and liberties and economic and social benefits marks a difference among primary social goods that one should try to exploit. It suggests an important division in the social system. Of course, the distinctions drawn and the ordering proposed are bound to be at best only approximations. There are surely circumstances in which they fail. However, it is essential to depict clearly the main lines of a reasonable conception of justice; and under many conditions anyway, the two principles in serial order may serve well enough. When necessary we can fall back on the more general conception. The fact that the two principles apply to institutions has certain consequences. Several points illustrate this. First of all, the rights and liberties referred to by these principles are those which are defined by the public rules of the basic structure. Whether humans are free is determined by the rights and duties established by the major institutions of society. Liberty is a certain pattern of social forms. The first principle simply requires that certain sorts of rules, these defining basic liberties, apply to everyone equally and that they allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
The only reason for circumscribing the rights defining liberty and making human’s freedom less extensive than it might otherwise be is that these equal rights as institutionally defined would interfere with one another. When principles mention persons, or require that everyone gain from an inequality, another thing to bear in mind is that the reference is to representative persons holding the various social positions, or offices, or whatever, established by the basic structure. Thus in applying the second principle I assume that it is possible to assign an expectation of well-being to representative individuals holding these positions. This expectation indicates their life prospects as these positions. This expectation indicates their life prospects as viewed from their social station. In general, the expectations of representative persons depend upon the distribution of rights and duties throughout the basic structure. When this changes, expectations change. I assume, then, that expectations are connected: by raising the prospects of the representative human in one position we presumably increase or decrease the prospects of representative humans in other positions. Since it applies to institutional forms, the second principle (or rather the first part of it) refers to the expectations of representative individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Neither principle applies to distributions of particular goods to particular individuals who may be individuals who may be identified by their proper names. The situation where someone is considering how to allocate certain commodities to less affluent persons who are known to one not within the scope of the principles. They are meant to regulate basic institutional arrangements. We must not assume that there is much similarity from the standpoint of justice between an administrative allotment of goods to specific persons and the appropriate design of society. Our common-sense intuitions for the former may be a poor guide to the latter. Now the second principle insists that each person benefit from permissible inequalities in the basic structure. When one views it as a concern, this means that it must be reasonable for each relevant representative human defined by this structure to prefer one’s prospects with the inequality to one’s prospects without it. One is not allowed to justify differences income or organizational powers on the ground that the disadvantages of those in one position are outweighed by the greater advantage of those in another. Much less can infringements of liberty be counterbalanced in thus way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
Applied to the basic structure, the principle of utility would have us maximize the sum of expectations of representative humans (weighted by the number of persons they represent, on the classical view); and this would permit us to compensate for the losses of some by the gains of others. Instead, the two principles required that everyone benefit from economic and social inequalities. It is obvious, however, when the initial arrangement of equality is taken as a benchmark that there are indefinitely many ways in which all may be advantaged. The grasping of the being of another person occurs on a quite different level from our knowledge of specific things about an individual. Obviously a knowledge of the drives and mechanisms which are in operation in the other person’s behaviour is useful; a familiarity with one’s patterns of interpersonal relationships is highly relevant; in formation about one’s social conditioning, the meaning of particular gestures and symbolic actions is of course to the point, and so on ad infinitum. However, when we confront the overreaching, most real fact of all—namely, the immediate, living person oneself, all these fall on to a quite different level. When we seek to know a person, the knowledge about one must be subordinated to the overarching fact of one’s actual existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
In the ancient Greek and Hebrew languages the verb “to know” is the same word as that which means to copulate with. This is illustrated time and again in the King James translation of the Bible—“Abraham knew his wife and she conceived…” and so on. Thus the etymological relation between knowing and loving is exceedingly close. Though we cannot go into this complex topic, we can at least say that knowing another human being, like loving one, involves a kind of union, a dialectical participation with the other. This is called the “duel mode.” If one is to be able to understand an individual, one must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking. The encounter with the being of another person has the power to shake one profoundly and may potentially be very anxiety-arousing. It may also be joy-creating. In either case, it has the power to grasp and move one deeply. And obviously the individual has defended oneself from anxiety at the price not only of the isolation of oneself from the other but also of the radical distortion of reality. For one does not ten really see the other person. It does not disparage the importance of the technique to point out that technique, like data, must be subordinated to the fact of the reality of two persons in the room. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
However, we find ourselves up against a dilemma. Our human being has become a sort of indeterminate clay which would have to receive [the desires] passively—or one would be reduced to a simple bundle of these irreducible drives or tendencies. In either case the human disappears; we can no longer find “the one” to whom this or that experience has happened. Either in looking for the person we encounter a useless, contradictory metaphysical substance—or else the being whom we seek vanishes in a dust of phenomena bound together by external connections. However, what each of us requires in this very effort to comprehend another is that one should never resort to this idea of substance, which is inhuman because it is well this side of the human. Also, if we admit that the person is a totality, we can not hope o reconstruct one by an addition or by an organization of the diverse tendencies which we have empirically discovered in one. Every attitude of the person contains some reflection of this totality. A jealousy of a particular date in which a subject posits oneself in history in relation to a certain person signifies for the one who knows how to interpret it, the total relation to the World by which the subject constitutes oneself as a self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
This empirical attitude is by itself the expression of the choice of an intelligible character. There is no mystery about this. It is interesting that the term “mystic” is used in this derogatory sense to mean anything we cannot segmentize and count. The odd belief prevails in our culture that if we cannot make it mathematical, a thing or experience is not real, and if we can reduce it to numbers it is somehow real. Thus we deny reality of our own experience. The term “mystic,” in this disparaging sense, is generally used in the service of obscurantism; certainly avoiding an issue by derogation is only to obscure it. Is not the scientific attitude rather, to try to see clearly what it is we are talking about and then to find whatever terms or symbols can best, with least distortion, describe this reality? It should not so greatly surprise us to find that “being” belongs to that class of realities, like “love” and “consciousness” (for two other examples), which we cannot segmentize or abstract without losing precisely what we set out to study. This does not, however, relieve us from the task of trying to understand and describe them. The loss of the sense of being is related on one hand to our tendency to subordinate existence to function: a human knows oneself not as a human or self but as a ticket-seller in the subway, a grocer, a professor, a vice president of Cresleigh, or by whatever one’s economic function may be. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
And on the other hand, this loss of the sense of being is related to the mass collectivist trends and widespread conformist tendencies in our culture. Indeed, I wonder if a psychoanalytic method, deeper and more discerning than any of that has been evolved until now, would not reveal the morbid effects of the repression of this sense and of the ignoring of this need. We need to be cognizant of freedom to become aware that there are forces in the World acting upon us. This is the sphere where we have the potential capacity to pause before reacting and thus to cast some weight on whether our reaction will go this way or that. And this, therefore, is the sphere where one, the human being, is never merely a collection of drives determined forms of behaviour. Hymans are the beings who can be conscious of, and therefore responsible for, their existence. It is this capacity to become aware of one’s own being which distinguishes the human being from other beings, as far as we know. Humans are not only being-in-itself, as all beings are, but also being-for-itself. They are the person-who-is-responsible-for-one’s-own-existence choosing. If the reader will keep in mind that being is a participle, a verb form implying someone in the process of being something, the full meaning of the term human being will be clearer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
We can understand another human being only as we see what one is moving toward, what one is becoming; and we can know ourselves only as we project our potentia in action. The significant tense for human beings is thus the future—that is to say, the critical question is what I am pointing toward, becoming, what I will be in the immediate future. Thus, being in the human sense is not given once and for all. It does not unfold automatically as the cypress tree does from the seed. For an intrinsic and inseparable element in being human is self-consciousness. If one is to become oneself, humans are the particular being who has to be aware of oneself, be responsible for oneself. As far as we know, human beings are also the particular being who knows that at some future moment one will not be; one is the being who is always in a dialectical relation with nonbeing, death. And one not only knows one will sometime not be, but one can, in one’s own choices one makes once and for all at the point of considering suicide; it reflects to some degree a choice made at every instant. The profound awareness of human beings is one pictured with incomparable beauty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
The do-it-yourself movement has accompanied, paradoxically, increasing specialization in the occupational sphere. As one’s job narrows, perhaps, one seeks the challenge of new skill-acquisition in the Cresleigh Home. However, specialization also means that one’s interpersonal encounters with artisans in the Cresleigh Home proliferate and become more impersonal. It is not a matter of familiar encounter with the local smith or grocer—a few well-known individuals performing a relatively large number of functions, and with whom one’s casual interpersonal contacts may be a source of satisfaction, and are in any case a testimony to the stability and meaningful interrelatedness of human affairs. One finds instead a multiplicity of narrow specialists—each perhaps a stranger (the same type of repair may be performed by a different person each time). Every relationship, such as it is, must start from scratch, and it is small wonder that the householder turns away from such an unrewarding prospect in apathy and despair. Americans thus find themselves in a vicious circle, in which their extrafamilial relationships are increasingly arduous, competitive, trivial, and irksome, in part as a result of efforts to avoid or minimize potentially irksome or competitive relationships. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
As the few vestiges of stable and familiar community life erode, the desire for a simple, cooperative life style grows in intensity. The most seductive appeal of radical ideologies for Americans consists in the fact that all in one way or another attack the competitive foundations of our society. Each touches a responsive doubt, and the stimuli arousing this doubt must be carefully unearthed and rooted out, just as the Puritan must unearth and root out the stimuli of the pleasures of the flesh that excite one. Both efforts are ambivalent, since, the seek and destroy process is a part a quest for the stimulus itself. The Puritanical censor both wants the stimuli of the pleasures of the flesh and is in part of a quest to destroy it, and one’s job enables one to gratify both of these contradictory desires. There is a similar prurience in the efforts of groups such as the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to uncover subversion. Just as the censor gets to experience far more pornography than the average human, so the Congressional red-baiter gets to hear as much Anti-Patriot ideology as one wants, which is apparently quite a lot. Now it may be objected that American society is far less competitive than it once was, and the appeal of radical ideologies should hence be diminished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
A generation of critics has argued that the entrepreneurial individualist of the past has been replaced by a bureaucratic, security-minded, Organization Human. Much of this historical drama was written through the simple device of comparing yesterday’s owner-president with today’s assistant sales manager; certainly these nostalgia-merchants never visited a nineteenth-century company town. Another distortion is introduced by the fact that it was only the most ruthlessly competitive robber barons who survived to tell us how it was. Little is written about the neighbourhood store that extended credit to the less affluent, or how Mrs. Sarah Winchester paid her employees three times the national average and built houses for them and their families on her estate around her mansion (unfortunately most the Victorian homes that were around the mansion were destroyed, but the mansion still stands as well as one guest house), or the small town industry that refused to lay off local workers in hard times—they all went under together. And as for the organization humans—they left us no sags. Despite these biases real changes have undoubtedly occurred, but even if we grant that the business World as such was more competitive, the total environment contained more cooperative, stable, and personal elements. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
The individual worked in smaller firm with lower turnover in which one’s relationships were more enduring and less impersonal, and in which the ideology of Adam Smith was tempered by the fact that the participants were neighbours and might have been childhood playmates. Even if the business World was a cannibalistic as we imagine it (which seems highly unlikely), one encountered it as a deviant episode in what was otherwise a more comfortable and familiar environment than the organization human can find today in or out of one’s office. The organization human complex is simply an attempt to restore the personal, particularistic, paternalistic environment of the family business and the company town; and the other-directed “group think” of the suburban community is a desperate attempt to bring some old-fashioned small-town collectivism into the transient and impersonal life-style of the suburb. The social critics of the 1950’s were so preoccupied with assailing these rather synthetic substitutes for traditional forms of human interdependence that they lost sight of the underlying pathogenic forces that produced them. Medical symptoms usually result from attempts made by the body to counteract disease, and attacking such symptoms often aggravates and prolongs the illness. This appears to be the case with the feeble and self-defeating efforts of twentieth-century Americans to find themselves a viable social context. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
“And now, it came to pass in the twenty and sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, behold, when the Lamanites awoke on the first morning of the first month, behold, they found Amalickiah was dead in his own tent; and they also saw that Teancum was ready to give them battle on that day. And now, when the Lamanites saw this they were affrighted; and they abandoned their design in marching into the land northward, and retreated with all their army into the city of Mulek, and sought protection in their fortifications. And it came to pass that the brother of Amalickiah was appointed king over the people; and his name was Ammoron; thus king Ammoron, the brother of king Amalickiah, was appointed to reign in his stead. And it came to pass that he did command that his people should maintain those cities, which they had taken by the shedding of blood; for they had not taken any cities save they had lost much blood. And now, Teancum saw that the Lamanites were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken, and those parts of the land which they had obtained possession of; and also seeing the enormity of their number, Teancum thought it was not expedient that he should attempt to attack them in their forts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
“However, he kept his men around about, as if making preparations for war; yea, and truly he was preparing to defend himself against them, by casting up walls round about and preparing places of resort. And it came to pass that he kept thus preparing for war until Moroni had sent a large number of humans to strengthen his army. And Moroni also sent orders unto him that he should retain all the prisoners who fell into his hands; for as the Lamanites had taken many prisoners, that he should retain all the prisoners of the Lamanites as a ransom for those whom the Lamanites had taken. And he also sent orders unto him that he should fortify the land Bountiful, and secure the narrow pass which led into the land northward, lest the Lamanites should obtain that point and should have power to harass them on every side. And Moroni also sent unto him, desiring him that he would be faithful in maintaining the quarter of the land, and that he would seek every opportunity to scourge the Lamanites in that quarter, as much as in his power, that perhaps he might take again by stratagem or some other way those cities which had been taken out of their hands; and that he also would fortify and strengthen the cities round about, which had not fallen into the hands of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“And he also said unto him, I would come unto you, but behold, the Lamanites are upon us in the borders of the land by the west sea; and behold, I go against them, therefore I cannot come unto you. Now, the king (Ammoron) had departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and had made known unto the queen concerning the death of his brother, and had gathered together a large number of humans, and had marched forth against the Nephites on the borders by the west sea. And thus he was endeavouring to harass the Nephites, and to draw away a part of their forces to that part of the land, while he had left to possess the cities which he had taken, that they should also harass the Nephites on the borders by the east sea, and should take possession of their lands as much as it was in their power, according to the power of their armies. And thus were the Nephites in those dangerous circumstances in the ending of the twenty and sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. However, behold, it came to pass in the twenty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, that Teancum, by the command of Moroni—who has established armies to protect the south and the west borders of the land, and had begun his march towards the land Bountiful, that he might assist Teancum with is humans in retaking the cities which they had lost– #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“And it came to pass that Teancum had received orders to make an attack upon the city of Mulek, if it were possible retake it. And it came to pass that Teancum made preparations to makes an attack upon the city of Mulek, and march forth with one’s army against the Lamanites; but he saw that it was impossible that he could overpower them while they were in their fortifications; therefore he abandoned his designs and returned again to the city Bountiful, to wait for the coming of Moroni, that he might receive strength to his army. And it came to pass that Moroni did arrive with his army at the land of Bountiful, in the latter end of the twenty and seventh year f the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And in the commencement of the twenty and eight year, Moroni and Teancum and many of the chief captains held a council of war—what they should do to cause the Lamanites to come out against them to battle; or that they might by some means flatter them out of their strongholds, that they might gain advantage over them and take again the city of Mulek. And it came to pass they sent embassies to the army of the Lamanites, which protected the city of Mulek, to their leader, whose name was Jacob, desiring hm hat he would come out with is armies to meet them upon the plains between the two cities. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“However, behold, Jacob, who was a Zoramite, would not come out with his army to meet them upon the plains. And it came to pass that Moroni, having no hopes of meeting them upon fair grounds, therefore, he resolved upon a plan that he might decoy the Lamanites out of their strongholds. Therefore he caused that Teancum should take a small number of humans and march down near the seashore; and Moroni and his army, by night, marched in the wilderness, on the west of the city Mulek; and thus, on the morrow, when guards of the Lamanites had discovered Teancum, they ran and told it unto Jacob, their leader. And it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites did march forth against Teancum, supposing by their numbers to overpower Teancum because of the smallness of his numbers. And as Teancum saw the armies of the Lamanites coming out against him he began to retreat down by the seashore, northward. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that he began to flee, they took courage and pursued them with vigour. And while Teancum was thus leading away the Lamanites who were pursuing them in vain, behold, Moroni commanded that a part of his army who were with him should march forth into the city, and take possession of it. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“However, behold, Jacob, who was a Zoramite, would not come out with his army to meet them upon the plains. And it came to pass that Moroni, having no hopes of meeting them upon fair grounds, therefore, he resolved upon a plan that he might decoy the Lamanites out of their strongholds. Therefore he caused that Teancum should take a small number of humans and march down near the seashore; and Moroni and his army, by night, marched in the wilderness, on the west of the city Mulek; and thus, on the morrow, when guards of the Lamanites had discovered Teancum, they ran and told it unto Jacob, their leader. And it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites did march forth against Teancum, supposing by their numbers to overpower Teancum because of the smallness of his numbers. And as Teancum saw the armies of the Lamanites coming out against him he began to retreat down by the seashore, northward. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that he began to flee, they took courage and pursued them with vigour. And while Teancum was thus leading away the Lamanites who were pursuing them in vain, behold, Moroni commanded that a part of his army who were with him should march forth into the city, and take possession of it. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And thus they did, and slew all those who had been left to protect the city, yea, all those who would not yield up their weapons of war. And thus Moroni had obtained possession of the city Mulek with a part of his army, while he marched with the remainder to meet the Lamanites when they should return from the pursuit of Teancum. And it came to pass that the Lamanites did pursue Teancum until they came near the city Bountiful, and then they were met by Lehi and a small army, which had been left to protect the city Bountiful. And now behold, when the chief captains of the Lamanites had beheld Lehi with his army coming against the, they fled in much confusion, lest perhaps they should not obtain the city Mulek before Lehi should overcome them; for they were wearied because of their march, and the humans of Lehi were fresh. Now the Lamanites did not know that Moroni had been in their rear with his army; and all they feared was Lehi and his men. Now Lehi was not desirous to overtake them till they should meet Moroni and his army. And it came to pass that before the Lamanites had retreated far they were surrounded by the Nephites, by the humans retreated far they were surrounded by the Nephites, by the humans of Moroni on the one hand, and the humans of Lehi on the other, all of whom were fresh and full of strength. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“However, the Lamanites were wearied because of their long march. And Moroni commanded his humans that they should fall upon them until they had given up their weapons of war. And it came to pass that Jacob, being their leader, being also a Zoramite, and having an unconquerable spirit, he le the Lamanites forth to battle with exceeding fury against Moroni. Moroni being in their course of march, therefore Jacob was determined to slay them and cut his way through the city of Mulek. However, behold, Moroni and his humans were more powerful; therefore they did not give way before the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they fought on both hands with exceeding fury; and there were many slain on both sides; yea, and Moroni was wounded and killed. And Lehi pressed upon their rear with such fury with his strong humans, that the Lamanites in the rear delivered up their weapons of war; and the remainder of them, being much confused, knew not whither to go or to strike. Now Moroni seeing their confusion, he said unto them: If ye will bring forth your weapons of war and deliver them up, behold we will forbear shedding your blood. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
“And it came to pass that when the Lamanites had heard these words, their chief captains, all those who were not slain, came forth and threw down their weapons of war at the feet of Moroni, and also commanded their humans that they should do the same. However, behold, there were any that would not; and those who would not deliver up their swords were taken and bound, and their weapons of war were taken from them, and they were compelled to march with their brethren forth int the land Bountiful. And now the number of prisoners who were taken exceeded more than the number of those who had been slain, yea, more than those who had been slain on both sides,” reports Alma 52.1-40. He walked the path that descends to death; Himself still living, He braved the journey and brought rebirth to those beyond hope dwelling in the coldest regions, living in the halls of Earth. Facing Death boldly, He led him to love and taught him the secrets that only He knew. It was His great courage that taught us to dare and His example that we should follow in the heart of trouble that may beset us. Come, my beloved, with chorus of praise, welcome Bride Sabbath, the Queen of the days. “Keep and Remember!”—in divine Word He that is One Alone, made His will heard; One is the name of Him, One is the Lord! His are the fame and the glory and praise! #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
Cresleigh Homes
It may be warm, but we still feel the fall spirit creeping in! 🍂 Have you started decorating your home for fall?
If you are stumped on where to start, keep an eye out for our upcoming blog post for how to get into the fall spirit! 😍 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
You Always Hold Your Loved One in Your Heart, but You Must Let Go of Your Grief!
We have probed the Earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it….That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-moth bases, we would have been evicted long ago, and perhaps that is what is going on with COVID-19. Perhaps the Earth is tired of being abused. After 96 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. Reentering America, one is struck first of all by the grim monotony of American facial expressions—hard, surly, and bitter—and by the aura of deprivation that informs them. One goes abroad forewarned against exploitation by grasping foreigners, but nothing is done to prepare the returning traveler for the fanatical acquisitiveness of one’s compatriots. It is difficult to become reaccustomed to seeing people already weighted down with possession acting as if every object they did not own were bread withheld from a hungry mouth. These perceptions are heightened by the contrast between the sullen faces of real people and the vision of happiness television offers: men and women ecstatically engaged in stereotyped symbols of fun—running through fields, strolling on beaches, dancing and singing. Smiling faces with chronically open mouths express their gratification with the manifold bounties offered by the culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
One begins to feel there is a sever gap between the fantasies Americans life by and the realities they live in. Americans know from an early age how they are supposed to look when happy and what they are supposed to do or buy to be happy. However, for some reason their fantasies are unrealizable and leave them disappointed and embittered. The traveler’s antennae disappear after a time. These impressions fade, and reentry process is gradually effected. American once again seem familiar, comfortable, ordinary. Yet some uneasiness lingers on, for the society seems troubled and self-preoccupied—as if suddenly large numbers of America were scrutinizing their own society with the doubtful eyes of a traveler. One of the functions of a society is to make its inhabitants feel safe, and American devote more of their collective resources to security than to any other need. They build McMansions in gated communities, have cameras inside and outside the home, every member of the family has a mobile phone and every kind of insure you can dream of. Some people even go as far as buying armored (bullet proof) Ultimate Driving Machines. Yet American still think they need more safety because of shotguns in the close, nuclear bombers patrolling overhead, and the fiction the passes as news. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
With each decade we seem to accumulate more fears, and most of these fears seem to be about each other. In the fifties we were afraid of native Communists, and although we now feel sheepish about that moment of panic, today we express the same kind of fears about the mainstream media and the political party; and in our reactions to all of these fears we have created some very real dangers. Our intense fears make many people believe their race, way of life, religion, wealth, family, home and country are in danger of total extinction. During this COVID-19 crisis, many people have seriously become fearful of a World War III. Given this lack of concern for an overwhelming threat, how can we account for the exaggerated fear of climate change? From Dr. Freud we learned long ago to suspect, when a fear seems out of proportion, that is has been bloated by a wish; and this seems particularly likely when the danger is defined as a psychological one—an evil influence. The truth about climate change is if we want to save the World, we need to stop destroying forests and rain forests. We fear storms and wild beasts, but we do not censor them. If we must guard ourselves against evil influences we there by admit to their seductive appeal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Thus the McCarthy era reached its peak after the discovery that a few Americans has responded to “brainwashing” efforts, and the fear of conversion to Communism was quite explicit in public statements and popular surveys. One survey respondent, for example, made the revealing statement that “so many people in America are eager like those soldiers of ours in Korea to fall into the traps set by Communist propaganda.” The anticommunism of that period and its institutional residues have served as a kind of political fig leaf. The same emphasis surrounds of fears of radicalism today. The political party, peace demonstrations, militance, dens, and student protests are disturbing not only because they provide a serious physical danger (say the equivalent of walking through a street gang wearing the wrong colour), but also because we fear having our secret doubts about the viability of our social system voiced aloud. It is not what happens abroad that generates hysteria, but rather what appears to be happening within ourselves. This is why force must be used against the expression of certain ideas—if the ideas pluck a responsive chord counterarguments are difficult to remember, and one must fall back on clubs and tear gas. However, what is the nature of the attraction exerted by radical ideas on unwilling conservatives? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We know something about the hopes that tige the old maid’s search for a ravisher under her bed, but we need to understand better the seductive impact that informs our enraged fascination with the revolutionary currents of American society. Since the very form of this question rests on certain assumptions about culture and personality, however, let me first makes these explicit. The emotional repertory of human beings is limited and standard. When caressed, we are built to feel warm, happy, and content, when frustrated feel angry, when attacked feel frightened, when insulted feel offended, when excluded jealous, and so on. However, every culture holds some of these human reactions to be unacceptable and attempts to warp its participants int some peculiar specialization. Since human beings are malleable within limits, the warping is for the most part successfully achieved, so that some learn not to laugh, some not to cry, some not to love, and some not to hate in situations in which these reactions might appropriately be expressed. This cultural warping of human emotionality is eased by compartmentalization: there are special times and places and situations where the disparaged responses are permitted, or classes of people who can provide vicarious satisfaction through conspicuous performance of some kind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Yet there are always a few of these responses with which every society and every individual has trouble. They must be shouted down continually, although they are usually visible to the outsider. Thus although the Germans, for example, have always placed great stress on order, precision, and obedience to authority, they periodically explode into revolutionary chaos and are driven by romantic Gotterdammerung fantasies. In the same way there is a cooperative underside to competitive America, a rich spoofing tradition in ceremonious England, an elaborate pornography in all prudish societies, and so on. Rather than saying Germans are obedient or Anglo-Saxon societies stuffy or puritanical, it is more correct to day that Germans are preoccupied with issues of authority, Anglo-Saxons with the control of emotional and pleasures of the flesh expression, and so forth. Those issues about which members of a given society seem to feel strongly all reveal a conflict one side of which is strongly emphasized, the other side as strongly (but not quite successfully) suppressed. These opposing forces are much more equally balanced than the society’s participants like to recognize—were this not true there would be no need for suppression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Life would indeed be much less frantic if we were all able to recognize the diversity of responses and feelings within ourselves, and could abandon our somewhat futile efforts to present a monolithic self-portrait to the World. Probably some exaggeration of uniformity is necessary, however, in order for us to act at all, or at least with enough consistency to permit smooth social functioning. On the individual level the delicate balance reveals itself though conversion. An individual who “converts” from one orientation to its exact opposite appears to oneself and others to have made a gross change, but actually it involves only a very small shift in the balance of a focal and persistent conflict. Just as only one percent of the voting population is needed to reserves the results of an American election, so only one percent of an individual’s internal “constituencies” need shift in order to transform one from voluptuary to ascetic, from police officer to criminal, from Communist to anticommunist, or whatever. The opposite sides are as evenly matched before, and the apparent change merely represents the desperate efforts made by the internal “majority” to consolidate its shaky position of dominance. The individual must expend just as much energy shouting down the new “minority” as one did the old; some of the most dedicated witch hunters of the 1950’s, for example, were ex-Communist. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
So the reason there is so much division in America right now is because the majority is now becoming the minority, as the demographics change. On the society levels there are more outlets from the expression of “minority” themes and sentiments, and reversals of emphasis involve more overlap between the opposing trends. The United States of America, for example, traditionally one of the most prudish societies in the World, has long displayed, in a somewhat warped and mechanical way, the greatest profusion of stimuli involving pleasures of the flesh. These considerations suggest that the fear of radical movements in America derives much of its intensity from the attraction that such movements have for their opponents—an attraction that must be stifled. However, what is it? What is so severely lacking in our society that the assertion of an alternative life style throws so many Americans into panic and rage? I would like to suggest three human desires that are deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture: The desire for community—the wish to live in trust and fraternal cooperation with one’s fellows in a total and visible collective eternity. The desire for engagement—the wish to come directly to grips with social and interpersonal problems and to confront on equal terms an environment which is not composed of ego extensions is another human desire that is deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The third is the desire for dependence—the wish to share responsibility for the control of one’s impulses and the direction of one’s life. When I say that these three desires are frustrated by American culture, this need not conjure up romantic images of individual struggling against society. In every case it is fair to say that we participate eagerly in producing the frustration we endure—it is not something merely done t us. For these desires are in each case subordinate to their opposites in that vague entity called the American Character. Americans have voluntarily created and voluntarily maintained a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravate these secondary yearnings, to the point where they threaten to become primary. Groups that in any way personify this threat are therefore feared in an exaggerated way, and will be until Americans as a group are able to recognize and accept those needs within themselves. “Thus says the Lord Who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing, even now it is springing to light. Do you not perceive it? A way will I make in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!” (Isaiah 43.16, 18-19.) #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Most of the conditions we commonly speak of as feelings are really not feelings at all; but the feeling tones or sensations that accompany those conditions are so powerful that the conditions themselves become identified with the associated sensations. This is true love and hatred or contempt, for example, but also with hurry and peace and with self-esteem and discouragement. Now, there are some extremely serious dangers here. When we confuse the condition with the accompanying feeling—peace, for example, with the feeling of peacefulness—we very likely will try to manage the feelings and disregard or deny the reality of the conditions. That way lie such things as “falling in love with love” and most of all the well-known addictions. The person who primarily wants the feeling of being loved or being “in love” will be incapable of sustaining loving relationships, whether with God or with other humans. And the person who wants the feeling of peacefulness will be unable to do the things that make for peace—especially, doing what is right and confronting evil. So, as far as our planning for spiritual formation is concerned, we must choose and act with regard to the condition, good or bad, and allow the feelings to take care of themselves, as they certainly will. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
In particular, we must never directly cherish, protect, or manipulate feelings, whether in ourselves or others. When negative feelings have themselves become so overwhelming that they threaten to take over our lives, this is the only exception to this rule. Then we must take steps to remove the negative feeling (grief or pain, for example). Prayer or even medication for such feelings is then wise. However, even so, the focus on the feeling must not be allowed to prevent our dealing, when and as we can, with the conditions from which that feelings arises. A well-known minister, after his wife passed away, said he had learned that there is a difference between turning loose your loved one and turning loose your grief. You always hold your loved one in your heart, but you must let go of your grief. So far as possible, we must always away from painful and destructive feelings. Simply that. Walk away. “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. On the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, so that I had to reject them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
However, this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people for I will forgive their guilt and I will remember their sins no more,” reports Jeremiah 31.31-34. Charles Darwin. Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) has offered a model of emotion for various other theorists and researchers. Darwin focuses on emotive expressions—that is, on visible gestures—and not on the subjective meanings associated with them. These gestures, he posits, were acquired during a prehistoric period and have survived as “serviceable associated habits.” Originally linked to actions these emotive gestures become actions manque. The emotion of love, for example, is the vestige of what was once a direct act of copulation. The baring of teeth in rage is a vestige of the once immediate act of biting. The expression of disgust is the vestige of what was once the immediate act of regurgitating a noxious thing. For Darwin, there is no emotion without gesture although there may be gesture without action. (The says the Lord God: ) “I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within them. I will remove their heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh,” reports Ezekiel 11.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Darwin’s theory of emotion, then, is a theory of gesture. The question for later students thus became: are emotive gestures universal or are they culturally specific? Darwin’s own general conclusion was that they were universal. Darwin distinguished between facial expressions of emotion that are innate and universal and facial gestures (not necessarily of emotion) that are learned and thus culturally variable. He devised a sixteen-item questionnaire and sent it to thirty-six missionaries and others who had lived in non-Western societies. One question was: “Can a dogged or obstinate expression be recognized, which is chiefly shown by the mouth being firmly closed, a lowering brow, and a slight frown?” Based on his returned questionnaires, Darwin concluded that “the chief expressive actions” of human beings were innate and therefore universal. Despite his generally universalist interpretations, however, Darwin concluded that some nonverbal behaviours (such as weeping, kissing, nodding, and shaking the head in affirmation and negation) were not universal but culture-specific and “learned like the words of a language.” However, the debate has been carried forward by those who argue that emotional expressions are probably innate, and those who argue that they are modeled on language and therefore culturally variable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
What is missing from both sides of this debate is what was missing in Darwin’s theory from the beginning: a conception of emotion as subjective experience and a more subtle and complex notion of how social factor impinge. Humans compete with each other for control of the ritual apparatus, which is a powerful tool for commanding people by controlling their emotions. The ego is a mediator between the id (drive) and conscious expression. Affects are seen as signals of impending danger (from inside or outside) and as an impetus to action. The ego is assigned the capacity to postpone id drives, to neutralize or bind them. One emotion—anxiety—is the model for all others because it is more important due to the unpleasantness of anxiety which leads to the development of various ego defenses against unpleasantness. As analysts we recognize that anxiety occupies a special position in mental life. It is the motive for defense. Defenses serve the purpose of minimizing, or, if possible, preventing the development of anxiety. Anxiety was initially defined in a way that bypasses the ego: anxiety is the reaction to an influx of stimuli which is too great for the mental apparatus to master or discharge. (Thus says the Lord God: ) “I ignore the troubles of the past. I shut mine eyes to them. For, behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth. The past shall be forgotten and never come to mind. Humans shall rejoice forever in what I now create,” reports Isaiah 65.16, 17. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
So we see that God is a worker and that humans, created in God’s image, is a worker and that work is good. However, then come the Fall and the Curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3.17-19. The Curse made nature uncooperative, so that work became painful toil and humans had to sweat for a living. Today our working conditions vary. Some sweat more than others. We may be in a better position than some. However, the norm for the World is “painful toil.” Even more, the normal experience of humankind is one’s labour is a malaise of futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes gave this universal expression as he bemoaned his plight from the perspective of one who leaves God out of his life. In 2.4-10 he describes his professional success in acquiring vineyards and gardens and parks and enslaved humans and flocks and treasures. He was greater than all his contemporaries. He was denied nothing his eyes desired. However, he concluded in verse 11, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing gained under the Sun.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
And he reiterates in verse 17, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the Sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the win.” Humans and others, this is as far as work will take you apart from God. You will engaged in it because, though fallen, you are in the image of God and because work is part of the natural order, and it will produce its benefits and satisfactions—but it will also be toil, and its joys will be ephemeral. Studs Terkel has revealed what has always been true under the Sun when God is left out. “And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of Earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And upon the top of these ridges of Earth he caused that there should be timers, yea, works of timbers built up to the height of a human, round about the cities. And he caused that upon those works of timbers there should be a frame of pickets built upon the timbers round about; and they were strong and high. And he caused towers to be erected that overlooked those works of pickets, and he caused places of security to be built upon those towers, that the stones and the arrows of the Lamanites could not hurt them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
“And they were prepared that they could cast stones from the top thereof, according to their pleasure and their strength, and slay one who should attempt to approach near he walls of the city. Thus Moroni did prepare strongholds against the coming of their enemies, round about every city in all the land. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his armies should go forth into the east wilderness; yea, and they went forth and drove all he Lamanites who were in the east wilderness into their own lands, which were south of the land of Zarahemla. And the land of Nephi did run in a straight course from the east sea to the west. And it came to pass that when Moroni had driven all the Lamanites out of the east wilderness which was north of the lands of their own possessions, he caused that the inhabitants who were in the land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness, even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land. And he also placed armies on the south, in the borders of their possessions, and caused them to erect fortifications that they might secure their armies and their people from the hands of their enemies. And thus he cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites in the East wilderness, yea, and also on the west, fortifying the line between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi, from the west sea, running by the head of the river of Sidon—the Nephites possessing all the land northward, yea, even all the land which was northward of the land Bountiful according to their pleasure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“Thus Moroni, with his armies, which did increase daily because of the assurance of protection which his works did bring forth unto them, did seek to cut off the strength and the power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possession, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession. And it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city, and they called the nae of the city Moroni; and it was by the east sea; and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites. And they also began a foundation for a city between the city of Moroni and the city of Aaron, joining he borders of Aaron and Moroni; and they called the name of the city, or the land, Nephihah. And they also began in that same year to build many cities on the north, one in a particular manner which they called Lehi, which was in the north by the borders of the seashore. And thus ended the twentieth year. And in these prosperous circumstances were the people of Nephi in the commencement of the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did prosper exceedingly, and they became exceedingly rich; yea, and they did multiply and wax strong in the land. And thus we see how merciful and jus are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of humans; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And we see that these promises have been verified to the people of Nephi; for it has been their quarrelings and their contentions, yea, their murderings, and their plunderings, their idolatry, their whoredoms, and their abominations, which were among themselves, which brought them their wars and their destructions. And those who were faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord were delivered at all times, whilst thousands of their wicked brethren have been consigned to bondage, or to perish by the sword, or to dwindle in unbelief, and mingle with the Lamanites. However, behold, there was never a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni, yea, even at this time, in the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that the twenty and second year of the reign of the judges also ended in peace; yea, and also the twenty and third year. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And it came to pass that in the commencement of the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges, there would also have been peace among the people of Nephi had it not been for a contention which took place among them concerning the land of Lehi, and the land of Morianton, which joined upon the borders of Lehi; both of which were on the borders by the seashore. For behold, the people who possessed the land of Morianton did claim a part of the land of Lehi; therefore there began to be a warm contention between them, insomuch that the people of Morianton took up arms against their brethren, and they were determined by the sword to slay them. However, behold, the people who possessed the land of Lehi fled to the camp of Moroni, and appealed unto him for assistance; for behold they were not in the wrong. And it came to pass that when the people of Morianton, who were led by a man whose name was Morianton, found that the people of Lehi had fled to the camp of Moroni they were exceedingly fearful lest the army of Moroni should come upon them and destroy them. Therefore, Morianton put it into their hearts that they should flee to the land which was northward, which was covered with large bodies of water, and take possession of the land which was northward. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And behold, they would have carried this plan into effect, (which would have been a cause to have been lamented) but behold, Morianton being a man of much passion, therefore he was angry with one of his maid servants, and he fell upon her and beat her much. And it came to pass that she fled, and came over to the camp of Moroni, and told Moroni all things concerning the matter, and also concerning their intentions to flee into the land northward. Now behold, the people who were in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, feared that they would hearken to the words of Morianton and unite with his people, and thus he would obtain possession of those parts of the land, which would lay a foundation for serious consequences among the people of Nephi, yea, which consequences would lead to the overthrow of their liberty. Therefore Moroni sent an army, with their camp, to head the people of Morianton, to stop their flight into the land northward. And it came to pass that they did not head them until they had come to the borders of the land Desolation; and there they did head them, by the narrow pass which led by the sea into the land northward, yea, by the sea, on the west and on the east. And it came to pass that the army which was sent by Moroni, which was led by a man whose name was Teancum did meet the people of Morianton. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
And when Teancu met the people of Morianton, so stubborn were the people of Morianton, (being inspired by wickedness and his flattering words) that a battle commenced between them, in which Teancum did slay Morianton and defeat his army, and took them prisoners, and returned to the camp of Moroni. And thus ended the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus were the people of Morianton brought back. And upon their covenanting to keep the peace they were restored to the land of Morianton, and a union took place between them and the people of Lehi; and they were also restored to their lands. And it came to pass that in the same year that the people of Nephi had peace restored unto them, that Nephihah, the second chief judge, died, having filled the judgment seat with perfect uprightness before God. Nevertheless, he had refused Alma to take possession of those records and those things which were esteemed by Alma and his fathers to be most sacred; therefore Alma had conferred them upon his son, Helaman. Behold, it came to pass that the son of Nephihah, Pahoran, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, in the stead of his father; yea, he was appointed chief judge and governor over the people, with an oath and sacred ordinance to judge righteously, and to keep the peace and the freedom of the people. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Pahoran also had the power to grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God, yea, to support and maintain the cause of God all his days, and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime. And Pahoran did fill the seat of his father, and did commence his reign in the end of the twenty and fourth year, over the people of Nephi,” Alma 50.1-40. Wonder and awe, as I sit in your presence, you who sit in the gateway, in this World and in the other, mediating the power that shines through, letting pass what I need, and what I can use, holding back in mercy what I cannot. Seen against the brightness, your dark silhouette is still and sharp and clear. Sitting fiercely, with perfect intent, pure in your purpose, source of terror and comfort. A roaring fire, you sit in my heart’s center. A rampaging bull, you tear through my soul. A searing bolt, you cut through my life. A skirring arrow, you slice me in two. A standing stone, you are my anchor. The Lord reigneth while the people stand in awe; He is enthroned upon His judgment seat, while the Earth trembles. The Lord is mighty in Zion; He is exalted over all peoples. They praise His name: “God is great and revered, is holy.” Mighty King who loveth justice, Thou hast established equity; Justice and righteousness hast Thou wrought in Jacob. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
A tall-standing cypress tree is our God, supporting the Worlds on his limbs, each World ordered according to the spreading of His branches. Into each World, His twigs extend, bearing the leaves and birds that are our lives. From what source is the tree nourished? Where do its roots extend? Deep within the void they reach and are fed there from the substance of the Goddess. He makes known her will, giving it form, from which we might know it and live according to its pattern. Shaper and essence, open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart, that I might perceive the sacred pattern and conform my life to it. The goddess is the one who is Lady of all, and she is the one of whom I would speak, the one who gives birth and the one who brings death, beginning and end of the course of our lives. God is the Lord Almighty. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, declaring: “Holy is He!” Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel was among those that called upon His name, calling upon the Lord and being answered. He would speak unto them out of a pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the laws He gave them. Thou, O Lord, didst answer them; Thou wast a forgiving God unto them, through punishing them for their evil. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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I Feared Dying, Not Because of Death, but Because it Would End My Career!
People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. Millions of people regard their work as something they must bear, a living indignity. Their feelings are not without precedent. A dark could of dissatisfaction blankets today’s work force. For the overwhelming majority, work is dull and meaningless. This pervasive discontent has spawned the paradoxical problems of laziness on the one hand and overwork on the other. Twenty five percent of employees gives one’s best effort on the job, and about twenty percent of the average worker’s time is wasted, thus producing, in effect, a four-day work week. However, sloth is an epidemic, so is over overwork. Moonlighting is a way of life for a substantial part of our work force. When the workers at a rubber manufacturing plant in Akron, Ohio USA, were given six-hour workdays—and over half of them took on a second full- or part-time job—this was a classic illustration! #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The managerial counterpart to workers’ moonlighting is the workaholism of those who sublimate everything—family, leisure, friends, church—to career. The depths to which careerism can go is chronicled and is extreme but not an uncommon expression when a man confessed he feared dying, not because of death, but because it would end his career. This mind-set has produced an unending list of shallow folk-religion epigrams which tout the requisite qualities of successful careers: discipline—creativity is two percent inspiration and ninety eight percent perspiration; goals—if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time; savvy—success in life some not from holding a good hand, but from playing a poor hand well; perseverance—tough times never last, but tough people do; vision—some people dream dreams and ask, Why? I dream dreams and ask, Why not?; self-confidence—believe in God, and you are halfway there; believe in yourself, and you are three-quarters there. The careerists who espouse the hubris of these credos wrongly think themselves heirs of the Protestant work ethic, but they are anything but that, as we shall see. This delusion takes on personally tragic dimensions, because surveys have indicated that the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians are virtually identical. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
At church they swear allegiance to values informed by creeds and Scriptures. However, at work they bow to idols of expedience and career success. Moral camouflage has become de rigueur (required by etiquette or current fashion) in the workplace. The plain truth is, many Christian humans miserably fail in their work ethics either because of sloth or overwork or, ironically, both. What we need is a work ethic which is informed by God’s Word and religiously lived out in the workplace and the Church. The reason this is so important is that most of us spend eight to twelve of our sixteen waking hours at work five or six days a week. So how we work not only reveals who we are, but determines what we are. The Christian discipline of work must be observed de rigueur wherever God has placed us. “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. However, where in abounded, grace did much more abound,” reports Romans 5.20. Thee words of Paul summarize his apostolic experience, his religious message as a whole, and the Christian understanding of life. To discuss theses words, or to make them the text of even several sermons, has always seemed impossible to me. I have never dared to use them before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, something has driven me to consider these words during the past few months, a desire to give witness to the two facts which appeared to me, in hour of retrospection, as the all-determining facts of our life: the abounding sin and the greater abound of grace. There are few words more strange to most of us than “sin” and “grace.” They are strange, just because they are so well-known. During the centuries they have received distorting connotations, and have lost so much of their genuine power that we must seriously ask ourselves whether we should use them at all, or whether we should discard them as useless tools. However, there is a mysterious fact about the great words of our religious tradition: they cannot be replaced. All attempts to make substitutions, including those I have tried myself, have failed to convey the reality that was to be expressed; they have led to shallow and important talk. There are no substitutes for words like “sin” and “grace”. However, there is a way of rediscovering their meaning, the same way that leads us down into the depths of our human existence. In that depth these words were conceived; and there they gained power for all ages; there they must be found again by each generation, and by each of us for ourselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Let us therefore try to penetrate the deeper levels in our life, in order to see whether we can discover in them the realities of which our text speaks. It seems desirable at this point, in order to prevent misunderstanding to discuss briefly the nature of moral theory. I shall do this by explaining in more detail the concept of a considered judgment in reflective equilibrium and the reasons for introducing it. Let us assume that each person beyond a certain age and possessed of the requisite intellectual capacity develops a sense of justice under normal social circumstances. We acquire a skill in judging things to be just and unjust, and in supporting these judgments by reasons. Moreover, we ordinarily have some desire to act in accord with there pronouncements and expect a similar desire on the part of others. Clearly this moral capacity is extraordinarily complex. To see this suffices to note the potentially infinite number and variety of judgments that we are prepared to make. The fact that we often do not know what to day, and sometime find our minds unsettled, does not detract from the complexity of the capacity we have. Now one may think of moral philosophy at first (and I stress the provisional nature of the view) as the attempt to describe our moral capacity; or, in the present case, one may regard a theory of justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
This enterprise is very difficult. For by such a description is not meant simply a list of the judgments on institutions and actions that we are prepared to render, accompanied with supporting reasons when these are offered. Rather, what is required is a formulation of a set of principle which, when conjoined to our beliefs and knowledge of the circumstances, would lead is to make these judgements with their supporting reasons were we to apply these principles conscientiously and intelligently. A conception of justice characterizes our moral sensibility when the everyday judgments we do make are in accordance with its principles. These principles can serve as part of the premises of an argument which arrives at the matching judgments. We do not understand our sense of justice until we know in some systematic way covering a wide range of cases what these principles are. Only a deceptive familiarity with our everyday judgments and our natural readiness to make them could conceal the fact that characterizing our moral capacities is an intricate task. The principles which describe them must be presumed to have a complex structure, and the concepts involved will require a serious study. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
A useful comparison here is with the problem of describing the sense of grammaticalness that we have for the sentences of our native language. In this case the aim is to characterize the ability to recognize well-formed sentences by formulating clearly expressed principles which make the same discrimination as the native speaker. This is a difficult undertaking which, although still unfinished, is known to require theoretical constructions that far outrun the ad hoc precepts of our explicit grammatical knowledge. A similar situation presumably holds in moral philosophy. There is no reason to assume that our sense of justice can be adequately characterized by familiar common-sense precepts, or derived from the more obvious learning principles. A correct account of moral capacities will certainly involve principles and theoretical constructions which go much beyond the norms and standards cited in everyday life; it may eventually require fairly sophisticated mathematics as well. This is to be expected, since on the contract view theory of justice is part of the theory of rational choice. Thus the idea of the original position and of an agreement on principles there does not seem too complicated or unnecessary. Indeed, these notions are rather simple and can serve only as a beginning. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
So far, though, I have not said anything about considered judgments. Now, as already suggested, they enter as those judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion. Thys in deciding which of our judgement to take into account we may reasonably select some and exclude others. For example, we can discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence. Similarly, those given when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain one way or the other can be left aside. All these judgments are likely to be erroneous or to be influenced by an excessive attention to our own interests. Considered judgements are simply those rendered under conditions favourable to the exercise of the sense of justice, and therefore in circumstances where the more common excuses and explanations making a mistake do not obtain. The person making the judgment is presumed, then, to have the ability, the opportunity, and the desires to reach a correct decision (or at least, not the desire not to). Moreover, the criteria that identify these judgments are not arbitrary. They are, in fact, similar to those that single out considered judgments of any kind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
And once we regard the sense of justice as a mental capacity, as involving the exercise of thought, the relevant judgments are those given under conditions favourable for deliberating and judgment in general. Have the people of our time still a feeling of sin? Do they, and do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act, that “sin” should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it is arrogant and erroneous to divine humans by calling some “sinners” and others “righteous”? For by way of such a division, we can usually discover that we ourselves do not quite belong to the “sinners”, since we have avoided heavy sins, have made some progress in the control of this or that sin, and have been even humble enough not to all ourselves “righteous”. Are we still able to realize that this kind of thinking and feeling about sin is far removed from what the great religious tradition, both within and outside the Bible, has meant when it speaks of sin? I should like to suggest another word to you, not as a substitute for the word “sin”, but as a useful clue in the interpretation of the word “sin”: “separation”. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Separation is an aspect of the experience of everyone. Perhaps the word “sin” has the same root as the word “asunder”. In any case, sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of humans from oneself, and separation of all humans from the Ground Being. This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists; it is a universal fact; it is the fate of every life. And it is our human fate in a very special sense. For we as humans know that we are separated. We not only suffer with all other creatures because of the self-destructive consequences of our separation, but also know why we suffer. We know that we are estranged from something to which we really belong, and with which we should be united. We know that the fate of separation is not merely a natural event like a flash of sudden lightening, but that it is an experience in which we actively participate, in which our whole personality is involved, and that, as fate, it is also guilt. Separation which is fate and guilt constitutes the meaning of the word “sin”. It is this which is the state of our entire existence, from its very beginning to its very end. Such separation is prepared in the mother’s womb, and before that time, in every preceding generation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Separation is manifest in the special actions of our conscious life. It reached beyond our graves into all succeeding generations. It is our existence itself. Existence is separation! Before sin is an act, it is a state. We can say the same thing about grace. For sin and grace are bound to each other. We do not even have a knowledge of sin unless we have already experienced the unity of life, which is grace. And conversely, we could not grasp the meaning of grace without having experienced the separation of life, which is sin. Grace is just as difficult to describe as sin. For some people, grace is the willingness of a divine king and a father to forgive over and again the foolishness and weakness of his subjects and children. We must reject such a concept of grace; for it is a merely childish destruction of a human dignity. For others, grace is a magic power in the dark places of the soul, but a power without any significance for practical life, a quickly vanishing and useless idea. For others, grace is the benevolence that we may find beside the cruelty and destructiveness in life. However, it does not mater whether we say “life goes on”, or whether we say “there is grace in life”; if grace means no more than this, the word should, and will, disappear. For other people, grace indicates the gifts that one has received from nature or society, and the power to do good things with the help of those gifts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
However, grace is more than gifts. In grace something is overcome; grace occurs “in spite of” something; grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement. Grace is the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself. Grace is the acceptance of that which is rejected. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny; it changes guilt into confidence and courage. There is something triumphant in the word “grace”: in spite of the abounding of sin grace abounds much more. Implicit in the emphasis of orthodox psychotherapy is the point of view that the neurotic is a person who once had a problem, and that the resolution of this past problem is the goal of psychotherapy. The whole approach to treatment through memory and the past indicates this assumption, which runs directly counter to everything we observe about neurosis and the neurotic. The neurotic is not merely a person who once had a problem, one is a person who has a continuing problem, here and now, in the present. Although it may well be that one is acting the way one is today “because” of things that happened to one in the past, one’s difficulties today are connected with the ways one is acting today. One cannot get along in the present, and unless one learns how to deal with problems as they arise, one will not be able to get along in the future. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The goal of therapy is to reunite the individual with one’s soul and give one the means with which one can solve one’s present problems and any that may arise tomorrow or next years. That tool is self-support, and this one achieves by dealing with oneself and one’s problems with all the means presently at one’s command, right now. If one can become truly aware at every instant of oneself and one’s actions on whatever level—fantasy, verbal or physical—one can see how one is producing one’s difficulties, one can see what one’s present difficulties are, and one can help oneself to solve them in the present, in the here and now. Each one the individual solves makes easier the solution for the next, for every solution increases one’s self-support. It is usual for humans, in such difficulties, to have resource to some invisible intelligent principle, as the immediate cause of that event, which surprises them, and which they think, cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature. However, philosophers, who carry their scrutiny a little farther, immediately perceive, that, even in the most familiar events, the energy of the cause is as unintelligible as in the most unusual, and that we only learn by experience the frequent conjunctions of objects, without being ever able to comprehend any thing like connection between them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Here then, many philosophers think themselves obliged by reason to have recourse, on all occasions, to the same principle, which the vulgar never appeal to but in cases, that appear miraculous and supernatural. They acknowledge mind and intelligence to be, not only the ultimate and original cause of all things, but the immediate and sole cause of every event, which appears in nature. They pretend, that those objects, which are commonly denominated causes, are in reality nothing but occasions; and that the true and direct principle of every effect is not any power or force in nature, but a volition of the Supreme Being, who wills, that such particular objects should, forever, be conjoined with each other. Instead of saying, that one billiard-ball moves another, by a force, which it has derived from the author of nature; it is the Deity oneself, they say, who, by particular volition, moves the second ball, being determined to this operation by the impulses of the first ball; in consequence of those general laws, which one has laid down to oneself in the government of the Universe. However, philosophers advancing still in their enquiries, discover, that, as we are totally ignorant of the power, on which depends the mutual operation of bodies, we are no less ignorant of that power, on which depends the operation of mind on body, or of body on mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Nor are we able, either from our senses or consciousness, to assign the ultimate principle in one cause, more than the other. The same ignorance, therefore, reduces them to the same conclusions. They assert, that the Deity is the immediate cause of the union between soul and body; and that they are not the organs of sense, which, being agitated by external objects, produce sensations in the mind; but that it is a particular volition of our omnipotent Maker, which excites such sensation, in consequence of such a motion in the organ. In like manner, it is not any energy in the will, that produces local motion in our members: It is God himself, who is pleased to second our will, in itself impotent, and to command that motion, which we erroneously attribute to our own power and efficacy. Nor do philosophers stop at this conclusion. They sometimes extend the same inference to the mind itself, in its internal operations. Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker. When we voluntarily turn our thought to any object, and rise up its image in the fancy; it is not the will which crates the idea: It is the Universal Creator, who discover it to the mind, and renders it present to us. “And now it came to pass that the sons of Alma did go forth among the people, to declare the word unto them. And Alma, also, himself, could not rest, and he also went forth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
“Now we shall say no more concerning their preaching, except that they preached the word, and the truth, according to the spirit of prophecy and revelation; and they preached after the holy order of God by which they were called. And now I return to an account of the wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites, in the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges. For behold, it came to pass that the Zoramites became Lamanites; therefore, in the commencement of the eighteenth year the people of the Nephites saw that the Lamanites were coming upon them; therefore they made preparations for war; yea, they gathered together their armies in the land of Jershon. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came with their thousands; and they came into the land of Antionum, which is the land of the Zoramites; and a man by the name of Zerahemnah was their leader. And now, as the Amalekites were of a more wicked and murderous disposition than the Lamanites were, in and of themselves, therefore, Zerahemnah appointed chief captains over the Lamanites, and they were all Amalekites and Zoramites. Now this he did that he might preserve their hatred towards the Nephites, that he might bring them into subjection to the accomplishment of his designs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“For behold, his designs were to stir up the Lamanites to anger against the Nephites; this he did that he might usurp great power over them, and also that he might gain power over the Nephites by bringing them into bondage. And now the design of the Nephites was to support their lands, and their houses, and their wives, and their children, that they might preserve them from the hands of their enemies; and also that they might preserve their rights and their privileges, yea, and also their liberty, that they might worship God according to their desires. For they knew that if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites, that whosoever should worship God in spirit and in truth, the true and the living God, the Lamanites would destroy. Yes, and they also knew the extreme hatred of the Lamanites towards their brethren, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, who were called the people of Ammon—and they would not take up arms, yea, they had entered into a covenant and they would not break it—therefore, if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites they would be destroyed. And the Nephites would not suffer that they should be destroyed; therefore they gave them lands for their inheritance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“And the people of Ammon did give unto the Nephites a large portion of their substance to support their armies; and thus the Nephites were compelled, alone, to withstand against the Lamanites, who were a compound of Laman and Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, and all those who had dissented from the Nephites, who were Amalekites and Zoramites, and the descendants of the priests Noah. Now those descendants were as numerous, nearly, as were the Nephites; and this the Nephites were obliged to contend with their brethren, even unto bloodshed. And it came to pass as the armies of the Lamanites had gathered together in the land of Antionum, behold, the armies of the Nephites were prepared to meet them in the land of Jershon. Now, the leader of the Nephites, or the man who has been appointed to be the chief captain over the Nephites—now the chief captain took the command of all the armies of the Nephites—and his name was Moroni; and Moroni took all the command, and the government of their ways. And he was only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites. And it came to pass that he met the Lamanites in the borders of Jershon, and his people were armed with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“And when the armies of the Lamanites saw that the people of Nephi, or that Moroni, has prepared his people with breastplates and with arm-shields, yea, and also shields to defend their heads, and also they were dressed with thick clothing—now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones, and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites, and the Amalekites. However, they were not armed with breastplates, nor shields—therefore, they were exceedingly afraid of the armies of the Nephites because of their armour, notwithstanding their number being so much greater than Nephites. Behold, not it came to pass that they durst not come against the Nephites in the borders of Jerson; therefore they departed out of the land of Antionum into the wilderness, and took their journey around about in the wilderness, away by the head of the river Sidon, that they might come into the land of Manti and take possession of the land; for they did not suppose that the armies of Moroni would know whither they had gone. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, it came to pass, as soon as they had departed into the wilderness Moroni sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp; and Moroni, also, knowing of the prophecies of Alma, sent certain humans unto him, desiring him that he should inquire of the Lord whither the armies of the Nephites should go to defend themselves against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that the word of the Lord came unto Alma, and Alma informed the messengers of Moroni, that the armies of the Lamanites were marching round about in the wilderness, that they might come over into the and of Manti, that they might commence an attack upon the weaker part of the people. And those messengers went and delivered the message unto Moroni. Now Moroni, leaving a part of his army in the land of Jershon, lest by any means a part of the Lamanites should come into that land and take possession of the city, took the remaining part of his army and marched over into the land of Manti. And he caused that all the people in that quarter of the land should gather themselves together to battle against the Lamanites, to defend their lands and their country, their rights and their liberties; therefore they were prepared against the time of the coming of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass that Moroni caused this his army should be secret in the valley which was near the bank of the river Sidon, which was on the west of the river Sidon in the wilderness. And Moroni placed spies round about, that he might know when the camp of the Lamanites should come. And now, as Moroni knew the intention of the Lamanites, that it was their intention to destroy their brethren, or to subject them and bring them into bondage that they might establish a kingdom unto themselves over all the land; and he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem; therefore, he found by his spies which course the Lamanites were to take. Therefore, he divided his army and brought a part over into the valley, and concealed them on the east, and on the south of the hill Riplah; and the remainder he concealed in the west valley, in the west of the river Sidon, and so down into the borders of the land of Manti. And thus having placed his army according to his desire, he was prepared to meet them. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came upon the north of the hill, where a part of the army of Moroni was concealed. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And as the Lamanites has passed the hill Riplah, and came into the valley, and began to cross the river Sidon, the army which was concealed on the south of the hill, which was led by a man whose name was Lehi, and he led his army forth and encircled the Lamanites about on the east in their rear. And it came to pass that the Lamanites, when they saw the Nephites coming upon them in their rear, turned them about and began to contend with the army of Lehi. And the work of death commenced on both sides, but it was more dreadful on the part f the Lamanites, for their nakedness was exposed to the heavy blows of the Nephites with their swords and their cimeters, which brought death almost at every stroke. While on the other hand, there was now and then a man fell among he Nephites, by their swords and the loss of blood, they being shielded for the more vital parts of the body, or the more vital part of the body being shielded from the strokes of the Lamanites, by their breastplates, and their armshields, and their head-plates; and thus the Nephites did carry on the work of death among the Lamanite. And it came to pass that the Lamanites became frightened, because of the great destruction among them, even until they began to flee towards the river Sidon. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And they were pursued by Lehi and his men; and they were driven by Lehi into the waters of Sidon, and they crossed the waters of Sidon. And Lehi retained his armies upon the bank of the river Sidon that they should not cross. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army met the Lamanites in the valley, on the other side of the river Sidon, and began to fall upon them and to slay them. And the Lamanites did flee again before them, toward the land of Manti; and they were met again by the armies of Moroni. Now in this case the Lamanites did fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been known to fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been know to fight with such exceedingly great strength and courage, no, not even from the beginning. And they were inspired by the Zoramites and the Amalekites, who were their chief captains and leaders, and by Zerahemnah, who was their chief captain, or their chief leader and commander; yea, they did fight like dragons, and many of the Nephites were slain by their hands, yea, for they did smite in two many of their head-plates, and they did pierce man of the breastplates, and they did smite off many of their arms; and this the Lamanites did smite in their fierce anger. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Nevertheless, the Nephites were inspired by a better cause, for they were not fighting for a monarchy nor power but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and children, and their all, yes, for their rites of worship and their church. And they were doing that which they felt was the duty to which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies. And again, the Lord has said that: Ye shall defend your families even unto bloodshed. Therefore for this cause were the Nephites contending with the Lamanites, to defend themselves, and their families, and their lands, their country, and their rights, and their religion. And it came to pass that when the humans of Moroni saw the fierceness and the anger of the Lamanites, they were about to shrink and flee from them. And Moroni, perceiving their intent, sent forth and inspired their hearts with these thoughts—yea, the thoughts of their lands, their liberty, yea, their freedom from bondage. And it came to pass that they turned upon the Lamanites, and they cried with one voice unto the Lord their God, for their liberty and their freedom from bondage. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And they began to stand against the Lamanites with power; and in the selfsame hour that they cried unto the Lord for their freedom, the Lamanites began to flee before them; and they fled even to the waters of Sidon. Now, the Lamanites were more numerous, yea, by more than double the number of the Nephites; nevertheless, they were driven insomuch that they were gathered together in one body in the valley, upon the bank by the river Sidon. Therefore the armies of Moroni encircled them about, yes, even on both sides of the river, for behold, on the east were the humans of Lehi. Therefore when Zerahemnah saw the humans of Lehi on the east of the river Sidon, and the armies of Moroni on the west of the river Sidon, that they were encircled about by the Nephites, they were struck with terror. Now Moroni, when he saw their terror, commanded his humans that they should stop shedding their blood,” reports Alma 43.1-54. Within the tangle of bushes and wines, among the stones and under fallen trees, the spirit of God is in the forest waiting for me. I go to Him with gifts as a token friendship. Hidden from me in the forest around me within each tree, behind each rock, the Spirit of God is gathered, unseen by people who walk, heavy-footed, through the World. I will sit quietly and wait for you, leaving you these gifts. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
This #PlumasRanch backyard looks perfect for enjoying today’s festivities! From all of us at #CresleighHomes, we hope you have a #HappyLaborDay!
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 