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Mission Can be Eternal—Told You Not to Hurt Him, but Maybe that’s a Lie?

Happiness is the object and design of our existence. The difference between the impossible and the possible is found in one’s faith. For those who struggle through life without knowing why they live, where they are going—and how to reach their highest potential—the restored gospel provides some answers. “Adam fell that humans’ might be; and hums are, that they might have joy,” reports 2 Nephi 2.25. However, happiness is not synonymous with pleasure or even freedom from pain. Those who expect life to be care free do not understand that joy is the brother and child of tribulation. True happiness comes from the personal, spiritual growth that rises out of the fires of mortal experience. It needs to be taught that there is an opposition in all things. Without that opposition, neither righteousness nor joy is possible. Some of the trials we face in life, we impose on ourselves. Others are caused by the sins and weaknesses of our fellow beings. And some just come because we live in a fallen, imperfect World. Still, the source of our trials is not nearly as important as the fact that they exist and the way we deal with them. “And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high,” Doctrine and Covenants 121.1-2,7-8. Trials, then, are a fundamental part of the plan of life. However, that does not mean we have no hope for happiness in mortality. The key to happiness here and eternal joy hereafter is the atonement of Jesus Christ. Through the principles and ordinances of the gospel, the Atonement leaves us all free to learn from sorrow, to grow from experience—and to find joy in the process. The path to happiness is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. In obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has designed our happiness, He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of His law and ordinances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 30

Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. Satan regularly lies to us about the nature of God and of ourselves. However, we do not have to listen. Some of the greatest battles in life are not literal battles but struggles in one’s own heart and mind against feelings of self-doubt, hopelessness and fear. Satan is increasingly striving to overcome the Saints with despair, discouragement, despondency, and depression. One way that Satan attempts to overcome us with such feelings is by telling us lies about our worth and about God’s feelings towards us. These lies may originate as simple thoughts, repeated many times in our minds, can develop into entrenched habits of belief. These falsehoods are then reinforced especially by many of the shows on some television programs and some television news programs; things other people say, or even by misinterpretation of the scriptures. Satan might even misuse words from the scriptures that emphasize the justice of God, in order to imply that there is no mercy. Whatever their source, Satan’s lies can take root in our minds and develop into feelings of depression, low self-worth, and inadequacy. Some people also love to lie, they often lie every day, several times a day, hangout with other liars, and stew in their hate, but refuse to read the Christian Bible or go to church. They even call themselves “gods.” However, if they were gods, why are they so unhappy and their lives so foul? Why do they have to cheat, steal, lie, and set other people up to get ahead. God does not live in lack and limitation, doom and gloom, nor is he foolish and ghoulish. People like because of their weaknesses and failings. God is continually disappointed in, frustrated with, and angry with liars. However, God loves all living and nonliving beings because He is your Heavenly Father and He created you. God’s love can be more joyous to one’s soul because He has the capacity to love one more than anyone knew possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 30

The goal in life is to love, not hate. More specifically, to love God for God is the Creator of all things. We learn that through God all things are possible. We learn that we love God by following His commandments. We learn that we reap what we sew. So, if you love God, obey His commandments, and use the Golden Rule—treat others like you want to be treated—God will provide for you. Stealing, lying, hustling, setting people up are evil ways. Not God’s ways. It shows that you do not trust God because you refuse to be honest. Therefore, you have a mind set of lack and limitation and are unwilling to live an honest life. Satan is constantly telling you that you will never be as good as someone else, and for you, life is a competition. You cannot feel good about yourself unless you are hurting someone else, lying, or putting others down. To be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord—to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgement that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear; it is an indication that we know where our true strength is. We can both be humble and fearless. We can be both humbles and courageous. The Lord will strengthen us as we humble ourselves before Him. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall life you up,” reports James 4.6, 10. With ownership comes envy. When youngsters play with friends, they soon discover other people’s toys they would like to get their hands on. Or they experience the injustice of being forced to share what they had assumed was their alone. Even babies express jealousy over objects, giving signs of “violent rage” when a toy is taken from them and given to another. Most children have an unusually intense relationship with a specific “attachment object,” usually a favourite blanket or a soft toy. However, in an intriguing study, researchers discovered that the majority of three-to-six-year-old children preferred to take home their original attachment object, as opposed to a duplicate made by a “copy machine.” To the prospect of taking a copy, the most common response was horror. #RandolphHarris 3 of 30

It is as if the children believe their special object had a unique essence, a form of magical thinking that re-appears in adulthood in our treatment of heirlooms, celebrity memorabilia, artwork and other things of sentimental value. Envy is a strong word. Some people may not only be jealous of material things, but about someone’s choices. However, do not be hurt. There are going to be times in our lives when someone else receives some unexpected blessing or special recognition. Do not be hurt—and certainly do not feel envious—when good fortune comes to another person? We are not diminished when someone else is added upon. We are not in a race against each other to see who is the wealthiest or the most talented or the most beautiful or even the most blessed. The race we are really in is the race against sin, and surely envy is one of the most universal of those. So be kind, and be grateful that God is kind. It is a happy way to live. In your life, is there something that you are envious of? Now is the time to let it go. During the first two weeks of August three revelations were given that the Saints might better understand about America and the rules for gathering. God told them they were honoured to be the ones to lay the foundation of America to which the nations of the World would come. The first to come were to be the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble. Then after God’s power came to them, the rest of the people were to come. The Lord said, “That the testimony might go forth from America; yea, from the mouth of the city of the heritage of God; yea, for this cause I have sent you hither, for verily I say unto you, My laws shall be kept on this land. Let no human break the laws of the land, for one that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land. Behold, the laws which ye have received from my hand are the laws of the church, and in this light ye shall hold them forth. Behold, here is wisdom.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 30

The Saints were instructed that they must use their own judgment in some things and not expect God to tell them every little thing that needed to be done. The Lord said: “It is not meet that I should command in all things, for one that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore one receiveth no reward. Verily I say, Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as humans do good, they shall in no wise lose their reward.” All the members of the church throughout the land were instructed to give as much money as they could to be used in buying land in America, for God wanted them to buy the whole region around Independence. There was need for people to occupy and work this land, thus instructions concerning the gathering were given in this revelation: “Inasmuch as there is land obtained, let there be workmen (and women) sent forth, of all kinds, unto this land, to labour for the saints of God. Let all these things be done in order. Let the work of the gathering be not in haste, nor by flight, but let it be done as it shall be counseled by the elders of the church at the conferences. For verily, the sound must go forth from this place into all the World; and unto the uttermost parts of the Earth, the gospel must be preached unto every creature, with signs following them that believe. And behold, the Son of Man cometh. Amen.” A few days later another revelation was given concerning the people who were to come to America: “Behold, blessed, saith the Lord, are they who have come up unto this land with an eye single to my glory, according to my commandments. Yea, blessed are they whose feet stand upon the land of America, who have obeyed my gospel, for they shall receive for their rewards the good things of the Earth.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 30

To those who should live in the land of America, the Lord gave commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Thou shalt not steal; neither commit adultery, nor kill, not do anything like unto it. Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things. Thou shalt offer a sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in righteousness; even that of a broken heart and contrite spirit. Thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacrament upon my holy day. Nevertheless thy vows shall be offered up in righteousness on all days, and at all times; but remember that on this, the Lord’s day, thou shalt offer thine oblations, and thy sacraments, unto the Most High. Verily I say, that inasmuch as ye do this the fullness of the Earth is yours. Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of a man, both to please the eye, and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body, and to enliven the soul. One who doeth the works of righteousness, shall receive one’s reward, even peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to come.” A commandment was given by revelation to those who were to work in America: “Thou shalt not idle away thy time; neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.” Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Sidney Rigdon, together with other elders, who were not to make their homes in America at this time, were instructed to go back to Kirtland. They were to teach and preach as they went, and visit those whom they have baptized on their way to America. On August 9, Joseph Smith and ten elders left Independence traveling by canoes on the Missouri River. By revelation the Lord instructed them, and others going from and coming to America, that they should travel by land rather than by water, because there were many dangers upon the waters, particularly the waters of the Missouri River. #RandolphHarris 6 of 30

Also, the Lord reminded them, when they traveled by water, they did not come in contact with people who might be converted to the gospel: “It is not needful for this whole company of mine elders, to be moving swiftly upon the waters, whilst the inhabitants on either side are perishing in unbelief. Be of good cheer, little children, for I am in our midst, and I have not forsaken you, and inasmuch as you have humbled yourselves before me, the blessings of the kingdom are yours. Be watchful, and be sober, looking forth for the coming of the Son of Man, for he cometh in an hour you think not. Pray always that you enter not into temptation, that you may abide the day of his coming.” The next day they were happy to meet several elders who were on their way to America. A revelation was given for them through Joseph Smith in which Jesus said: “Assemble yourselves upon the land of America, and hold a meeting and rejoice together, and offer a sacrament unto the Most High. And then you may return to bear record….Be faithful, and declare glad tidings unto the inhabitants of the Earth. Behold, I, the Lord, have brought you together that the promise might be fulfilled, that the faithful among you should be preserved and rejoice together in the land of Missouri.” Fewer than one hundred Saints were in Missouri to carry on the Lord’s work. This number, however, was gradually increased as other groups of the Saints arrived from the East. “The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Saviour [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing,” reports Zephaniah 3.17. Jesus Christ, The Son of God, is necessarily equal to the Father in power. Power of action is a consequence of perfection in nature. In creatures, for instance, we see that the more perfect the nature, the greater power is there for action. #RandolphHarris 7 of 30

Now, the very notion of the divine paternity and filiation requires that the Son should be the Father’s equal in greatness—that is, in perfection of nature. Hence it follows that the Son is equal to the Father in power; and the same applies to the Holy Ghost. The unity of the divine nature implies that the Son so acts of Himself [per se], that He does not act by Himself [a se].” The Father communicates knowledge to the Son, as He communicates His essence. The command of the Father can be explained in the same sense, as giving Him from eternity knowledge and will to act, by begetting Him. Or, better still, this may be referred to Christ in His human nature. As the same essence is paternity in the Father, and filiation in the Son: so by the same power the Father can do; yet it does not follow that the Son can beget; for to argue thus would imply transition from substance to relation, for generation signifies a divine relation. So the Son has the same omnipotence as the Father, but with another relation: the Father possessing power as “giving” signified when we say that He is able to beget; while the Son possesses the power of “receiving,” signified by saying that He can be begotten. Thus the mission of a divine person is a fitting thing, as meaning in one way the procession of origin from the sender, and as meaning a new way of existing in another; thus the Son is said to be sent by the Father into the World, inasmuch as He began to exist visibly in the World by taking our nature; whereas “He was” previously “in the World,” reports John 1.1. Mission implies infeority in the one sent, when it means procession from the sender as principle, by command or counsel; forasmuch as the one commanding is the greater, and the counsellor is the wiser. In God, however, it means only procession of origin, which is according to equality. What is sent as to being to exist where previously it did not exist, is locally moved by being sent; hence it is necessarily separated locally from the sender. #RandolphHarris 8 of 30

This, however, has no place in the mission of a divine person; for the divine person sent neither begins to exist where one did not previously exist, nor ceases to exist where He was. Hence such a mission takes place without a separation, having only distinct origin. The modern philosophical interpretation of conscience follows three main lines: an emotional-aesthetic line, an abstract-formalistic line, and a rational-idealistic line. Secularizing the sectarian belief in the revealing power of conscience, it is interpreted as the emotional reaction to harmony between self-relatedness and relatedness to others, in all beings and in the Universe as a whole. The principle of ethical action is the balance between the effects of benevolence and the effects of selfishness as indicated by conscience. Conscience works better and more accurately, the more the taste for the Universe and its harmony is developed. The educated conscience has a perfect ethical taste. Not harmony with the Universe but sympathy with the other human is the basis of conscience, according to Hume and Adam Smith; we identify ourselves with the other human and take one’s approval or disapproval of our action as our own judgment. This, of course, presupposes a hidden harmony between individuals and the possibility of a mutual feeling of identification. It presupposes a universal principle of harmony in which individuals participate which reveals itself to the conscience. The emotional-harmonistic interpretation of conscience has often led to a replacement of ethical by aesthetic principles. The attitude of the late aristocracy, high bourgeoisie, and bohemianism at the end of the last century was characterized by the elevation of good tastes to the ultimate judge in moral affairs, corresponding to the replacement of religion by arts in these groups. It was an attempt to reach a transmoral conscience but it did not reach even a moral one, and it was swept away by the revolutionary morality and immorality of the twenty-first century. #RandolphHarris 9 of 30

The second method of interpreting conscience philosophically is the abstract-formalistic one. It was most clearly stated by Kant, and it was introduced into theology by Ritschl. Kant wanted to maintain the unconditional character of the moral demand against all emotional relativism, against fear and pleasure motives, as well as against divine and human authorities. However, in doing so, he was driven to a complete formalism. Conscience is the consciousness of the “categorical [unconditional] imperative,” but it is not the consciousness of a special content of this imperative. “Conscience is a consciousness which itself is a duty.” It is a duty to have a conscience, to be conscientious. The content, according to Ritschl, is dependent on the special vocation, a special historical time and space. Only conscientiousness is always demanded. This corresponds to the Protestant, especially the Lutheran, evaluation of work. It is the expression of the activist element of the bourgeoisie and is identical with the bourgeois adaptation to the technical and psychological demands of the economic system. Duty is what serves bourgeois production. This is the hidden meaning even of the philosophy of the “absolute ego” in Fichte, who describes conscience as the certainty of the pure duty that is independent of anything besides its transcendent freedom. In the moment when transcendent freedom comes down to action it is transformed into obedience to a well-calculated system of economic services. It is understandable that this loss of a concrete direction of conscientiousness paved the way for immoral contents when they were commanded, for instance, by a totalitarian state. Against the aesthetic-emotional as well as the authoritarian form of determining the conscience, attempts were made in modern philosophy to have rationality and contents united. The most influential of these attempts is the common-sense theory of Thomas Reid and the Scottish school, id est, the moral sense is common to everybody, being a natural endowment of human nature (like the synteresis of the scholastics). #RandolphHarris 10 of 30

Decisive for practical ethics is Hutcheson’s theory of the sense of benevolence towards others. This theory adequately expressed the reality of British (and to a degree, American) conformism and natural benevolence in a society where the converging tendencies still prevail over the diverging ones, and in which a secularized Christian morality is still dominant. Another attempt to find rational contents for the conscience was made by Hegel. He distinguishes the formal and the true conscience. About the first he says, “Conscience is the infinite formal certainty of oneself—it expresses the absolute right of the subjective self-consciousness—namely, to know within and out of itself what law and duty are, and to acknowledge nothing except what it knows in this way as the good.” However, this subjectivity is fallible and may turn into error and guilt. Therefore, it needs content in order to become the true conscience. This content is the reality of the family, society, and state. With the state (as the organization of historical reason) the formal conscience is transformed into the true conscience. It is a mistake to link these ideas historically to the totalitarian use of the state and the pagan distortion of conscience by national socialism. Hegel was a rationalist, not a positivist. His idea of the state unites Christian-conservative and bourgeois-liberal elements. His famous, though rarely understood, idea of the state as the “God on Earth” is based on the identification of the state with the church as the “Body of Christ,” expressed in secular terms. The conscience that is determined by the state in this sense is determined not by bureaucratic orders but by the life of a half-religious, half-secular organism—the counterpart of Christian-rationalistic common sense of the Anglo-Saxon society. There is little new under the Sun. Who has not chuckled about the legendary “headache” that grips angry/resentful/exhausted/repulsed women when the husbands want dessert? One woman or even millions clutching their head at bedtime do not constitute a celibate society. However, when they are acting deliberately, and each “headache” is a political tool rather than a personal ploy, the case is very different. #RandolphHarris 11 of 30

In Lysistrata, as we have seen, a legion of battle-weary soldiers’ wives unite to force their husbands to cease hostilities. Their weapon, withholding pleasures of the flesh until the bellicose men lay down their swords, is celibacy at its strategic purest, employed in the great cause of peace. The 1880s saw a relation of the rules and some of the laws that had condemned women to social and economic dependence. This was particularly true for women in the more advantaged classes. Higher education, for example, was more accessible and so were some of the professions. White-collar employment mushroomed, opening so many new positions that women were actually hired. Because of the 1870s Married Woman’s Property Act, women could keep their wages and no longer had to surrender them to their husbands, so the idea of salaried employment was far more alluring than it had been. These changes were not gifts from a munificent government. They were the outcome of decades of agitation, mostly by middle- and upper-class women, against their oppression. Many of them had also spoken out on behalf of the millions of their working-class sisters, whose oppression was manifested differently but stemmed nonetheless from the same patriarchal domination. Had the laws changed in tandem with social customs and granted professional women the same legal independence as their brothers, spinsterhood might not have seemed so enticing. What was still so galling, however, was that in marrying, a woman merely exchanged her father’s authority for her husband’s. True, the 1882 (revised and upgraded) Married Women’s Property Act permitted women to own property in their own right, but in other crucial areas, they remained legally subservient. All too often, the transfer of subservience from father to spouse proved a sorry bargain. As a female writing team had observed a decade earlier, “A woman should be reminded…that in marrying she gives up many advantages. Her habits, pursuits, society, sometimes even friendships, must give way to his.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 30

Had not Florence Nightingale earlier warned that women who marry “must sacrifice all their life…behind his destiny women must annihilate herself”? She, like so many other women of her class, remained single—and celibate—to guarantee the personal independence she needed to fulfill her ambitions. The statistical odds against finding a suitable husband ensured that many a women languished in despised spinsterhood, pining for the children she would never have, writhing under the contempt of relations obliged to habour her upon the death of her parents, facing an interminable life of bleak boredom. (Had some talented members of this class undertaken to research the fate of young Hindu widows, a heartening and significant genre of literature might have developed.) However, the dearth of British men certainly cannot explain why one-quarter of British women never married—after all, at the worst of times, the imbalance never even quite reached eleven to ten. And determinedly marriage-minded women could and did emigrate to Australia, where the gender imbalance was reversed, though the quality of available men was somewhat questionable. What, then, explains this sweeping wave of middle-class womanly singleness? In Marriage as a Trade, playwright Cicely Hamilton argued the phenomenon was a political tactic to create a significant class of spinsters prepared to challenge male domination, including what she styled intimate abuse. Except for those who turned to other women for intimate satisfaction, as a small percentage did, these spinsters adopted celibacy as a necessary tool in their campaign. Another spinster-by-choice noted that “wherever women are admitted to pleasures of the flesh to such a degree that the celibate class is practically nonexistent, there the position of women socioeconomically, and intellectually is of a low order.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 30

Thus a considerable slice of the late-nineteenth-century celibacy was the deliberate choice of frustrated, rebellious, and politically astute middle-class women. Pleasures of the flesh, they believed, was a surrender of judicial and (despite the 1882 legislation) property rights, and an abdication of personal independence. They seized on celibacy as a strategy to improve the female condition and, with quiet determination, earned their own living and simply refused to marry. There are beneficial and sadistic forces in the World and therefore in human beings. If a person cannot eliminate one’s negative qualities (and most people find it almost impossible), one can, however, bring them into a neutral point and thus establish a state of equilibrium or balance. Living in a society where there is so much folly and ignorance, evil and unbalance, one must protect oneself mentally, emotionally, physically and even psychically. In a World seething with negative thoughts, murky in several areas with suspicion and even hatred, inflamed with violent feelings, one who knows the truth must hold all the more to inner and outer calm, to goodwill and faith in the Overself’s presence. Evil is strong in the World and sometimes people who aspire to the good become discouraged and depressed. It is at such moments that they need to recall whatever glimpses of the Real they have had and to remember that all things pass away, including the evil. We live in apocalyptic times, as history is already revealing. The call today is a penitential one, a solemn recall from earthliness to holiness, from frivolousness, grossness, and madness to remember of life’s higher purpose. Those who feel in their own hearts some sort of a response, however feeble, should cling to this precious intuition and let it guide them until they are saved. The failure to persuade either the masses of their leaders to change their way of life and thought is not a reason for abandoning either the inner or outer work as useless. #RandolphHarris 14 of 30

Even though any marked and visible result may not now appear, it may yet do so at a later date. We must have a moral concern which instigates acts aiming at conversion or makes proposals even if they will obviously fail. Question about man’s future and civilization’s prospects trouble us. More pessimistic answers are gloomily given than optimistic ones. It is not easy to do otherwise, when the facts are so tragically plain and when they lie so plentifully all around us. Philosophy least of all can afford wishful thinking. It too sees the night falling but whilst conselling stoic resignation it does not discourage constructive resistance. And it reminds the individual that society’s catastrophes should urge one all the more to seek and find the one necessary refuge—one’s own sacredness. If anyone wants to see a better World, one must make one’s own contribution toward it. And this demands inexorably that one begin with oneself and make one’s character and conduct better. The prudent human learns by observation or by experience, or more often by both, that there is a spiritual ignorance in the World and in humans: one must often conceal the greater portion of one’s wisdom and one’s power. This is necessary for personal safety which induced the writers of ancient Christian texts to advise those who lived under a brutal tyranny to emigrate. This did not mean going to a new country but to a new district. We are now in a position to understand the Hipster as Role Players. The Role Player is the fellow who, without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without any real aptitude or training to do anything, and without a commitment to any goal, can skillfully fit the expectations that people have of one, and give typical performances to prove that one can do the job. The Roles of society are the capitalized nouns in Time style, exempli gratia Halle Berry or Very Important Person. There are great advantages in being a hipster in this sense. #RandolphHarris 15 of 30

First, being a hipster is a way of getting by. If a human feels that one is not anything, one is at least taken for something, and one belongs. Then one cannot feel contempt for the others because they are fools, they are taken in and so one satisfies one’s spite. And one can feel more confident that the so-called worth-while aims are empty because one can give a token performance, and this calms one’s own gnawing feelings of frustrations and worthlessness. Finally, Role Playing protects a deep conceit of one’s abstract powers: one “could” if one wanted, but in fact is never tested. The hipster in this sense must be distinguished from the industrious confidence human who wants to get the swag and vanish, and does not thrive on publicity. The hipster will often boast: one knows the score, one is ahead of the game. This cool attitude of the hipster is endemic in the organized system. However, on the other hand, the committed Organization Man also really belongs, one has status and salary and must protect them. Therefore the junior executive is in a terrible contradiction. One is cynical about the aims of the firm, yet one has fears that one’s own ineptitude will be found out. One has no recourse to concrete performance, for there is little contact with unambiguous material and there are no objective standards. How to meet a purely subjective demand? In pain (even ulcers) one has to get by by role playing, interpersonal relations abstracted from both animal desire or tangible achievement. One meets expectations, one conforms, one one-ups, one proves one must know by attaining a higher status. The trainee believes managing is an end in itself—technique is more vital than content. Compare the identical remark in a memorandum of the Liberal Project in Congress: The past few years “have given rise to a particular brand of politician. One is completely method-oriented. The substance of a bill that is paramount.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 30

The new type of salesperson does not sell the product but the human: by the expense account one proves that one is a right person and one confirms the buyer’s image of oneself, whatever that happens to be. For many bright young fellas, I think, the Organization has taken the place that the Communist Party had in the Thirties. At that time young men who were frustrated in their creative lives, perhaps because unable to stand the gaff, took out their self-hatred on the capitalist system, and often with sublime self-contempt accepted jobs with high salaries. In our decade, the young people believe they belong to the governing board, and their resentment has turned to cynicism. The standard of human integrity is equivalent. The type situation of Role Playing is the Air Force questionnaire asking who is Giotto, Vivaldi or Pilot Patrick: if the candidate gives the right answer, one is disqualified, one will not belong. The Role Player has no difficulty. I was once at another convention (National Recreation Congress, 1959), and striking was the difference between the working stiffs, the actual directors of play and group activities, and the administrators. The actual directors were human being, often enthusiastic and proud of happy improvisations and strokes of good judgment that they wanted to report. However, the administrators were concerned about standards, certificates, avoiding complaints and offending, and providing their dedicated service; it was clear that they wanted above all to diminish the factor of risk for themselves and create a front to get bigger appropriations. At the same time they kept asking how to recruit Leaders; but it was evident that the more strictly they applied their standards, the more surely they would eliminate the leaders. We must contrast the concept of Role, meeting expectations by playing it cool and knowing the technique for a token performance, with the concept of Identity. One discovers, fights for, appoints oneself to one’s Identity. Identity is defined by its task, mission, product; role depends on the interpersonal expectation of the others. #RandolphHarris 17 of 30

Naturally, statesmen and public spokes men are the role players, hipsters, par excellence. They exist by Front and giving symbolic satisfaction, so it is not to be hoped that their speech be serious, relevant to what objectively exists. However, it is dismaying to find the same symbolic relations in enterprises of production and the distribution of goods. One cannot help distrusting the goods, thinking they are only packages and brand names. And so, becoming disaffected from these enterprises, the Beat Generation sometimes comes to despise real goods. It takes good to be merely commodities that must be spurned: this is the fetishism of commodities in reverse. The factory operatives who could not care less about their jobs are not much aware of what they produce; causality is built into the machinery. The junior executives, advertising men, salesmen are role players and have little causal relation to the products. Presumably the technicians and top managers know something about and produce the products, since the products do come to exist. And the evidence is that the top managers do work very hard on production and sales; they work a sixty-hour week and ae produce of their work. However, even they have to devote an increasing majority of the time to interpersonal games of no productive use—90 percent. (Let me give a typical illustration. There is a well-known monthly magazine that five editors used to put out with a week’s work. It was pretty good. Unfortunately it made a reputation for itself and its wealthy sponsors hired a staff of ten secretaries and assistants to the editors. Soon the editors found themselves working all month, and quit. The magazine lost all its spark.) Considering the technical possibilities, we must say that our physical environment changes very slowly. This is not surprising, for so little thought was given to it. #RandolphHarris 18 of 30

When it comes to the misuse of substances, in some respects the story of the misuse of drugs is the same story as in the past. Substance use is still rampant, often creating damaging psychological disorders. New drugs keep emerging, and the public goes through periods of believing, naively, that they are “safe.” Only gradually do people learn that these drugs, too, pose dangers. And treatments for substance-related disorders continue to have only limited effect. Yet there are important new wrinkles in this familiar story. Researcher have begun to develop a clearer understanding of how drugs act on the brain and body. In treatment, self-help groups and rehabilitation programs are flourishing. And preventive education to make people aware of the dangers of drug misuse is also expanding and seems to be having an effect. One reason for these improvements is that investigators and clinicians have stopped working in isolation and are instead looking for intersections between their own work and that from other models. The same kind of integrated efforts that have helped with other psychological disorders are brining new promise and hope to the study and treatment of substance-related disorders. Perhaps the most important insight to be gained from these integrated efforts is that several of the models were already on the right track. Social pressures, personality characteristics, rewards, and genetic predispositions all seem to play roles in substance-related disorders, and in fact to operate together. For example, some people may inherit a malfunction of the biological reward center and so may need special doses of external stimulation—say, intense relationships, an abundance of certain foods or drugs—to stimulate their own reward center Their pursuit of external rewards may take on the character of an addictive personality. Such individuals may be especially prone to experimenting with drugs, particularly when their social groups makes the drugs available or when they are faced with intense social and personal stress. #RandolphHarris 19 of 30

Just as each model has identified important factors in the development of substance-related disorders, each has made important contributions to treatment. As we have seen, the various forms of treatment seem to work best when they are combined with approaches from the other models, making integrated treatment the most productive approach. These recent developments are encouraging. At the same time, however, enormous and increasingly levels of drug use continue. New drugs and drug combinations are discovered almost daily, and with them come new problems, new questions, and needs for new research and new treatments. Perhaps the most valuable lesson is an old one. There is no free lunch. Th pleasures derived from these substances come with high psychological and biological costs, some not yet even known. If you think about it, drugs that are not prescribed by a doctor and those that are used by people for recreational reasons is very similar to a virus, in that they can be deadly. The virus story is so strange that it is worthwhile to point out that it rests today on very firm experimental evidence. Some of the important episodes in the reproductive process of bacterial and certain other viruses can in fact be “seen” by means of the electron microscope. The first episode of the sequence is of this nature: the attachment by certain virus particles to the outer surface of the cell to be attacked. The next step can be deduced from later developments: apparently there is an enzyme in the protein coat of the virus particle which dissolves a hole in the membrane of the cell to which it is attached. The products of the chemical reactions involved then cause the entire protein capsule to contact. This has the effect of a hypodermic injection—squirting the nucleic acid content of the virus particle into the interior of the cell that is being infected. #RandolphHarris 20 of 30

All of this is remarkable enough, but what follows is even more spectacular. For the invading nucleic acid proceeds to take over from the cellular DNA and redirect the internal chemistry of the invaded organism! First, the viral nucleic acid directs the manufacture of enzymes that attacked the cellular DNA, thereby destroying the “control center” of the victim. Then a period of rapid reproduction of the viral nucleic acid begins. A little later, the viral nucleic acid induces the production of the kind of protein needed to make the protective covering of additional virus particles. After a few more minutes the newly formed strands of viral nucleic acid begin to get together with the new protein overcoats to form complete new virus particles. Eventually, when this assembly process has gone to completion, the last command is given by the invader to the cellular mechanisms—this time to produce an enzyme that dissolves large holes in the external membrane of the cell and allows the newly formed virus particles to escape. Between the instant of initial attachment by a virus particle to healthy cell and the final cataclysmic disintegration, twenty- or thirty-minutes elapse. The end product of the remarkable sequence of chemical steps is several hundred newborn virus particles, each identical with the one which started the chain of activity and each capable of initiating a similar lethal sequence in another healthy cell. In view of their bizarre reproductive habits, it is easy to understand the fascination that viruses hold for biologists. However, we must confine our attention to the light we earlier predicted virus studies would throw on the generality of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanism. It is, of course, the ability of the viral nucleic acid to take over and successfully redirect the metabolic processes in the invaded cell that is pertinent to our theories. #RandolphHarris 21 of 30

For even in the absence of present knowledge as to all the details of the interaction, it seems clear that the virus-reproduction story implies great compatibility between the design of the virus nucleic acid and the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms of the host cell. The invading nucleic acid is not only able to reproduce itself in the cell but also able to provide the messenger RNA that successfully attached itself to the cellular microsomes and directs the formation of virus-specific enzymes. For this purpose transfer RNA, amino acid fragments, phosphate energies, and a number of enzymes must come into play. Because of the relative simplicity of the viral nucleic acid molecules, it seems unlikely that new forms of all such components are synthesized under their direction; rather, it seems that the specifically virus messenger RNA must be able to work in conjunction with components indigenous to the healthy cell in the manufactures of the enzymes needed for the formation of new virus particles. Coronaviruses are a type of virus. There are many different kinds, and some cause disease. A coronavirus identified in 2019, SARS-CoV-2, has caused a pandemic of respirator illness, called COVID-19. As of now, researchers know that the coronavirus is spread through droplets and virus particles released into the air when an infected person breathes, talks, laughs, sings, coughs, or sneezes. Larger droplets may fall to the ground in a few seconds, but tiny infections particles can linger in the air and accumulate in indoor places, especially where many people are gathered and there is poor ventilation. That is why hand hygiene and physical distancing are essential to preventing COVID-19. The first case of COVID-19 was reported December 1, 2019, and the cause was a then-new coronavirus later names SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in an animal and changed (mutated) so it could cause illness in humans. #RandolphHarris 22 of 30

Research continues, and more study may reveal how and why the coronavirus evolved to cause a pandemic. What is the incubation period for COVID-19? Symptoms show up in people within two to 14 days of exposure to the virus. A person infected with the coronavirus is contagious to others for up to two days before symptoms appear, and they remain contagious to others for 10 to 20 days, depending upon their immune system and the severity of their illness. What are symptoms of coronavirus? Cough, fever or chills, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, muscle or body aches, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell, diarrhea, headache, new fatigue, nausea or vomiting, congestion or runny nose. Some people infected with the coronavirus have mild COVID-19 illness, and others have no symptoms at all. In some cases, however, COVID-10 can lead to respiratory failure, lasting lung and heart muscle damage, nervous system problems, kidney failure or death. If you have a fever or any of the symptoms listed above, call your doctor or a health care provider and explain your symptoms over the phone before going to the doctor’s office, urgent care facility, or emergency room. COVID has already killed more than 6 million people globally—and the pandemic is far from over. In many countries, including the United States of America, COVID-19 is now a leading cause of death, alongside heart disease and stroke. And yet experts say the pandemic’s true toll is much likely higher. It is quite possible that the number of deaths is around 12 million. However, 6 million is an astounding number on its own. No country has been able to escape this virus. The official global tally captures only confirmed cases in each country—and standards for reporting deaths vary widely. Some countries lack the robust testing protocols needed to diagnose cases while other may not count people who have died because of complications due to COVID-19. In many places, too, people are dying at home because they cannot reach care, and therefore are not counted in official death tolls. #RandolphHarris 23 of 30

The official tally also does not account for COVID-19’s vast collateral damage. Around the World, sick people have refrained from seeking care for fear of getting infected and countries have diverted resources from other critical health-care priorities. Deaths from tuberculosis have also risen for the first time in a decade. And though death rates are declining, they remain staggeringly high and will likely continue. Due to fears from COVID-19, many workers are retiring early. Around 22 percent more people have retired due to fear of contracting COVID. More than 3.5 million additional people retired during this pandemic. Thus virus research, in establishing the remarkable compatibility of the genetic mechanisms of forms of life so different as those bacteria and viruses, has further strengthened the argument of the universality of these mechanisms. However, just as in the case of pneumococci results, the evidence is less than conclusive. After all, viruses are pretty specific, each limited in its destructive ability to only one or a few species of cells, This is indicated by the descriptive levels given to viruses: the tobacco mosaic virus, the turnip yellow mosaic virus, the rabbit papilloma virus, and so on. Therefore we cannot ignore the possibility that, just as with the R and S strains of pneumococci, there is a close evolutionary kinship between the virus and the cell it attacks. Perhaps the two organisms, though greatly dissimilar, developed symbiotically through the ages in such a way as to maintain compatibility among their nuclear control mechanism. When thought of in this way, it could be that the virus and its related cell constitute a sort of single two-part organism and that the seemingly remarkable ability of the one to operate the chemical machinery of the other is but a prosaic example of the inevitable internal consistency in the metabolism of a viable organism, with no implications as to the universality of the genetic mechanisms among really different species. #RandolphHarris 24 of 30

Of course, we go a bit too far in disclaiming all pertinence to our thesis of the virus results. For a single virus sometimes, dos attack more than one cell species. After all, monkeys as well as men can contract polio. Just as in the case of the pneumococci results, nothing can keep the virus work from being suggestive. However, we have not yet made a convincing cause for the hypothesis that the genetic mechanisms are truly universal. More evidence is needed. Looking forward, some generations are born to create, others to maintain a civilization. The generations who launched the Second Wave of historic change were compelled, by force of circumstances, to be creators. Today in every sphere of social life, in our families, our schools, our businesses and churches, in our energy systems and communications, we face the need to create new Third Wave forms, and millions of people in many countries are already beginning to do so. Nowhere, however, is obsolescence more advanced or more dangerous than in our political life. And in so field today do we find less imagination, less experiment, less willingness to contemplate fundamental change. Even people who are daringly innovative in their own work-in their law offices or laboratories, their kitchens, classrooms, or companies—seem to freeze up at any suggestion that political structure need a little adjustment to make sure they adhere to the United States Constitution and that it is not brushed aside like ashes from a cigar. Is it not amazing that the country can force people to wear masks and get vaccinated, but will not force politicians, states, cities, and other to obey the birth certification of our nation? So frightening is Constitutional law, with its attendant risks to the corrupt status quo, however surrealistic and oppressive, suddenly seems like the best of all possible Worlds. Conversely we have in every society a fringe of pseudorevolutionaries, stepped in obsolete Second Wave assumption, for whom no proposed change is radical enough. #RandolphHarris 25 of 30

Honest to God terrorists are dreaming of totalitarian technocracies or medieval utopias. Even as we speed into a new historical zone, they nurse dreams of revolution drawn from the yellowed pages of yesterday’s political tracts. Yet what lies ahead as the super-struggle intensifies is not a replay of any previous revolutionary drama—no centrally directed overthrow of the ruling elites by some “vanguard party” with the masses in two; no spontaneous, supposedly cathartic, mass uprising trigged by terrorist. The creation of new political structures of the Third Wave civilization will not come in a single climatic upheaval, but as a consequence of a thousand innovations and collisions at many levels in many places over a period of decades. And the stakes are very high. In the past there was blood-drenched drama of wars, revolt, famines, forced migrations, coups d’état, and calamities. If you think of it, they are resurging. There is a need for broadened democracy. Most of us know, or sense, how dangerous a World we live in. We know that social instability and political uncertainties can leash savage energies. We know what war and economic cataclysm mean, and we remember how often totalitarianism has sprung from noble intentions and social breakdown. What most people seem to ignore, however, are the beneficial different between present and past. Christian theologians use the term inerrantists for those who insist that, even after two thousand years of problematic interpretations and mistranslation, the Christian Bible is error-free, and that, moreover, its every word must be understood in its most literal sense. Economics has its own inerrantists who maintain, in the face of all sorts of anomalous, puzzling and contradictory evidence, that nothing has really changed. At the “fundamental” level, they claim the economy had been only minimally affected by the digital upheaval and the shift to a knowledge-based economy. #RandolphHarris 26 of 30

The manager of one of America’s biggest mutual funds reassures an audience of European petrochemical executives that, in finance, things always go up and down, so what is new? The economy is still the same as it was before, some believe. This illusion, however, becomes unsustainable the minted we shift our gaze from the everyday fundamentals to the deeper ones. For it is at this deeper level that we find the most compelling evidence that the economy is not “as it was before”—that, in fact, today’s entire structure of wealth creation is quaking and rocking, suggesting even bigger changes to come. Things much bigger the cryptocurrency. Circumstances differ from country to country, but never in history have there been so many reasonably educated people collectively armed with so incredible a range of knowledge. Never have so many enjoyed so high a level of affluence, precarious perhaps, yet ample enough to allow them time and energy for civic concern and actions. Never have so many been able to travel, to communicate, and to learn so much from other cultures. Above all, never have so many had so much to gain by guaranteeing that the necessary changes, though profound, be made peacefully. Elites, no matter how enlightened, cannot by themselves make a new civilization. The energies of whole peoples will be required. However, those energies are available, waiting to be tapped. Indeed if we, particularly in the high-technology countries, took as our explicit goal for the next generation the creation of wholly new institutions and constitutions, we could release something more powerful even than energy: the collective imagination. The sooner we begin to design alternative political institutions based on the three principles described above—the power of underrepresented groups, semi-direct democracy, and decision division—the better our chances for a peaceful transition. #RandolphHarris 27 of 30

It is the attempt to block such changes, not the changes themselves, that raises the level of risk. It is the blind attempt to defend obsolescence tht creates the danger of bloodshed. This means that to avoid violent upheaval we must begin now to focus on the problem of structural political obsolescence around the World. And we must take this issues not merely to the experts, the constitutionalists, lawyers, and politicians, but to the public itself—to civic organizations, trade unions, churches, to women’s groups, to ethic and racial groups that remain marginalized, to scientists and housewives and businessmen and women. We must, as a first step, launch the widest public debate over the need for a new political system attuned to the needs of Third Wave civilization. We need conferences, television programs, contests, simulation exercises, mock constitutional conventions to generate the broadest array of imaginative proposals for political restructuring, to unleash an outpouring of fresh ideas. We should be prepared to use the most advanced tools available to us, from satellites and computers to digital streaming and interactive television. No one knows in detail what the future holds or what will be best in our society. For this reason we should think not of a single massive reorganization or of a single revolutionary, cataclysmic change imposed from the top, but of thousands of conscious, decentralized experiments that permit us to test new models of political decision-making at local and regional levels in advance of their application to the national transnational levels. However, at the same time, we must also begin to build a constituency for similar experimentation—and radical redesign—of institutions are the national and transnational levels as well. Today’s widespread disillusionment, anger, and bitterness against the World’s Second Wave governments can either be whipped into fanatic frenzy by demagogues calling for authoritarian leadership or it can be mobilized for the process of democratic reconstruction. #RandolphHarris 28 of 30

By launching a vast process of social learning—and experiment in anticipatory democracy in many nations at once—we can head off the totalitarian thrust. We can prepare millions for the dislocations and dangerous crises the lie before us. And we can place strategic pressure on existing political systems to accelerate the necessary changes. Without this tremendous pressure from below, we should not expect many of today’s nominal leaders—presidents and politicians, senators and central committee members—to challenge the very institutions that, no matter how obsolete, give them prestige, money, and the illusion, if not the reality, of power. Some unusual, farseeing politicians or officials will lend their early support to the struggle for political transformation. However, most will move only when the demands from outside are irresistible or when the crisis is already so advances, and so close to violence, tht they see no alternative. The responsibility for change, therefore, is found within us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for the freedom of expression—the right of the people to voice their ideas, even if heretical. Above all, it means starting this process of reconstruction now, before the further disintegration of existing political systems sends the forces of tyranny jackbooting through the streets, and makes impossible a peaceful transition through the Twenty-first Century Democracy. If we begin no, we and our children can take part in the exciting reconstruction not merely of our obsolete political structures, but of civilization itself. #RandolphHarris 29 of 30

Like the generation of the revolutionary immortals, we have a destiny to create. In traveling learn to believe and trust your experiences as an alert to eye and ear. Often firsthand experience or chance conversations sheds a revealing light on abstraction. A Limo driver in a Latin American capital told me more than all his government’s cheery statistics: When I asked him why his people were not doing something to protest a soaring inflation rate, he simply imitated the stuttering of a machine gun. Once you give up your laws, rights, and freedoms, you usually never get them back. Nan did want to go in the water—I told her to stay on the shore—of course, she would wade in the breakers. And now she is drowned. What a bore! Look around the World at socialist countries and see what is wrong with them before you give up on Capitalism. I hear a voice, the cry of a wounded animal; someone shoots an arrow at the moon; a small bird has fallen from the nest. People must be awakened, witness must be given, so that life can be guarded. God, Thou causes grass to spring up for the cattle, please allow an abundance of health, cash, credit, money, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and herbs for the service of humans. Thou bringest for break out of the Earth to sustain humans’ life, and premium cranberry justice to gladden their hearts. Thou appointest the moon for seasons; the sun knoweth its time of setting. How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. The higest achievement is to serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with thanksgiving. It is quite true to say that during deep prayer and praises, these exercises eventually lead to remarkable powers. This gives mental abstraction. For the Lord, your God, brought you into a good land; a land of brooks and of fountains that spring out of valleys and hills; a land wherein you shall eat bread without scarcity, and shall lack for nothing. You shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord you God for the good land which He hath given you. At the same time, allow His creative imagination and His concentrated will, and the lower energy to produce lofty aspiration. #RandolphHarris 30 of 30

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People Bamboozle their Consciences and Shut their Eyes

Life is an adventure of beauty, love, curiosity, success, and more importantly, Significance. Significance means making contributions to others. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose. And never confuse yourself with someone else. Just because you handled situations in a particular way, and like certain things, does not mean you understand someone else. It is a lot like thinking you can see into the soul of Hollywood actors based on their movies and social media; until you spend a few years with one, and find out he or she is nothing like you ever imagined. Some people act on the silver screen, other do it in life and are so far out of touch with reality, and their living soul. Nonetheless, in our department of the genetic mechanisms there has been a conspicuous absence of qualifying statements such as “this is the way it works in the frog” or “the bacterial mechanisms look like this.” On the contrary, in several aspects of the preceding treatment it has been implied, and occasionally it has been specifically stated, that in the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms we seem to be dealing with a general biological principle applicable equally to amoeba or man. However, it would obviously be unreasonable to imagine that a mechanism as complex as that underlying the interplay between the giant molecules of nucleic acid and protein enzymes could have been independently developed for each of many different species by tortuous processes of evolution. Therefore, if the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms do indeed exist in all forms of modern organism, it would seem necessary to conclude that they originated early in the history of life—before much progress had been made in the evolutionary differentiation that has resulted in today’s large variety of living forms—and that they subsequently survived in all of those forms only because their possession proved to contribute to all types of host organism markedly superior to survival attributes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

This hypothesis credits a single evolutionary discovery with such remarkably superior properties as to justify us in requiring of the biologists some rather strong evidence before we accept the current doctrine of the ubiquity of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms. Let us therefore look at some of the recent research findings that suggest that we are here in fact dealing with a universal biological principle. Of course, the first discoveries attesting to the existence of the nucleic acid/enzyme control mechanisms could provide little evidence for their generality. Indeed, nearly all of the early work was done on bacteria or other microorganisms. It was not until 1962, for example, that messenger RNA was isolated from mammalian cells. However, unspecific, but highly suggestive, evidence pointing toward the broad applicability of the new discoveries was easy to come by. For example, DNA is always discovered in cell nuclei, when it is looked for. Similarly, the cytoplasm is always found to contain microsomes and RNA. And protein enzymes have been shown to control the chemical process that occur in the wide variety of plant and animal cells that have been investigated. One of the strongest reasons for believing that the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms might constitute a general principle of life was the neat solution they provided for a long-standing mystery of biochemistry—the precise architecture of protein molecules. A reasonable explanation of how, in nature, as distinct from the laboratory of the chemists, hundreds or thousands of different amino acid segments could be strung together in precisely ordered arrays, as was known to be required by the remarkable structure sensitivity of the enzyme molecules, filled a tremendous gap in biological theory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

For this reason the notion that all forms of living cells employ a system of control of their chemical processes of the general nature of that described in the preceding reports has from the first been attractive to biologists. However, no matter how attractive a theory might be, no good scientist would fail to put it to experimental test. And it was clearly important to do more than merely confirm the employment by various plant and animal species of similar broad principles of metabolic and genetic control. For the hypothesis that all living cells are controlled in their chemistry by a mechanism involving the interaction of nucleic acid and enzyme molecules, even if true, clearly need not imply identity in the details of the mechanisms employed by different organisms. Any ingenious scientist would encounter little difficulty in inventing variations of the nuclear DNA/messenger RNA/transfer RNA/microsome/protein enzyme scheme we have “derived” that would appear, from all that is known today, to be as workable as the particular scheme described. Thus an inevitable preoccupation of the research scientists has had to be not only to look for the existence of nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms in various species but also to determine the extent of variation in these mechanisms from species to species. Determination of the similarities and differences among the molecular mechanisms of different species of organisms is not easy as it sounds, however. Scientific techniques are not yet advanced to the point where molecules of DNA in the nucleus or RNA in the cytoplasm can be sorted out and their precise dimension and structure catalogued. As is so usual in science, indirect methods of throwing light on the question at hand had to be sought. When considered in terms of modern knowledge, an experiment performed in 1928 seems to have first pointed the way toward a suitable investigation technique. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

That early experiment involved work with a certain type of pneumonia-causing bacterium. It has been found that this bacterium comes in two slightly different forms, or “strains.” One strain is characterized by a smooth coating surrounding the bacterial cell; this is called the smooth, or S, strain. Bacteria of the other strain possess no such coating. They are called the rough, or R, strain. The curious thing that was reported in 1928 about these two strains of bacteria was that, when a batch of dead S bacteria was added to living R bacteria, there would subsequently appear in the culture living members of the S strain. (It has been well established that a colony composed exclusively of R bacteria would produce only more R types, whereas S bacteria would also breed true.) Since it was inconceivable that dead S bacteria could come back to life, the 1928 experiment had always required the conclusion that something in the dead S bacteria had converted some live R bacteria into live S bacteria. Many years later, additional experiments succeeded in isolating this something and showing that it was pure nucleic acid. In terms of our present understanding of the nucleic acid mechanisms, the explanation of the behaviour of the pneumococci is not difficult. Evidently the S bacteria contain a molecule of DNA that, through the mechanisms we have studied, leads to the formation of an enzyme that results in the construction of the smooth coating that characterizes this particular strain. A bacterium of the R strain differs from one of the S strain in not possessing this particular strain. A bacterium of the R strain differs from one of the S strain in not possessing this particular piece of DNA. The treatment that killed the S bacteria did not destroy their DNA. When the live R bacteria were mixed with dead S bacteria, occasionally DNA from a dead cell was able to work its way into a living cell, thereby supplying the kind of nucleic acid needed for the formation of a smooth coat. Result: the R bacterium became an S bacterium instead. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Clearly, this experiment constituted a step toward the establishment of generality in the genetic mechanisms; for it showed that the DNA from one type of pneumococcus bacterium could successfully operate the complex messenger RNA/transfer RNA/microsome apparatus of the other type of bacteria to produce a new and effective enzyme molecule. To be sure, if out theories are any good at all, they would have to account for the similarity of the genetic mechanisms among organisms so closely related as two strains of the same bacterial type. Nevertheless, the experiment was a step in the right direction. It suggested further steps. Was it possible to devise more advanced experiments to test for a similar kind of operation of the genetic mechanisms of one species by the nucleic acid from an entirely unrelated species of organism? Such a phenomenon, if it could be observed, would imply considerable similarity in the details s well as the general characteristics of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms of unrelated species. It has indeed been found possible to devise experiments to test the proposed hypothesis. It is virus research that has provided this possibility. This work is important enough to our story to justify our digressing to study the characteristic of virus particles that are pertinent to an understanding of some of its implication. A virus particle is the simplest of all living structures. It consists of only two components: a quantity of nucleic acid surrounded by a shell, or “overcoat,” of protein material. There is no cellular structure—no nucleus, no cytoplasm, no microsomes, none of the other complex structures that we shall later see make of the modern living cell a complex piece of machinery. By itself, a virus particle appears to be a lifeless object: it does not eat, grow, reproduce or die; no chemical processes take place in its vitals; it is an inert capsule of protein-protected nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Certain virus particles may even form regular crystalline matrices, yielding microscopic structures of overall mechanical and optical properties grossly similar to those of salt or diamond, for example. In terms of such properties, viruses appear much more akin to lifeless minerals than to living organisms. Viruses are no more confused with their virions, but can be viewed as complex living entities that transform the infected cell into a novel organism—the virus—producing virions. A virus is a microscopic organism that can replicate only inside the cells of a host organism. Most viruses are so tiny they are only observable with at least a conventional optical microscope. Viruses infect all types of organisms, including animals and plants, as well as bacteria and archaea. Although viruses have no ability to metabolize on their own, they depend on a host organism for replication. Therefore, viruses are at the edge of life. Approximately 5,000 different viruses have been described in detail at the current time, although it is known that there are millions of distinct types. Viruses are found in virtually every ecosystem on Earth, and these minute life forms are thought to be the most abundant type of biological entity. The study of viruses is known as virology, a specialty within the field of microbiology. The common concept of viruses focuses on their role as pathogen. Actually, there are vast numbers of viral entities that are beneficial to individual species as well as providing ecosystems service. For example, a class of viruses known as bacteriophages can kill a spectrum of harmful bacteria, providing protection to humans as well as other biota. Since viruses are capable of self-replication, they are clearly some type of lifeform, and likely involved with the early evolutionary development of such other simple lifeforms as bacteria and protists. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Viruses differ, however, from the simpler autonomous replication of chemical crystals. This is due to the fact that a virus can inherit a genetic mutation and is also subject to similar natural selection processes of cellular organisms. A virus cannot be labelled simply, therefore, as inanimate or lifeless. Here, we consider it a lifeform, but we adhere to current taxonomy and so not credit it with a parallel domain to other recognized cellular lifeforms. However, put the virus particles in contact with living cells of a suitable species of plant or animal and the situation changes dramatically. For now, life seems to appear. In a matter of minutes the number of virus particles will have doubled. Under suitable conditions, a few hours will suffice for a millionfold increase in their popular! This peculiar lifelike/nonlifelike dichotomy in the personality of the virus has caused considerable attention to be focused on it in recent years. Without doubt, Wendell M. Stanley heads the list of pioneers in the field. As early as 1935 he showed that the tobacco leaf, could be isolated in the form of pure crystals. For his work in this field, Stanley shared in the 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Stanley’s pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic virus led to studies by many investigators of the curious reproductive processes of viruses. Some of the interesting discoveries have been made with the kinds of viruses that attack, and therefore reproduce in, plant cells—such as those studies by Stanley; other important discoveries have arisen out of work with the so-called bacteriophages—viruses that attack and reproduce in the cells of bacteria. A consistent picture has emerged from all of this work bearing on the way in which a virus particle is able to make use of the genetic mechanisms of the cell it infects in order to reproduce its own kind. In such viral groups as poxviruses, papillomaviruses, and tobamoviruses, molecular taxonomy aligns generally with the genetic relationships of their hosts. This suggests that the affiliations of those viral groups predate their present derivatives, and, in fact, that these three viral groups and their hosts likely coevolved. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

In addition, some other things we may want to consider, while on the topic of health and science, is community prevention programs. As we have seen, sociocultural theorists believe that psychological problems emerge in a social setting and are treated in a social context. Perhaps the most effective approach to substance-related disorders is to prevent them. The first drug-prevention efforts were conducted in schools. Today prevention programs are also offered in workplaces, activity centers, and other community settings, and even through the media. Some prevention programs argue for total abstinence from drugs, while others teach responsible use. Some seek to interrupt drug use; others try to delay the age at which people first experiment with drugs. Programs may also differ in whether they offer drug education, teach alternatives to drug use, try to change the psychological state of the potential users, seek to change relationships with peers, or combine these techniques. Before it begins—community prevention programs for substance-related disorders often target very young children. Children often pledge abstinence from drug use on Red Ribbion by wearing red, getting a sticker, and signing a contract. (They used to release balloons, but that has been showed to be dangerous, it can cause fires and harm fish and wildlife.) Substance use—illegal, legal, and medical must be controlled to keep people safe and sane. No drug should be viewed as cool, or “it is just,” if it was not prescribed to you by a doctor, leave it alone. Besides the out-of-scale physical environment and its complicated techniques, the social environment too is baffling and produces ineptitude and loss of the sense of causality. Think of a child trying to cope with Property Rights, a most abstract notion. There is no problem when it is a case of something being used by somebody else, when Leo tries to take Finn’s shovel out of his hand and Finn gets upset or complains to authority in no uncertain terms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

When it comes to obeying authority, the puzzlement comes when the shovel is idle and Mama say, “Leo, Leo, you mustn’t use that shovel, it’s Finn’s.” What impresses the child is no precise idea, but the grownup’s tone of conviction. The child “believes,” though there is no evidence of his senses. It is the beginning of what Karl Marx called the fetishism of commodities. What is sickening is that it is just this kind of influence that is wanted by priest, mayors, and tavern philosophers who declare that more home influence is the remedy for out troubles of youth. However, the social relationships of the grownups themselves are out of human scale, for in the corporate system of organization the puzzling has become altogether mysterious. It is disturbing to a child to sense that his mother is under the unseen thumb of religion or his father of the boss. However, the top managers in our semimonopolies are quite anonymous. This is part of the new managerial code, as described by Fortune itself. A child cannot use them as model heroes, for they are invisible. This is exactly why Jackie Robinson’s proposal to import the TV personalities as ersatz models is so unfortunate, for these visible “heroes” are puppets. With the increasing concentration of management and control, there is less relation even to Property Rights. Consider it. If one is put upon or abused, with whom shall one be angry? One cannot vent rage against an abstract system. However, there is no need to vent feeling, for it is a matter of the grievance committee and other regular channels. In the Middle Status, the heart of the organized system, the situation is not the same as in a bureaucracy, with which it is usually compared; for a bureaucracy has written code and a definite pecking-order; but organization protects everybody’s personal dignity, and its subtle interpersonal feuding and competition cannot be codified, for it is without any objective utility to give a principle. Even that mighty systems the State is more material: it has banners, soldiers, elections, postmen and women, police. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

In a child, the systems of the State rouses awe and fear. However, the organize system exists only in the bland front of its brand-name products and advertising. There is no knowing how it is run or who determines. It is in these circumstances that young persons grow up convinced that everything is done with mirrors, by “influence.” Not even the personal influence of nepotism, but something more like the astrological influence of the planets. The sense of initiative, causality, skill has been discouraged. Merit is a train of “personality.” Learning is the possession of the Diploma. Usefulness is a Business Card. Justification is Belonging. Turning to the “sectarian” understanding of conscience, we find the Franciscan idea of the immediate knowledge of the natural law in the depth of the human soul. However, no two new elements supported and transformed this tradition: the so-called “German mysticism,” with its emphasis on the divine spark in the human soul, and the “spiritual enthusiasm” awakened by the Reformation, with its emphasis on the individual possession of the Spirit. Thomas Muenzer and all his sectarian followers taught that the divine Spirit speaks to us out of the depth of our own soul. We are not speaking to ourselves, but God within us. “Out of the abyss of the heart which is from the living God,” wrote Muenzer, we receive the truth if we are opened to it by suffering. Since the enthusiasts understood this divine voice within us in a very concrete sense, they identified it with the conscience. In this way conscience became a source of religious insight and not simply a judge of moral actions. The conscience as the expression of the inward light has revealing character. However, the question arose immediately: what is the content of such a revelation through conscience? Luther asked Muenzer, and Cromwell asked Fox: what is the difference between practical reason and the inward light? Both of the could answer: the ecstatic character of the divine Spirit! #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

However, they could be asked again: what bearing has the ecstatic form of revelation on its content? And then the answer was difficult. Muenzer referred to practical decisions in his daily life, made under the inspiration of the Spirit; and Fox developed an ethics of unconditional honesty, bourgeois righteousness, and pacifism. It was easy to ask again whether reasonableness and obedience to the natural moral law could not produce the same results. The “revealing conscience” is a union of mysticism with moral rationality. However, it does not reveal anything beyond biblical and genuine Christian tradition. An important result arising from this transformation of the concept of conscience is the idea of tolerance and its victory in the liberal era. The quest for “freedom of conscience” does not refer to the concrete ethical decision, but to the religious authority of the inward light that expressed itself through the individual consciences. And since the inward light could hardly be distinguished from practical reason, freedom of conscience meant, actually, the freedom to follow one’s autonomous reason, not only in ethics, but also in religion. The “religion of conscience” and the consequent idea of tolerance are not a result of the Reformation, but of sectarian spiritualism and mysticism. Florence Nightingale also had a religious state of mind when it came to the conscience. Although she was living in despair at the futility of existence under her parents’ roof, the privileged thirty-one-year-old’s life was confined to an endless round of social visits, teas, and parties. Florence loathed it all, even the “charity” balls and concerts where “people bamboozle their consciences and shut their eyes.” Over a decade earlier, on February 7, 1837, God had spoken and called her to his service. However, unlike the message Joan of Arc had received, Florence’s had been vague about what this service entailed. In any case, her parents rejected their daughter’s desire for a career or profession. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

In Victorian, England, women like Florence were supposed to marry. She was an excellent catch—attractive, wealthy, clever, fluent in several languages, widely read, dynamic, witty. She had “adored” her longtime suitor, Monckton Miles, but after nine years of courtship, she had rejected him. Afterward, she suffered terribly when he would scarcely speak to her, but she never regretted her decision. Monckton would have satisfied her intellectual and passionate nature, Florence Explained, but “I have a moral, an active, nature which requires satisfaction and that would not find it in his life…I could be satisfied to spend a life with him in combining our different powers in some great object. I could not satisfy this nature by spending life with him in making society and arranging domestic things.” God, she believed, had marked her out to be one of the single women, whom He “organized…accordingly for their vocation.” The Nightingales were furious. Florence had turned down the perfect husband. Family quarrels escalated into bitter battles. On her thirtieth birthday, Florence confronted her life: “Today I am thirty—the age Christ began his mission. Now no more childish things. No more love. No more married. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.” Slowly, this will was revealed to her: she should devote her life to nursing, the profession of slatterns, drunks, women of the evening, and criminals. Hospitals in Florence’s day were cesspools of filth, degradation, abuse, and death. Only the most destitute and desperate would go to an institution where the floors were slimly with vomit, feces, blood, where patients were jammed together in filthy, linenless beds, and surgeons routinely seceded the degenerate nurses. Florence was able to convince her parents to let her go to Germany for a training session at a medical establishment, Kaiserwerth Institute on the Rhine. The family fought her every inch of the way. Her sister, Parthe, flung bracelets into her face with such force that Florence passed out. Despite it all, she went to Kaiserwerth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Eventually Florence triumphed, and in 1853, she was named superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen. Though she despised the charitable matrons in charge, dismissing them as “Fashionable” Mules, she overrode her family’s hostility and accepted the position. After she was installed, the Fashionable Mules were horrified at her energy and zeal. She reorganized their operation from the revolutionary perspective that the patient was paramount and forced the Institution’s directors to agree to accept all sick women, not just Anglicans. Florence was driven, compassionate, but cold near-saint. Her soft voice and gentle mannerisms belied her unyielding character and her irresistible force of personality. She had causes rather than friends, and she hovered somewhere between God and the rest of humankind. One of Florence’s attributes was strict celibacy, easy to abide by after her momentous decision not to marry. For her, it was a cheap price to pay for her freedom from marriage. She harmoniously incorporated this chastity and the chance to pursue the profession to which God had called her into her increasingly austere lifestyle. Even her intense relationships with the men who revered her seemed to lack a sensual dimension. Instead, she always ensured their admiration was sublimated into unremitting toil for her current cause. This nonthreatening fervor enabled Florence to deal openly with the most important officials of the day—doctors, politicians, and military officers—without the least whiff of scandal. This extended even to her brother-in-law, who married her sister Parthe only after Florence had turned him down. The next stage of Florence’s mission saw her orchestrate a move from Harley Street to Scutari in Turkey, as superintendent of nurses in the hospital there. With a ragtag band of nurses and nuns, she arrived in 1854 to an edifice groaning with wounded soldiers dying of malnutrition, gangrene, even a festering corpse, but innocent of furniture, operating tables, cooking utensils, or supplies. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

In the basement, two hundred starving women were crammed together, quarreling, sickening, and dying. Outside, stopped-up latrines over flowed and poisoned the air. Despite these horrendous conditions, Florence’s worst enemy was officialdom, for the doctors refused to even acknowledge her existence. Barred from the wards, she waited it out until and influx of casualties following the Battle of Balaclava shook hostile doctors into enlisting her. War wounds, cholera, frostbite, and dysentery ravaged the troops. Nearly three out of every four soldiers will ill or injured. Florence threw herself into the struggle to save them, scrubbing, feeding, soothing, hearing them, raising funds, visiting them at night with one of her famous Turkish Lanterns—the Lady with the Lamp. Finally, mortality at the Scutari Hospital dropped from 42 percent to 2.2 percent. Florence was a hero to her patients and to the general public. She knew, however, that if it were not for the public support making it too awkward for the War Office to get rid of her, many a military doctor or official would sacrifice her like Joan of Arc. She had accomplished miracles, but only be defying authority, recruiting support from influential individuals, including Queen Victoria, and imposing her system and values with an iron will. Florence has also driven her own slight body too far, with sleepless nights, insufficient food, and no relief from relentless nursing, management, and intrigue. Twice she fell gravely ill, perhaps as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, and never really recovered. Back in England, she adopted nunlike clothing—simple black dresses and prim caps. She was emaciated from illness and her abstemious diet. Her quiet melancholy stemmed from grief at leaving so many soldiers in their Crimean graves, as well as lingering memories of the war. However, the wounds and blood and dysentery, the cold and heat and hunger, did not haunt her as much as “intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior; jealousies, meanness, indifferent, selfish brutality on the part of the superior. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

At the end of her long life, Florence had not a single regret about her decision to nurse rather than marry. She was also very firm about advising other women “to keep clear of the jargon, namely, about the ‘rights of women,’ which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women. Surely women should bring the best she has, whatever this is, to the work of God’s World, without attending to either of these cries.” To the end, her ever-active, analytical mind was impatient with ideology and rote thought. Personal rebellion had been the price of her success, but when she died, aged ninety, she had enormous accomplishments to her credit. Apart from these successes, Florence was admired by and corresponded with the highest in the realm, including Queen Victoria. She measured her friendships and her life in goals achieved—nothing else mattered. Life was not a journey but a destination. This was true from her earliest years, when she had refused to be submerged within a stifling Victorian marriage and, in defiance of her genteel World’s natural order, embraced celibacy and freedom. Is the true patriot only the human who puts one’s faith in brute force, harsh violence, and tragic destruction? Is there no love of country in gentler ways? I venture the claim that the human who keeps oneself above negativity, who seeks and finds the Overself’s inner peace and then distributes it in one’s country’s mental atmosphere, is worth more to the State than the human who places one’s reliance on violent ways. The problem of our proper reaction to war is a difficult one. The duty of defending ourselves against, or rescuing the victims of, a murderous assault seems to be a sacred duty. It seems right and reasonable to believe that open aggression should be resisted and even, to a certain extent, punished. However, with the advent of the atomic and hydrogen bombs the methos of fighting for any cause, even a righteous one, has become the greater of two evils where formerly it was the lesser. Where self-defense may lead to certain and suicidal self-destruction, we begin to pause, to consider, and to hesitate. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Any investigation of the destiny of nations from a philosophic point of view shows that the appearance of an aggressive invader on a people’s borders must haves some underlying Universal Law which is deeper than the obvious political or economic one. Just as the appearance of a certain unpleasant event in an individual’s life is often due to corresponding faults or weaknesses in one which need to be remedied, so the invader’s appearance points to deficiencies or errors in the invaded nation’s inner life. They too need correction. There is no escape from this inner duty, and so long as the weaknesses remain so long will troubles appear or assaults threaten. Until the nations achieve this moral development, they can hope only to restrict the violence and area of war, not to eradicate it. Such a restriction can be brough about by external means only be in international policing army, just as society’s crimes is restricted by local police. This single army to replace the many armies implies some kind of a World government. Yet national feelings are everywhere still unwilling to sacrifice themselves to a supernational government, and there is some ground for the refusal. There is no other prospect of its arrival than through a third World War, whose aftermath would unquestionably be the birth of a World government to control international relations, leaving the separate peoples free to pursue their own policies in regard to internal ones. This is the only alternative path to peace, terrible though it be. Meanwhile what is the duty of the spiritually awakened individual, as apart from the unwakened nations? Has the time come for one to practise a new approach? Does the old one of meeting violence with violence belong to the animal World? Then what is the new one which belongs to the human World? Must one cease to take life, withdraw from this course of endless slaughter, and seek protection from the higher powers by offering up even the will to live itself if needs be? #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

The individual alone can test the truth and worth of this newer moral concept. For support of it offers no early likelihood of attaining sufficient strength as a political power. Philosophy can give no lead in the matter. The decision is a personal one. Each must decide for oneself. The need for new political institutions exactly parallels our need for new family, educational, and corporate institutions as well. It is deeply wired into our search for a new energy base, new technologies, and new industries. It reflects the upheaval in communications and the need to restructure relationships with the non-industrial World. It is, in short, the political reflection of accelerating changes in all these different spheres. Without seeing these connections, it is impossible to make sense of the headlines around us. For today the single most important political conflict is no longer between the affluent and less affluent, between dominate and non-dominate ethnic groups, or even between capitalist and non-capitalist. The decisive struggle today is between those who try to prop up and preserve industrial society and those who are ready to advance beyond it. This is the super-struggle for tomorrow. Other, more traditional conflicts between classes, races, and ideologies will not vanish. They may even—as suggested earlier—grow more violent, especially if we undergo large-scale politico and economical turbulence. However, all these conflicts will be absorbed into, and play themselves out within, the super-struggle as it rages through every human activity from art and pleasure of the flesh to business and balloting. This is why we find two political wars raging around us simultaneously. At one level, we see a politics-as-usual clash of Second Wave groups battling each other for immediate gain. At a deeper level, however, these traditional Second Wave groups cooperate to oppose the new political forces of the Third Wave. This analysis explains why our existing political parties, as obsolete in structure as in ideology, seem so much like blurry mirror images of one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Democrats and Republicans, as well as Tories and Labourites, Christian Democrats and Gaullists, Liberals and Socialists, Communists and Conservatives, are all—despite their differences—parties of the Second Wave. All of them, while jockeying for power within it, are basically committed to preserving the dying industrial order. Put it differently, the most important political development of our time is the emergence in our midst of two basic camps, one committed to Second Wave civilization, the other to Third. One is tenaciously dedicated to preserving the core institutions of industrial mass society—the nuclear family, the mass education system, the giant corporation, the mass trade union, the centralized nation-state, and the politics of pseudorepresentative government. The other recognizes that today’s most urgent problems, from energy, war, and poverty to ecological degradation and the breakdown of familial relationships, can no longer be solved within the framework of an industrial civilization. The lines between these two camps are not yet sharply drawn. As individuals, most of us are divided, with a foot in each. Issues still appear murky and unconnected to one another. In addition, each camp is composed of many groups pursuing their own narrowly perceived self-interest, without any overarching visions. Nor does either side have a monopoly on moral virtue. There are decent people ranged on both sides. Nevertheless, the differences between these two subsurface political formations are enormous. The defenders of the Second Wave typically fight against the power of marginalized groups; they scoff at direct democracy as “populism”; they resist decentralization, regionalism, and diversity; they oppose efforts to de-massify the schools; they fight to preserve a backward energy system; they deify the nuclear family, pooh-pooh ecological concerns, preach traditional industrial-era nationalism, and oppose the move toward a fairer World economic order. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

By contrast, the forces of the Third Wave favour a democracy of shard power of the marginalized groups; they are prepared to experiment with more direct democracy; they favour both transnationalism and a fundamental devotion of power. They call for a crack-up of the giant bureaucracies. They demand a renewable and less centralized energy system. They want to legitimate options to the nuclear family. They fight for less standardization, more individualization in the schools. They place a high priority on environmental problems. They recognize the necessity to restructure the World economy on a more balanced and just basis. Above all, while the Second Wave defenders play the conventional political game, Third Wave people are suspicious of all political candidates and parties (even new ones), and sense that decisions crucial to our survival cannot be more within the present political framework. The Second Wave camp still included a majority of the nominal power-holders in our society—politicians, businessmen and women, union leaders, educators, the heads of the mass media—although many of them are deeply troubled by the inadequacies of the Second Wave World view. Numerically, the Second Wave camp undoubtedly still claims the unthinking support of most ordinary citizens as well, despite fast-spreading pessimism and disillusionment in their ranks. The advocates of the Third Wave are more difficult to characterize. Some head up major corporations while others are zealous anticorporate consumerists. Some are worried environmentalists; others are more concerned with the issues of gender roles, family life, or personal growth. Some focus almost exclusively on the development of alternative energy forms; others are mainly excited by the democratic promise of the communications revolution. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Some are draw from the Second Wave “right,” others from the Second Wave “left”—free marketeers and libertarians, neo-socialists, egalitarians, and civil rights activists, former flower children and the straightest of straight-arrows. Some are long-times activists in the peace movement; others have never marched or demonstrated for anything in their lives. Some are devoutly religious, others diehard atheists. Scholars may debate at length over whether or not so seemingly formless a group constitutes a “class,” or whether, if so, it is the “new class” of educated information-workers, intellectuals, and technicians. Surely many of those in the Third Wave camp are college-educated, middle-class people. Surely many are directly engaged in the production and dissemination of information, or in the services, and, by twisting the term, one could probably call them a class. Yet to do so obscures more than it reveals. For among the key groups pressing toward the de-massification of industrial society are relatively uneducated marginalized groups, many of whose members hardly fit the picture of the attaché-case-carrying knowledge-worker. How does one characterize women struggling to break out of confining roles in Second Wave society? How, moreover, does one describe the fast-expanding millions in the self-help movement? And what about many of the “psychologically oppressed”—the millions of victims of the epidemic of loneliness, the broken families, the single parts, the underrepresented gender groups—who do not fit neatly into the notion of class? Such groups come from virtually all the ranks and occupations of society, yet are important sources of strength for the Third Wave movement. Indeed even the term movement can be misleading—partly because it implies a higher level of shared consciousness than so far exists, partly because Third Wave people properly mistrust all the mass movements of the past. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Nevertheless, whether they comprise a class, a movement, or simply a changing configuration of individuals and transient groups, all of them share a radical disillusionment with the old institutions—a common recognition that the old system is now broken beyond repair. The super-struggle between these Second and Third Wave forces, therefore, cuts like a jagged line across class and party, across age and ethic groups, preferences in pleasures of the flesh and subcultures. It reorganizes and realigns our political life. And, instead of a harmonious, classless, conflict-free, non-ideological future society, it points toward escalating crises and deep social unrest in the near-term future. Pitched political battles will be waged in many nations, not merely over who will benefit from what is left of industrial society but over who participates in shaping, and ultimately controlling, its successor. This sharpening super-struggle will decisively influence the politics of tomorrow and the very form of the new civilization. It is as a partisan in this super-struggle, aware or unwitting, that each of us plays a role. That role can be either destructive or creative. Meanwhile, every morning, millions of people around the World blink their eyes open and immediately check the Web for stock-market prices, scan the business pages of on their tablet computer, tune in to the latest business news on the Internet—or do all three. Only then do they worry about breakfast. Some, no doubt would be willing to embed a microchip in their brain if it would automatically alter them to the latest twitch in interest rates or changes in their stock portfolio. Before long, some will. Until then, housewives in Shanghai, cabdrivers in New York, and currency traders in Frankfurt will have to make do with the close-to-real-time information pumped out, 86,400 second a day, by Reuters, Bloomberg, NHK, and their partners and rivals around the World. Providing all this news, online and off, has itself become a global industry. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

No one can pretend to understand how the media and its unprecedented output of information (and misinformation) influence and distort stock markets and the World money economy. Nonetheless, amid all the clamour, experts confidently attribute an astonishing variety of stock-market swings, business shifts and economic ups and downs to changes in what they call “fundamentals.” General Motors’ chief economist allows that “mainstream economic fundamentals remain strong.” The chairman of Warner Telecom attributes its success in a weak economy to its “sound business fundamentals” despite the odd fact that its stock price had plummeted 90 percent in the previous twelve months. Investors should look at Russia’s economic fundamentals, rather than its recent history. A high level Chinese officials ascribes the strong export market to “economic fundamentals.” Since the pandemic, many countries, including Japan, have seen a significant growth in the trade deficit. What exactly the term “economic fundamentals” means, however, remains extremely hazy. Depending on who does the talking, it includes factors like “low inflation,” “sound credit quality” and “World prices for gold and cooper.” Or maybe not. During the wild run-up of the U.S. stock market during Trump’s presidency, economists threw into the definitional gumbo such supposedly fundamental variables as a balanced government budget, a strong manufacturing sector, the presence of absence of a global central bank, the disparity between stock prices and profits, levels of personal borrowing and the percentage of low-age jobs, not to mention increased bankruptcies. No doubt some of these variables are important—sometimes. However, what if, in fact, by focusing on them we miss some things that are even more important? What is all such factors depend, directly or not, on a deeper set of forces—“deep fundamentals,” so to speak, that shape the more superficial fundamentals themselves? #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

What if the fundamentals tell us one thing and the deep fundamentals another? And what if these more basic, more potent factors are themselves changing at high speed? Not only is it impossible that anything should be created by God, but it is necessary to say that all things were created by God. For when anyone makes one thing from another, this latter thing from which one makes is presupposed to one’s actions, and is not produced by his action; thus the craftsman works from natural things, as wood or brass, which are caused not by the action of art, but by the action of nature. So also nature itself causes natural things as regards their for, but presupposes matter. If therefore God did only act from something presupposed, it would follow that things presupposed would not be caused by Him. Now it has been shown, that nothing can be, unless it is from God, Who is the Universal cause of all being. Hence it is necessary to say that God brings things into being from nothing. In safety and in Bliss may all creatures be of a blissful heart whatever breathing beings there may be frail or firm…long or big…short or small…seen or unseen, dwelling far or near. Existing or yet seeking to exist, may all creatures be of a blissful heart. O God, please scatter of ignorance and darkness, please grant me your strength. May all beings regard me with the eye of a friend, and I all beings! With the eye of a friend may each single being regard all others. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a vesture; the waters stood above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of Thy thunder they hasted away; they ascended the mountains and flowed into valleys, unto the place which Thou hadst founded for them; thou didst set a bound for the waters, that they might not return to cover the Earth. Thou sendest forth springs into the valleys; they run between the mountains; they give drink to every beast of the field, that all creatures may quench their thirst. Besides them dwell the fowl of Heaven, from among the branches they raise their son. Thou sendest down rain upon the mountains from Thy reservoirs, the Earth is full of the fruit of Thy works. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Just because my composure sort of slips, the moment your eyes meet mine, chances are you think my heart’s your Valentine.

In the magic of the moonlight when I sigh, chances you believe the stars that fill the skies are in my eyes. Guess you feel you’ll always be the one and only one for me.

And if you think you could, well, chance are your chances are awfully good. Guess you feel you’ll always be the one and only home for me. Cresleigh Homes are awfully good. #CresleighHomes

In the Cup of Omens there is a Baptism into Black Magic!

In popular thinking, the term “magic” refers to the tricks of a sleight-of-hand artist, the optical illusions created by a clever trickster, or the cunning exhibition of seemingly supernatural powers by money-hungry charlatans. Undoubtedly many of the amazing demonstrations performed by such people have a completely naturalistic explanation, but honest scholars who have investigated occultic phenomena in many parts of the World agree that science at present is unable to account for some of the apparently supernatural events they have witnessed. The Bible also sets forth the view that not all magic is merely hocus-pocus. In the Biblical portrayal of magic, the Scriptures acknowledge that real superhuman power can be accomplished through sorcery, but clearly teach that the source of such manifestations is evil. The Egyptian magicians actually were able to change their rods into serpents by throwing them on the ground. Some say these rods were really snakes which had been hypnotized into becoming as rigid as a cane, but even so we must admit that no scientist today can explain how these men were able to perform this feat. They also were successful in changing water into blood, and in producing a miraculous multiplication of frogs, thus apparently duplicating what Moses and Aaron had done by God’s supernatural power. The Egyptian sorcerers undoubtedly believed their gods gave them the ability to perform these amazing exploits, and they viewed their encounter with Moses and Aaron as a contest to determine whether or not their gods were more powerful than God. The Bible implies that supernatural beings take advantage of the practices of heathenism to further enslave their adherents, but declares that these invisible agents are neither holy angels nor gods. It states that they are demons—spirit beings who rebelled against God and now are dedicated to Him. For this reason, Moses and Aaron convincingly demonstrated the superiority of God over these demonic forces. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

When Aaron’s rod became a serpent, it swallowed up those the Egyptians had cast to the ground. The greater power of God also was manifested when the pagan sorcerers were unable to remove the plague of frogs, but Moses simply prayed to the Lord, and “the frogs died out of the houses, out of the villages, and out of the fields,” reports Exodus 8.13. God’s servants then brought about the third plague, a changing of dust into lice, a judgment which made life almost unbearable for human and beast. This time the magicians of Egypt were unable to duplicate the miracle, not could they bring about the sudden death of the pests. They therefore humbly acknowledged, “This is the finger of God,” reports Exodus 8.19. In this manner, the Lord demonstrated His absolute superiority over the powers of evil which the Egyptians worshiped as gods. It does important for us to note again that the Bible does not indicate that the magicians were frauds. A careful study of this history of Egypt, Babylon, and other nations of antiquity reveals that heathen priests accomplished many unusual feats, and kept the people under subjection through what appeared to be supernatural abilities. In seeking to understand some of the mysterious phenomena of heathenism, we must bear in mind the declaration of the apostle Paul, “But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.20. The apostle was definitely saying that the worship of idols involved more than merely bowing down to lifeless images. Furthermore, the fact that the Bible repeatedly forbids sorcery, divination, and every other form of occultism is evidence that God links these practices with actual demonic power. We repeat, the death penalty would not have been the prescribed punishment for all mediums, fortunetellers, and sorcerers if they were only quacks guilty of deception for gain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Critics of the Bible insist that its attitude toward some forms of witchcraft is inconsistent, and even sincere believers have been puzzled by several passages which appear to condone these practices. A careful examination of these instances, however, reveals that such critical assertions are unwarranted. Genesis 30: 14-18 records the story of Leah and Rachel bargaining for mandrakes, showing that they believed these so-called “love apples” increased a woman’s fertility. However, the fact that Jacob’s wives held to this ancient concept does not necessarily indicate that the Bible expresses approval. Then, too, modern investigation has shown that some primitive medicines, scorned by medics a generation or two ago, actually do possess qualities which make them valuable. At any rate, this passage of Scripture does not indicate that the Bible encouraged the use of magic. In another instance of apparent superstition, Jacob peeled the bark from saplings to give them a spotted appearance become he believed that they offspring of the cattle bred before them would then be speckled and spotted. This story is declared to be an indication that the writer of Genesis held to the notion that the colour of the unborn young would be affected by what the female animal saw at the time of impregnation. (See Genesis 30.37-43.) A careful study of the entire account reveals, however, the truth that God actually was controlling the breeding process through the laws of heredity, not by means of Jacob’s efforts. The angel of the Lord later told the patriarch that the male animals possessed genetic characteristics which brought about the birth of so many striped, speckled, and spotted animals. (See Genesis 31.11-12.) Therefore, we can assert with confidence that this passage of Scripture in no way encourages the use of magic. The statement of Joseph to his brothers about his silver cup also poses a problem for Bible students, because his words seem to indicate that he used it for purposes of divination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

After the steward had hidden the cup in Benjamin’s sack of grain, Joseph told him what he was to do and say. The King James Version records Joseph’s instructions as follows, “Up, follow after them men; and when thou dost overtake them, say unto them, Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in which my Lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil in so doing” (Genesis 44.4-5). Scholars today know that the heathen sorcerers of Joseph’s day often sprinkled small particles of gold or sliver into a cup of water, or poured a small amount of oil in it, and then “read” the resulting design in the cup of omens. While it is possible that Joseph fell into this sinful and heathenish practice, we doubt very much that he did, for he had one of the finest characters of all the men portrayed in the entire Old Testament. In addition, we can present good reason for our conviction that Joseph never really used the coup to find out about the unknown. In the first place, Joseph did not need such sources of information. God had spoken to him through dreams and other forms of revelation, and therefore Joseph did possess knowledge ordinarily hidden to humans. In that sense he was able to “divine.” His instruction to his steward may be translated, “Is it not from this cup that my Lord drinks, and concerning which he will assuredly divine?” In other words, Joseph made it clear that he possessed a power which would enable him to find out what happened to the cup. (We must remember that Joseph was play-acting in order to test his brothers. He wanted them to be puzzled by the knowledge he possessed, and did not want to disclose his real identity at this time. For this reason, he did not speak of obtaining information directly from God.) This interpretation of verse 5 fits well with the statement of Joseph recorded in verse 15, “What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

He let his brothers know that he was a special person with unusual powers of perception, but did not reveal the source of his ability. Later he told them about his faith in God. Therefore, the story of Joseph and the silver cup is certainly not an indication of Biblical approval of magic, and the likelihood exists that Joseph never practiced the heathen customs of his day. Certain elements of the Mosaic law sometimes are thought to be a form of magic. In Numbers 5, for example, we are told that if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he was to take her to the priest for trial. The woman would then drink a liquid potion to determine her guilt or innocence. If certain physical results became apparent immediately, she was deemed guilty. If not, she was innocent. On the surface this appears to be a superstitious practice, but when we remember that Israel lived under a theocracy and that God has ordained this test, we can believe He would in this manner declare infallibly the guilt or innocence of the person being tried. The Urim and Thummim as a means of revelation and the long hair of Samson as the secret of his strength are further examples of divinely ordered and controlled phenomena which cannot be compared to the magic of the heathen. Therefore, we can say assuredly that nothing in the Old Testament or the New can be properly interpreted as divine sanction of sorcery or magic. Shortly before the Exile, the prophet Ezekiel delivered a scorching denunciation of women who were using amulets and veils in a magic ritual to bring joy or sadness, blessing or cursing, even life or death to certain individuals. “Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, who prophesy out of their own heart, and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew amulets upon all wrists, and make kerchiefs for the head of every person of stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear you lies? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

“Wherefore, thus saith the LORD GOD: Behold, I am against your amulets, with which ye there hunt the souls to make them fly; and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, who I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life; therefore, ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations; for I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall know that I am the LORD,” reports Ezekiel 13.17-23. Exactly what these women did is not easy to ascertain. Some Bible students have conjectured that they performed a rite in which they symbolically bound up the soul of a person so that the individual would gradually waste away and die. Then, for a fee they would bring about his release. Other scholars think that Ezekiel describes features of “sympathetic magic,” whereby the sorceress fastened something around her own wrists or enshrouded her own head to place a curse upon a specific individual. In either case, the practice of these women appeared to have consequences so serious as to warrant divine condemnation and a prophetic declaration that God would deliver His people from their grasp. The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of real magic, and consistently condemns it in every form. Furthermore, the rites and ceremonies prescribed for Israel were not equivalent to the practices of the heathen, but were instructions that came directly from God and over which He would exercise control. At the very threshold of human history stands God’s command, “Fill the Earth and subdue it,” reports Genesis 1.28. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

The task and right of man was the peaceful conquest of the Earth’s powers in accordance with the will of God. In opposition to this command Satan, the great master of confusion came and put forward his arch-temptation, “You will be like God knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Magic is the very antithesis of the commandment of God as it reveals a hunger for knowledge and a desire for power in opposition to the will of God. When faced with this temptation humankind was at the crossroads. The decision has to be made. Either voluntary subordination to the will of God or rebellion against His statues and His ordinances caused by a greed for power and a desire for knowledge. The decision still faces us today. We either conform to God’s revealed way of salvation or we carry on the rebellion, trying to rule the created World in unforgivable opposition to God. Magic is thus at its roots a rebellion, and it has been so from the beginning. It is the climax of man’s revolt against God. Any talk of harmless forces of nature and neutral applications is criminal in the light of this scriptural fact. On the surface, parapsychology (the science of extrasensory experience) still recognizes something of the double nature of magic. The differentiation is made between Psi-Gamma phenomena and Psi-Kappa phenomena. (Gamma representing gignoskein, to perceive; kappa representing kinein, to move). Here we have again the two basic elements of magic: knowledge and power through supernatural means. Through a great deal of pastoral work, I have noticed four ways in which magical powers can originate. These are through heredity, subscription of oneself to the devil, occult experiments and occult transference. The evidence drawn from many actual case histories goes to prove that magical abilities can be passed on by means of heredity. Often mediumistic powers can be traced back over three or four generations in one family. There are two possibilities here, one being that it is a matter of the genes and the other that it is a matter of succession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

By this we mean the custom of a person on one’s deathbed actually bestowing the magical abilities upon the eldest son or daughter in order to die peacefully. Often tragic scenes occur when the children do not want to have these abilities passed on to them. A person may cry out for weeks on his deathbed for someone to relieve him of his magical powers. Sometimes a distant relative or an outsider is willing to accept the succession. The reason for this may differ from case to case, be it pity, curiosity or maybe lust for power. The death of some magicians can drag on over a period of weeks till the office of “succession” has been settled. This is not an apostolic but a diabolic succession. Magical powers on the other hand may originate through subscription to the devil. One can see in this the counterpart to baptism. To every event recorded in the Bible, there seems to be a demonic parallel to it in the field of magic. Subscription to the devil accounts for some of the most terrible and formidable cases met with by Christian workers. For example, in Paris there is an occult church with the name or title, “We Worship the Prince of this World.” This church has sister congregations in Basle and berne, and a few decades ago one was opened in Rome. In order to become a member of this church, one has to subscribe oneself to the devil. This is a baptism into black magic! For years a man in Toggenburg, Switzerland, had a flourishing practice as a nature healer and charmer. He could even sure come people who the doctors had given up as hopeless. He had healed the blind, the lame, cases of advanced cancer, tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma and other serious diseases. On one occasion however, the man’s own personal need came to the surface. He said, “I can help others, but for myself there is no help, no not in all eternity!” In his youth the man had subscribed himself to the devil. It was since that time that he had obtained his unearthly healing ability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Another way in which magical powers may develop is through experimenting with occultism. A Swiss factory worker grew tired of his job. Since he had often heard that occult healers and mesmerizers made a lot of money, he bought some magic charms, underwent various devil ceremonies and then began healing experiments. His magic healing ability developed rapidly and ultimately his income surpassed his previous earnings many times over. The next example will illustrate all three factors together, that is, the factors of heredity, subscription and experimenting in occultism. A young woman told me this story. Here great-grandmother had subscribed herself to the devil with her own blood. She had practiced black magic and had healed both animals and people. On her deathbed she had suffered terribly as is often the cause with magic conjurers. The daughter, that is the grandmother of my storyteller, took over the magic powers of her mother. The magic literature of her mother also passed into her hands. Later the apparition of the great-grandmother was seen by the relatives. The grandmother however, continued to practice magic. During nights of the full moon, she would charm diseases. She was also in the habit of using a key suspended over a Bible as a pendulum, and she could also successfully stop people from bleeding. If she ever attempted to read the Bible, she found it quite a trial. As she grew older, she began to see black figures in her home, and finally when she died it was again an unpleasant time. Her ghost was also seen after her departure. The story went on that the young woman’s mother had then taken over the magical literature and practices. She too had become a well-known healer, but her fate had been the same as her predecessors’. The fourth member in this terrible line of succession was not the young woman. As a small child, her mother had cast spells over her. Shortly after this, she had become clairvoyant and had also begun to see black figures in the house. Her brother and sister had suffered from depression and she herself had has serious psychic and nervous disturbances which had led her to seek the help of a minister. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Occult transference is the fourth source of magical powers. A young man told me that he had once had three black magicians lay their hands on his head and murmur some magic charms over him. He had afterwards possessed magic abilities which astonished even the family doctor. The doctor had investigated his powers and had to acknowledge that they were genuine. The laying on of the hands of the magicians would again be a counterpart to the scriptural laying on of hands. Another example, a young man saw someone searching for water with a pendulum. He was asked if he would like to have a go, but the pendulum did not react in his hand. When the dowser took hold of his hands, though, the pendulum had at once reacted. Later when he had tried to repent the experiment by himself, he was again successful, and he discovered that he now had the ability to search for water with both a rod or a pendulum. Yet the young man felt a change in his Christian life. Previously he had been regular in his reading of the Bible and in prayer. After this transference of pendulum ability, however, his love for the Word of God and for prayer declined. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. God’s universe operates undeviatingly in accordance with the purpose for which He created it. The all-wise and all-powerful Creator is not permitting Satan and demons to throw his ordered Universe into confusion by violating the laws he has established. Nor is He permitting His own people to do so through haphazard miracles. Though not ignoring the laws of nature, God’s Word also recognizes the possible transcendence of natural law in divine miracle both in good supernaturalism (Exodus 14.19-31; 17: 5-7; Joshua 3.16-17; 6.20; John 2.9; 11:44) and in evil supernaturalism (Exodus 7.10-11, 22; 8.7; 2 Thessalonians 2.8-10; Revelation 13.15). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

When natural law is transcended by divine miracle, the natural eye may see the spiritual reality. An illustration is provided in 2 Kings 6.17. In answer to Elisha’s prayer, the Lord “opened the eyes” of the prophet’s servant who saw “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” In like manner Elisha saw the “chariot of fire, and horses of fire” when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven (2 Kings 2.11). Similarly John saw the demons coming up from the abyss in their last-day eruption as locusts (Revelation 9.1-12). He also saw the three hideous demons issuing from the months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet as froglike spirits (Revelation 16.13-14). The apocalyptic seer glimpsed these fouls spirits prophetically and by supernatural vision. However, when they are sent against human, they will be invisible to the natural eye. Their presence will be known by the excruciating pain they inflict and the gross deception they cause. The harm they inflict will be inescapable, because their victims will be unable to shield themselves from an invisible enemy. However, spirits can become discernible to humans through transcendence of natural law. Evil spirits may be seen and communicated through an intermediary or medium. Just as Peter and Paull saw and talked with an angel (Acts 5.19; 27: 23-24), so human beings today can communicate with evil spirits through magic rites and incantations. Communication with the demon World results in supernatural manifestations, but these, strictly speaking, are not miraculous. Occult enslavement and extrasensory phenomena await people who enter the realm from which God would protect his own people (Deuteronomy 18.10-11) and against which He solemnly warns (Leviticus 19.31; 20.27; 1 Samuel 28.9; 1 Timothy 4.1, 2;1 John 4.1-3). When humans ignore God’s warnings and enter a forbidden realm, they may witness materializations, levitations, and luminous apparitions, as well as experience spirit rappings, trances, automatic writing, magic phenomena, clairvoyance, oral and written communications and other forms of spiritistic phenomena. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Such manifestations are not miracles. They represent the operation of the occult within a certain well-defined sphere tolerated by God. Occult subjection and oppression are the inevitable penalties to all who traffic in the realm of evil supernaturalism. The Scriptures are markedly reticent on the matter of spirits being seen by humans. Here again, the Bible stands in contrast to ethnic and rabbinic systems. Multitudes of demons in bizarre forms are described in ancient semitic demonology. Rabbinic demonology, for example, divides demons into two classes: one composed of purely spiritual beings, the other of half-spirits. The latter were though to have a psycho-sarcous constitution that involved them in physical needs and functions. Although the Bible is silent concerning such “halbgeister,” they would seem to be what the offspring of the angels and mortal women (Genesis 6:1-4) might have been, half-angelic and half-human monsters. Many spiritualists say they accept the Christian Bible as the Word of God. To understand it, however, spiritualists go to the control spirit in the séances, and the spirits reputedly give the proper interpretation. Spiritualists frequently ask, “Why go to the Bible, when you can go directly to the spirit and receive personal instruction from such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, Isaiah, David, Peter, James, John, and Paul—even the Master himself?” With that kind of opportunity, few spiritualists prefer to read the Bible—and hence they know little of what it teaches. For the Christian, 2 Timothy 3.16-17, is a key teaching regarding the inspiration and purpose of Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfectly, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Spiritualists do not accept the plain meaning of that verse, and they distort another key verse, 2 Peter 1.21, which speaks of “holy men of God” producing prophecy “by the Holy Ghosts.” Spiritualists say this means that the prophets were inspired by the spirits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Dr. Moses Hull, an accepted authority among spiritualists, wrote in Biblical Spiritualism, a book he published in 1895: “The Bible is, I think, one of the best of the sacred books of the ages. It is supposedly the sacred fountain from which two, if not three, of the great religions of the World have flowed…While the Bible is not the infallible or immaculate book that many have supposed it to be, no one can deny that it is a great book…Yet it must be confessed that the age of critical analysis of all its sayings and its environments has hardly dawned…John R. Shannon said to his Denver audience, ‘We do not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The dogma that every word of the Bible is supernaturally dictated is false. It ought to be shelved away…Verbal inspiration is a superstitious theory; it has turned multitudes in disgust from the Bible; it has led thousands into infidelity; it has led to savage theological warfare’…All these facts would show, if brought out, that the Bible, like all other books, is exceedingly human in its origin. While the Bible is, none of it infallible, none of it unerring—when rightly interpreted it is all of it useful; all of it good. Even the parts which the people called infidels have ridiculed the most, become beautiful when examined in the light of modern spiritualism. In the following chapters the sacred light of spiritualism is applied to the Bible and it becomes indeed a ‘lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.’” To show something of how spiritualists interpret Scripture, I have chosen five examples from Hull’s book. Isaiah 21.4-5. “My heart panted, fearful affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink; arise, ye prices, and anointed the shield.” The spiritualists interprets the phrase “prepare the table” as meaning a table to be used for spirit manifestation at a séance. Ezekiel 9.4-6. “And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

“And to the other he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.” Dr. Hull comments: “Ezekiel was considered an excellent medium, but like many of the nineteenth century he makes wrong predictions. It is thought that very few, if any, of his predictions ever met their accomplishments.” Amos 7.7. “Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.” Hull writes: “Mediums see such manifestations in connection with departed human spirits nearly every day.” Acts 8.26-30. “And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south…and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch…had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him.” Dr. Hull asserts that Philip was carried by a control spirit to speak to the Ethiopian. Galatians 1.11-12. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In his handbook for spiritualist, Hull concludes from this text that the Apostle Paul received the gospel by spirit revelation through the mediumship of Jesus. It is noteworthy that to both the spiritualist and the Christian, Satan is God’s archenemy. I was at a séance one time when Satan supposedly entered. It ended abruptly, and we were told it was because of the presence of an evil spirit. It is tragic that many spiritualists never realize they are being deceived by this very devil who can ingeniously adapt his tactics to lure any type of prey. Satan is openly honoured, of course, by some practitioners of the so-called “black arts” or “black magic.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Generally, some of these people are obsessed with hexes and spells, sexual indulgence, weird rituals, and hints of violence. Spiritualists, who consider themselves followers of God and the “good spirits,” regard such people as self-centered “spiritists” who follow the “bad spirits.” However, these “good” and “bad” spirits serve the same master, Satan, and serve him well, because they each give their followers what Satan dispenses: a sense of goodness and of guidance without dependence on Christ; and a sense of power and self-fulfillment in defiance of God’s commands. However, many spirits do believe in God, and the Christian Bible says there is a Holy Spirit and Angels that guide us, and in many cases, these spirits do prevent people from facing hardships, and these people still depend on Christ. So, it is really hard to generalize and give Satan so much power. Nonetheless, all people are baffled by occult mysteries! Revelations 13.14 says, “Satan’s representative deceiveth them that dwell on the Earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do.” Generally, people think of miracles and blessings as good omens. So, everyone has to make their own decisions as to what they believe, but many people on Earth are always looking for evidence of the supernatural because the very fact that we live on a globe that floats in the sky and provides of with nature and fruit and meat, and sun and a nightlight at night is evidence of a supernatural power. Once upon a time, at the instigation of a ghost, a lawsuit took place at Downpartick in 1685. The account of this was given to Baxter by Thomas Emlin, “a worthy preacher in Dublin,” as well as by Claudius Gilbert, one of the principal parties therein concerned: the latter’s son and namesake proved a liberal benefactor to the Library of Trinity College—some of his books have been consulted for the present work. It appears that for some time past there had been dispute about the tithes of Drumbeg, a little parish about four miles outside Belfast, between Mr. Gilbert, who was vicar of that town, and the Archdeacon of Down, Lemuel Matthews, whom Cotton in his Fasti describes as “a man of considerable talents and legal knowledge, but of a violent overbearing temper, and a litigious disposition.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

The parishioners of Drumbeg favoured Gilbert, and generally paid the tithes to him as being the incumbent in possession; but the Archdeacon claimed to be the lawful recipient, in support of which claim he produced a warrant. In the execution of this by his servants at the house of Charles Lostin, one of the parishioners, they offered some violence to his wife Margaret, who refused them entrance, and who died about a month later (1 November 1685) of the injuries she had received at their hands. Being a woman in a bad state of health littler notice was taken of her death, until about a month after she appeared to one Thomas Donelson, who had been a spectator of the violence done her, and “affrighted him into a Prosecution of Robert Eccleson, the Criminal. She appeared divers times, but chiefly upon one Lord’s Day-Evening, when she fetch’d him with a strange force out of his House into the Yard and Fields adjacent. Before her last coming (for she did so three times that Day) several Neighbours were called in, to whom he gave notice that she was again coming; and beckon’s him to come out; upon which they went to shut the Door, but he forbad it, saying that she looked with a terrible Aspect upon him, when they offered it. However, his Friends laid hold on him and embraced him, that he might not go out again; notwithstanding which (a plain evidence of some invisible Power), he was drawn out of their Hands in a surprising manner, and carried about into the Field and Yard, as before, she charging him to prosecute Justice: which Voice, as also Donelson’s reply, the people heard, though they saw no shape. There are many Witnesses of this yet alive, particularly Sarah (Losnam), the Wife of Charles Lostin, Son to the deceased Woman, and one William Holyday and his Wife.” This last appearance took place in Holyday’s house; there were also present several young persons, as well as Charles and Helen Lostin, children of the deceased, most of whom appeared as witnesses at the trial. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Upon this Donelson deposed all he knew of the matter to Mr. Randal Brice, a neighbouring Justice of the Peace; the latter brought the affair before the notice of Sir William Franklin in Belfast Castle. The depositions were subsequently carried to Dublin, and the case was tried at Downpatrick Assizes by Judge John Lindon in 1685. On behalf of the plaintiff, Charles Lostin, Counseller James Macartney acted—if he be the Judge who subsequently makes his appearance in a most important witch-trial at Carrickfergus, he certainly was as excellent an advocate as any plaintiff in a case of witchcraft could possibly desire, as he was strongly prejudiced in favour of the truth of all such matters. “The several Witnesses were heard and sworn, and their Examinations were entered in the Record of that Assizes, to the Amazement and Satisfaction of all that Country and of the Judges, whom I have heard speak of it at the time with much Wonder; insomuch that the said Eccleson hardly escaped with his life, but was Burnt in the Hand.” Whether or not one believes in Mrs. Winchester’s superstitions about spirits, it is hard to dismiss occurrences of the number 13 throughout her gorgeous mansion. Many windows have 13 panes and there are 13 bathrooms, with 13 windows in the 13th Bathroom, 13 steps leading to that bathroom. The Carriage Entrance Hall floor is divided into 12 cement sections. There are even 13 hooks in the Blue Séance Room, which supposedly held the different coloured robes Mrs. Winchester wore while communing with spirits. Here are even more thirteens: 13 rails by the floor-level skylight in the South Conservatory, 13 steps on many of the stairways, 13 squares on each side of the Otis electric elevator, 13 glass cupolas on the Greenhouse, 13 holes in the sink drain covers, 13 ceiling panels in some of the rooms, and 13 gas jets on the Ballroom chandelier (Mrs. Winchester had the thirteenth one added!) It is interest to note that Mrs. Winchester’s will had 13 parts and was signed by her 13 times! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Mrs. Winchester sat by herself on the fourth-floor balcony of her mansion. It was an October evening, and the sun was setting. The west was all aglow with mysterious red light, very strange and lurid—a light that reflected itself in glowing purple of the sky. Mrs. Winchester had a poet’s soul. She sat there long, watching the livid hues that incarnadined the sky—redder and fiercer than anything she ever remembered to have seen growing up as a child. She knew it was getting late and was expecting guests for dinner. Mrs. Winchester was always such a stickler for punctuality and dispatch. However, there was something about that sunset and the lights on the bracken—something beautiful but bizarre—that absolute fascinated her. She took it as a sign from the spirits that something was about to happen. The Universe was always teeming with mysterious secrets to unfold. Many of the guests in her mansion felt something desired to possess their soul, and it made them want to stop and give way to this overpowering sese of the mysterious and the marvellous in the dark depths of the estate. She was expecting Claude Duncan for dinner. Mrs. Winchester dined at 6.00 p.m. punctually. However, Claude seemed to be having some issues that evening. He was an art dealer, and was being haunted by many strange shaped. However, he saw and heard absolutely nothing; yet he realized that unseen figures were watching him close with bated breath, and anxiously observing his every movement, as if intent to know whether he would rise and move on, or remain to investigate this causeless sensation. He could feel their outstretched necks; he could picture their strained attention. At last he broke away. “This is nonsense,” he said aloud to himself, and turned slowly homeward. Ad he did so, a deep sigh, as of suspense relieved, but relived in the wrong direction, seemed to rise—unheard, impalpable, spiritual—from the invisible crowd that father around him immaterial. Clutched hands seemed to stretch after him and try to pull him back. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

An unreal throng of angry and disappointed creatures seemed to follow him over the moor, uttering speechless imprecations on his head, in some unknown tongue—ineffable, inaudible. This horrid sense of being followed by unearthly foes took absolute possession of Claude’s mind. It might have been merely the lurid redness of the afterglow, or the loneliness of the moor, or the necessity of being at the Winchester Mansion, no one minute late for Mrs. Winchester’s dinner-hour; but, at any rate, he lost all self-control for the moment, and ran-ran widely at the very top of his speed, all the way from the barrow to the door of the Winchester Mansion garden. There he stopped and looked round with a painful sense of his own stupid cowardice. This was absolutely childish: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, had nothing definite to frighten him; yet he had run from his own mental shadow, like the verist schoolgirl, and was trembling still from the profundity of his sense that somebody unseen was pursing and following him. “What a precious fool I am,” he said to himself, half angrily, “to be so terrified at nothing! I will go to Mrs. Winchester’s dinner just to recover my self-respect, and to prove to myself, at least, I am not really frightened.” There is nothing like a light for dispelling superstitious terrors. The Winchester Mansion was fortunately updated with electric light; For Mrs. Winchester was nothing if not intensely modern. He went to dinner, however, in very good spirits. He told Mrs. Winchester and her niece Merriam “Daisy” Marriot that, “I felt a most peculiar sensation. Just after sunset, I was dimly conscious of something stirring inside, not visible or audible, but—” “Oh, I know, I know! Said Merriam. “A sort of feeling there was somebody somewhere, very faint and dim, though you could not see or her them; they tried to pull you down, clutching at you like this: and when you ran away frightened, they seemed to follow you and jeer at you. Great gibbering creatures! Oh, I know what all this is. I have been here, and felt it.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“Daisy!” Mrs. Winchester shouted, “what nonsense you talk! You are really too ridiculous. How can you suppose Mr. Duncan feels haunted?!” Mrs. Winchester darted at him a look of intense displeasure. She said, in a chilly voice, “at a table like this and with such thinkers around, we might surely find something rather better to discuss than such worn out superstitions.” Claude replied, “Mrs. Winchester, it has been shown conclusively that the Winchester mansion, was built on the grave of Aryan invaders, and that they are the real originals of all the San Jose hills and surrounding lands. You have heard the story of how your dark observation tower came, of course. People say the spirits built it because they were deeply religious people, who believed in human sacrifice. They felt they it would have a high spiritual benefit. That it lit up your palace, so that the spirits could find you.” “It is a very odd fact, Mr. Duncan, that only ghosts people ever see are the ghost of a generation very close to them. One hears lots of ghosts in nineteenth-century costumes, because everybody has a clear idea of wigs and small-clothes from pictures and fancy dresses. One hears of far fewer in Elizabethan dress, because the class most given to beholding ghost are seldom acquainted with ruffs and farthingales; and one meets with none at all in Angelo-Saxon or Ancient British or Roman costumes, because those are only known to a comparatively small class of learned people. Millions of ghosts of remote antiquity must swarm about the World, though, after a hundred years or thereabouts they retired into obscurity and cease to annoy people with their nasty cold shivers. However, the queer thing about these long-barrow ghost is that they must be the spirits of humans who died thousands and thousands of years ago, which is exceptional longevity for a spiritual being; do you not think so, Mr. Duncan?” “You mansion must be chock-full of them,” replied Mr. Duncan. “Daisy, my child, go to bed, said Mrs. Winchester. “This is not talk for you. And do not go chilling yourself by standing at the window in your nightdress, looking out on the common to search for the ghosts. You nearly fell to your death last year with that nonsense. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

As Claude Duncan went for a tour of the mansion by himself, he saw a child’s white face gaze appealingly across at him. Slowly the ghost boy raised one pale forefinger and pointed. His lips opened to an inaudible word; but he read it by sight. “Look!” he said simply. Claude looked where he pointed. A faint blue light hung lambent over the door-to-nowhere. It was ghostly and vague. It seemed to rouse and call him. Claude was now in a strange semi-mesmeric state of self-induced hypnotism when a command of whatever sort or by whomsoever given, seems to compel obedience. Trembling he rose, and taking his candle descended the stair noiselessly. Then, walking on tiptoe across the tile-paved hall, he opened the door-to-nowhere, and fell out into the garden below. Claude felt a creep sense of mystery and the supernatural. And he saw the pale face still pressed close against the window, and a white hand still motioning him mutely onward. He looked once more in the direction of where the ghost boy pointed, the spectral light now burnt clearer and bluer, and more unearthly than ever, and the observational tower of the mansion seemed haunted from end to end by innumerable invisible and uncanny creatures. As Claude groped on his way, speechless voices seemed to whisper unknow tongues encouragingly in his ear; ghosts appeared to crowd around him and tempt him with beckoning figures to follow them. As it seemed, by invisible hands, he staggered slowly forward, till at last, with aching head and trembling feet, he stood beside the front door of the mansion. Something clogged and impeded him from moving. His feet would not obey his will; they seemed to move of themselves back into the mansion. Steadying himself, and opening his eyes, Claude walked through the closed front doors. Then at once his feet moved easily, and the invisible attendant chuckled to themselves so loud that he could almost hear them. His terror was infinite, there was a ghostly through of people. They were spirits. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Claude Duncan was powerless in their intangible hands; for they seized him roughly with incorporeal fingers. Their wrist compelled him as the magnet compels the iron bar. A dim phosphorescent light, like the light of a churchyard or decaying paganism, seemed to illuminate the mansion faintly. Things loomed dark before him; but his eyes almost instantly adapted themselves to the gloom, as the eyes of the dead on the first night in the grave adapt themselves by inner force to the strangeness of their surroundings. The Grand Ballroom had a silver chandelier from Germany, and the walls and parquet floors were made of six hardwoods—mahogany, teak, maple, rosewood, oak, and white ash. And there were two mysterious stained-glass windows. The room was full of sumptuous music, the San Francisco orchestra was performing and ghosts dressed for a ball were dancing. Claude’s attention was too much concentrated on devouring fear and the horror of the situation to enjoy the mysterious beauty of it. There was also a grinning skeleton turning its head to reveal to Claude its eyeless orbs with vacant glance of hungry satisfaction. Claude, held fast by the immaterial hands of his ghastly captors, looked and trembled for his fate, too terrified to cry out or even to move and struggle, he beheld the hideous thing rise and assume a shadowy shape, all pallid blue light, like the shape of his jailers. Bit by bit, as he gazed, the skeleton seemed to disappear, or rather to fade into some unsubstantial form, which was nevertheless more human, more corporal, more horrible than the dry bones it had come from. Then it busted into a loud and fiendish laugh. It was a hideous laugh, halfway between a wild beast’s and a murderous maniac’s: it echoed through the long hall like the laughter of devils. It said, “You are mine. You soul now belongs to the Winchester mansion!” The men and women spirits, with a loud whoop, raised hands aloft in unison. Next instant with a howl of vengeance even louder than before, they crowded around Claude and jostled and hustled him. And the moon burned bright and bluer as Claude Duncan now became the Winchester Rifle’s victim. You see it is not a bullet, but an all-powerful spirit, which chooses victims even if they did not die at the hands of the Winchester Rifle. Curious about the Winchester Mystery House? #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

Winchester Mystery House

TONIGHT! Roam the halls of the iconic Winchester Mystery House with nothing but a flashlight 👀🔦 You don’t want to miss this. https://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?

Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!

We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!

Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.

I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).

Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.

In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/

We Wanted it to Last Forever—We Made Promises

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Life often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. The time is three or four billion years ago—one or two billion years after the Earth was formed. The scene is the open sea; it covers most of the Earth’s surface, just as it will continue to do for eons to come. The principal characters are the coacervates: small, membrane-enclosed bags of organic and inorganic compounds, including catalytic substances that contribute a high level of chemical activity to what would otherwise be inert, uninteresting drops of oily material. The plot, like that of all good dramatic productions, is based on conflict. Indeed, only a small fraction of our initial cast of characters will survive to the end of the play; they rest must die. Despite the superficial similarity of the coacervates, the conflict is essentially a struggle among different “species.” A particular series of reactions that happened to develop in primordial pool number 543 resulted in the formation of droplets of chemically active compounds of adequate stability to work their way to the open sea and there continue their metabolic process. However, a substantially different set of reactions had occurred in pool number 279, and this had led to injection into the ocean of an essentially different species of coacervate. Similarly for pools 59, 176, 798, and all the rest. The tremendous variety of combinations permitted by the basic versatility of organic and inorganic substances had resulted in a correspondingly wide variety of species among the initial cast of character in the drama to consider. As befits the relative simple nature of the members of the cast, the issues that sets them into conflict is a simple one—food. Initially the problem is not serious, for only a few coacervate individuals are widely scattered throughout vast expanses of ocean. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Under these circumstances their ability to grow and reproduce their kind is limited only by their own internal chemistry and a level of concentration of organic and inorganic nutrients in the surrounding water that is insignificantly influenced by the existence of other coacervates. Eventually, however, all this changes. A time comes when the absorption by the growing coacervate population of the nutrients of the ocean is extensive enough to start cutting down on the density of the available food. It is then that the interspecies conflict begins in earnest. For those types of coacervates that have the most effective metabolism, in the sense of being able to assimilate the available nutrients to grow and reproduce most rapidly, then begin to starve the less hardy species out of existence. From the beginning of the conflict, the tactics employed by the successful species are designed to make effective use of the numerical superiority they achieved in the fast-growing early years, while there was still enough food for all. When the era of overpopulation sets in, the continued eating and proliferating of these hungry hordes cause matters to go rapidly from bad to worse, and what started as a minor recession in the coacervate economy quickly becomes a disastrous depression. Of course, all species are affected by the growing food shortage, for each faces extinction if its birth rate falls below its death rate. And this can occur, be cause the decreasing availability of food curtails the birth rate more than it does the death rate. Ultimately, the small and undernourished coacervate droplets of a slowly growing species must get broken up by agitation, collision, and wear, with their contents spilling into the sea to provide food for the more hardy types. Thus the plot becomes clear. As our imaginary play continues for the millions of years that must elapse between opening and final curtain, the abundance of nutrients gradually decreases and the less prolific species, one by one, become extinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

At this point we can foresee the final outcome of the drama—the ultimate triumph of the strong over the weak, the emergence from the herd of the species possessed of the qualities most suitable for survival. We may as well anticipate the ending, quit the theater, and reflect on the meaning of what we have seen. Obviously, Charles Darwin, if not actually the author of our imaginary play, is at least entitled to credit for inspiring the theme. Of course, it is unlikely that he had in mind as primitive a conflict for existence as this when he formulated his principles of evolution, but there is no reason why his doctrine of “survival of the fittest” would not have applied to our primeval cast of characters. In fact, as we have seen, nothing could have prevented it. The principles involved are exactly the same as those underlying any number of physical and chemical phenomena in which parallel processes of different and self-aggrandizing rates of activity simultaneously have access to the same source of supply of basic ingredients. “Evolution” may be widely considered to be a law of biology but, like all other biological principles we have encountered, its roots are firmly implanted in the ordinary laws of physics. The ultimate result of the interspecies struggle for existence among the primordial coacervates had to be the same as the ultimate result of all evolutionary competitions—the suppression of the poorly adapted and the proliferation of the well adapted. The seas must have come to abound in droplets containing a mixture of catalysts and other ingredients that supported a variety of internal chemical activities which not only made rapid and effective use of the raw materials then available in the waters of the Earth but also maintained an internal organization and membrane properties that contributed to balanced growth and reproduction. However, despite our imaginary dramatic production, it is not necessary to conclude that only one species finally survived. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Differences in climate and local chemical conditions among different regions of the seas would result in different relative survival values for the competing species and would lead to strong geographical influences on the nature of the local population. Changes in the chemistry of the sea resulting from gradual changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and surface composition would also have preserved a larger number of species than could otherwise have coexisted by preventing the evolutionary processes from going to completion and becoming static. In any event, the principles of evolution would not have led to a static situation, even if the environmental conditions of the coacervates had been uniform and unchanging. For the perpetual random jostling of the organic and inorganic constituents inside the coacervates would frequently result in the formation of new types of molecules. Perhaps one of these molecules out of a million would help catalyze some new chain of reactions within the coacervate. And, in one of a million of these new rection chains, one of the products might be the newly invented molecule. If son, autocatalysis could occur, the new molecular form could be abundant, and the associated set of chemical reactions it facilitated could become part of the standard metabolism of succeeding generations of coacervates. To be sure, in our hypothetical example this would occur only once for every million million random formations of new molecular types, but this would be more than often enough to provide for the coacervates a dynamic pattern of evolutionary development. The time between successive events at the molecular level is so few millionths of a second and the time available is so many millions of years that the raw material of evolutionary change can easily consist of such seemingly unlikely accidental molecular juxtapositions or rearrangements. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

In fact, because of the “trying out” of new combinations that must occur ceaselessly in substance that is not held at the absolute zero of temperature, we can be sure that sooner or later pure chance will lead to the formation of any arrangement of the available materials that the laws of physics and chemistry will permit to hold together. Thus, new and improved molecular types, with their associated autocatalytic chains of chemical reactions, would have been continually “sought out” and incorporated into the architecture and metabolism of the coacervates to improve their growth and reproduction characteristics. The cumulative results of these natural-selection processes would ultimately have included the appearance of other new structural and metabolic features. For example, occasionally a chain reaction that got started would have produced, among other things, substances that tended to coagulate and thus form solid inclusions or membranes within the coacervate. Because of the physical adhesive forces, these new inclusions would have trapped and bound, in an extended two-dimensional configuration, some of the molecules floating in the surrounding fluid. In some instances, the surface-bound configuration of the trapped molecules would have had a higher chemical reactivity than the unbound configuration, thereby increasing the growth rate of the coacervate. Ultimately, therefore, evolutionary selection would have made common place coacervates with composition leading to include membranes. Another likely early aberration in coacervate structure would have been the formation of droplets within droplets. It will be recalled that organic materials in the primeval pools spontaneously coalesced into spherical droplets because of strong attractive forces between their molecules and that this was followed by the development of more or less permanent enclosing membranes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

In the same way, certain products of the coacervate metabolism could coalesce into “inclusions” separated from the bulk of the coacervate fluids by enclosing their own. (“Inclusion” is used here in a general sense. Modern descendants such coacervate structures would probably include not only the nuclei common to the cells of most organisms but also the smaller anatomic “organelles” that are found in the more primitive bacteria as well as in the cells of more advanced organisms.) The differential permeability of the membranes would block the transmission of certain molecules while allowing others to interpenetrate freely. This would result in the concentration of certain substances within the inclusions and different ones outside. Different series of reactions could then occur in the two regions of the coacervate. Among the countless millions of times that such inclusions spontaneously formed billion of coacervates, there would occasionally be a combination having above-average survival value. The special conditions preserved in the semi-isolated inclusion would support chemical reactions having a certain product that would not only be able to penetrate the enclosing membrane but, once on the outside, would be unusually effective in accelerating the external pattern of chemical reactions. These reactions, in the surrounding “body” of the coacervate, would then have as one product a substance that could enter the inclusion and further stimulate its synthesizing processes. Such a mutually facilitating interaction would contribute above-average growth characteristics to the complex coacervate, with the inevitable ultimate evolutionary popularizing among the coacervate population of an inclusion/body structure and associated chemistry that started out as a rare and improbably combination. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Even time-varying metabolic processes would be expected to result from the operation of the physical principles of evolution. Consider, for example, a complex coacervate similar to that just described but in which the ingredients that accelerate the growth reactions are not catalysts but instead get “used up” in the reactions thy promote. Suppose further that the body reaction must go on for a substantial period of time before the production of the ingredient that then migrates to the inclusion to participate in its internal chemistry and that the resulting reaction in the inclusion also requires a substantial period before it can generate and send the other accelerating ingredient back to the body. This is a “positive-feedback system” with time lags. Such a system, familiar to electronic engineers, results in oscillatory behaviour. In such a coacervate, in both body and inclusions, the chemical conditions would change periodically. In sophisticated coacervates, comparatively high on the evolutionary scale, the cyclic process would probably not be so simple as merely a successive acceleration and deceleration of a single chain of chemical reactions in body and inclusions. Instead, in addition to the “main chain” of chemistry involved in the cyclic process, there could be “side chains” of secondary reactions with various products, possibly including some useful for the main reaction chain. For example, the periodic exhaustion of the special inclusion-originating ingredient needed in the body of the coacervate could permit new reactions that would not be possible in the presence of the special ingredient. These other reactions might produce a substance needed in some subsequent step of the coacervate chemistry. Thus, temporal cycling of the coacervate chemical activity could have survival value and gradually become “standard equipment” in successive generations of coacervates. Such evolutionary processes would have resulted in a gradual but inexorable speeding up of the rate of development of new species of lifelike structures. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

As natural selection brought to prominence forms of organization of matter characterized by greater and greater efficiency in the use of the raw materials of the seas, the increasing rates of growth and reproduction of these new forms finally must have compressed into centuries of a degree of evolutionary development that had previously required hundreds of millenniums. If the first billion years of the Earth’s history was required for the tortuous development of a handful of coacervate droplets rugged enough to leave their pools of incubation and survive in the open seas, the second billion years must have witnessed increases in chemical and structural sophistication that were fantastic, compared with the accomplishments of the earlier era. Earlier, in our recognition of the lifelike characteristics of the primitive coacervates, we had to ask ourselves whether our discussion had carried us over the line dividing the realm of inanimate mechanism from that of animate organism. As we now contemplate the tremendous increase of sophistication that natural forces of evolution must have brought to the chemistry and structure of the coacervates, the question becomes even more insistent. In fact, from this point on, we should find it awkward if we could not start employing more of the language of biology in discussing the aggregations of matter we must deal with. We must soon start talking about “single-celled organisms” rather than coacervate droplets. However, if the property of “life” has really attached itself to our curious bags of chemicals, this would appear to be a development that no author should allow to slip unheeded into one’s text. After all, there can be no accomplishment more significant than establishing that the prosaic operation of the ordinary laws of physics on the materials and in the environment of the primordial Earth ultimately leads to the appearance of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

It would appear that the author would have the responsibility of calling the reader’s attention to the point at which the transition from nonlife to life occurs, so that due notice could be taken of this most important development. The trouble is that no one has designed a definition of life that permits clear-cut distinction between living and nonliving forms of matter. Most would say that a single-celled amoeba is alive and that a primeval pool of hot dilute soup is not. It terms of the organization of this report, there would probably be general agreement that the subject matter of the past was inanimate and that the subject matter even further back on is animate. However, there would be little agreement on precisely where the line between nonlife and life is crossed. This makes it difficult for an author to achieve the dramatic effect to which one feels an event of such importance entitles one. One’s defense must be that the colourlessness of the treatment is a consequence of the peculiarity of the subject matter rather than of one’s own literary inadequacy. Let us therefore take up again the thread of our narrative. We shall do so by exploring the continuing evolutionary development of what we shall now call this single-celled organisms of the late primeval World. As we encounter more evidence of the almost explosive accelerating power of the forces of evolution, we shall, of course, keep constantly in mind the fact that nothing vitalistic or even uniquely “biological” is involved. The appearance of effective evolutionary processes awaited only the development of the competitive conditions fundamental to the operation of the principle of natural selection. When these conditions appeared, so did evolution. The basic rules of the game we are playing are still the laws of physics. Education is about discovering the special skills and talents of students and guiding their learning according to high standards. Education is also about teaching our community basic American values and uncorking that World-renowned American ingenuity that has characterized our country. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

So we had our season in Heaven, we were not cheated. Heaven is never more than a glance and it is gone. We wanted it to last forever. We made our promises. Our lives are operatic. However poorly we sing, we are faithful to our one refrain: love, betrayal, revenge. We cannot settle on love alone, the other two are equally and inalienably our nature. The most we can hope for is to love a lot and go light on the other two. This splendid project has long been a shambles; but the failure, which a palace in ruins, still is grand and has some dignity, yet it has somehow been trivialized. What is left is a very little thing, and what still is possible for us in not very much, nothing that might call for passion or anguish or hope. The pain in our hearts is the meaning. And what does that pain say? Nothing stays. Temples, palaces, and pyramids, and stone heroes on stone horses all swirling into the void. And continents that split apart and drift, and stars that collapse and implode, and we are a flicker of desire in a torrent of fire and ice; it does not mean anything, it all slides away. Once a mysterious and hidden problem, hardly acknowledged by the public and barely investigated by professionals, suicide today is the focus of much attention. During the past 50 years in particular, investigators have learned a great deal about this life-or-death problem. In contrast to most other problems, suicide has received much more examination from the sociocultural model than from any other. Sociocultural theorists have, for example, highlighted the importance of societal change and stress, national and religious affiliation, martial status, gender, race, and the mass media. The insights and information gathered by psychological and biological researchers have been more limited. Although sociocultural factors certainly shed light on the general background and triggers of suicide, they typically leave us unable to predict that a given person will attempt suicide. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

When all is said and done, clinicians do not yet fully understand why some people kill themselves while others in similar circumstances manage to find better ways of addressing their problems. Psychological and biological insights must catch up to the sociocultural insight if clinicians are truly to explain and understand suicide. Treatments for suicide also pose some difficult problems. Clinicians have yet to develop clearly successful therapies for suicidal persons. Although suicide prevention programs certainly reflect the clinical field’s commitment to helping people who are suicidal, it is not yet clear how much such programs actually reduce the overall risk or rate of suicide. At the same time, the growth in the amount of research on suicide offers great promise. And perhaps most promising of all, clinicians are now enlisting the public in the fight against this problem. They are calling for broader public education about suicide—programs aimed at both young and old. It is reasonable to expect that the current commitment will lead to a better understanding of suicide and to more successful interventions. Such goals are of importance to everyone. Although suicide itself is typically a lonely and desperate act, the impact of such acts is very broad indeed. Let us return now to our alert young man of average to good attainments and imagine him growing up in and into this arena. Most likely he will go to work for an organization, in a factory or service job, manual or clerical, with the corresponding job attitude and way of life. However, if he has been to college, he will likely be in the second status of the organized system, in business management, communications, sales or technology, with its job attitude and way of life. After a few years, many such young men will perceive that they are in a Rat Race. The young workers will perceive it as the work speeds up, when they get married, as their installment payments fall due. The Organization Man will perceive it as competition, company pressure to conform, etcetera. Of these, most will race on, but a few will balk and stop running. Now what becomes of these few? #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

They are not likely to choose the other, motely, alternative of trying to remain in society independent of the organization. For their experience has been disillusioning. They have become hip. (We shall see later that this is profoundly organizational attitude.) They know that the independent unorganized are up against it; for they have learned techniques of promotion and they do not think much, or much think, of other methods and kinds of results. However, to be hip and cynical are not attitudes that prompt one to make a go on one’s own. It is not surprising then that many of those who balk in the Rat Race will voluntarily choose the other remaining possibility, poverty “outside” society (whether they choose it, of fall into it, comes to the same thing). These, not boys, but early disillusioned, hip, and resigned young men, are the Fourth Wave Generation. The organization they have quit may be the armed forces or a university that they cannot compound with; these tend to be more naïve. Those who have had experience of working for a firm and making a pretty good living tend to be more cynical. Naturally this cataclysmic transition, between being in and being “outside” society, does not occur without strong accompanying emotional moments: betrayals in love, binges, blow-up at the boss, addiction to forbidden haunts and vices. However, at this point let us stick to the social structure of it. Some men actually treasure their “vital energy,” it is a precious store of God-given fluid one has to dispense frugally enough to last one’s entire virile lifetime. The negative side of this vital energy: how to avoid debilitating/exhausting/weakening one’s manly self. Even the prescribed regimen—wholesome and spiceless food, purity of body and soul—was designed to dodge trouble. However, how is one to energize oneself? Well, one could throw oneself into a sport, which by midcentury, was being touted as an ideal way to stimulate the physical man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

One delightful consequence of sport was that it would not merely invigorate or reroute a man’s pleasures of the fleshing longings but recharge one’s strength at the same time. This ideology of the “vital energy economy”—budget your seed and spend it wisely—endured for over half a century. A man’s body, unlike his finite volume of seed, could thereby become a renewable resource. One would be a walking, flexing, pulsating specimen of Muscular Christianity. From 1850 to 1890, schools in both North America and England made playing games an important part of their curriculum, and the obsessive role sports in these cultures dates from that period. It became a major instrument in male bonding and in teaching men to be men. It also inculcated in them the notion that they were biologically superior to women and to other, effete breeds of man. (Unlike the Greeks, however, the Victorians were too modest to prove this by competing in the nude.) The vital energy played an equally vital role in this sport-mindedness, partly through seminal sublimation, partly through unexplained physical process. Sports, this vital energy-efficient activity, became associated as well with moral asceticism—temperance, in the nineteenth-century sense of avoiding all evils such as liquor and women. “What are you running here, a Sunday school or a baseball team?” demanded Chicago Cubs star player King Kelly of puritanical manager A.G. Spalding. Spalding’s answer might have been that the two were inseparably connected, moral purity and sportsmanship being two sides of the same coin. In fact, he hired Pinkerton detectives to tail his players and report on their extracurricular movements. At playgrounds, schools, and professional ball fields everywhere, the sportsman’s code applied: no tobacco, booze, gambling, womanizing, or ungentlemanly behaviour. Underlying these strictures was the most outlawed of all sins—onanism, casting irreplaceable vital energy into a moral void. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

In 1889, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms baseball team put their collective celibacy into the headlines when they adopted it as a talisman and won that year’s pennant. This was, admittedly, a desperate measure for a desperate team. However, despite the above-average number of newlywed team members who gave the Bridegrooms their nickname, the players cooperated and avoided their wives until after the play-offs. Pitcher Bob Carruthers went so far as to decline visiting his newborn baby, presumably a consequence of his preseason unchastity. The ideology of Muscular Christianity faded slowly. Today, it still permeates some sports, notably boxing and soccer, and some football teams, all manned by players seeking every possible physical and psychic advantage. Everywhere in the World, men have pondered their physical makeup. Often, the result of such meditations had been the conclusion that the vital energy is an immeasurably important substance and that it plays a role in men’s activities from the cognitive to the carnal, of which sports are arguably the most widespread and beloved. Nonetheless, most contemporary is the psychotherapeutic discovery that the least effective way of treating a person under a destructive compulsion—alcoholism, for example—is to direct one in terms of a moral command, “Stay sober at all times!” No psychoanalyst worthy of one’s profession would commit this destructive error. The law, as stated by the analyst, would produce a tremendous resistance in the patient, and justly so. The patient would withdraw to one’s freedom to contradict oneself, even though one might then destroy oneself. The patient, in this action, defends a decisive element in human freedom. Psychoanalysts who (according to the latest fashion) being to moralize to their patients, however cautiously, should remember that it is precisely the pathological loss of power to respond to moral commands that makes these persons patients. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Most analysts are still conscious of this, preserving one of the deepest insights of psychotherapy, namely, that the law cannot break compulsions, that the “thou shalt” does not liberate. Instead of encountering the law, the patient encounters acceptance on the part of the effective analyst. One is accepted in the state in which one is, and one is not told to change one’s state before becoming acceptable. In some cases, especially in pre-analytic counseling, the acceptance can express itself in a description by the counselor of how one oneself was or still remains in a similar predicament, so that one ceases to be merely the subject, and the patient merely the object, in the healer-patient relationship. One has accused psychotherapy of permissiveness. In particular cases this criticism is just—formerly, even more so. However, so far as the method is concerned, this permissiveness is a result of a simple confusion between acceptance and permission. In the analytic situation there is neither command nor permission, but acceptance and healing. If the power of the compulsion is broken, a counseling exchange between the healer and the healed may take place, and the question may arise as to what the patient should do with one’s newly regained freedom. Only then should the problems of morality, its content, and its motivation come into focus, and the analyst may become a friend or a priest to the patient. However, then the further question for both of them must be raised whether the moral law, appealing to their freedom, has motivating power, or whether it is powerless without a religious element in it—the religious element being an acceptance that transcends the psychotherapeutic distinction between the healer and healed. With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities, and then with renewed focus, align your daily actions with your purpose goals. Since you cannot know it all or do it all, it is vital that you learn to take the time to contemplate what it is you need to know and what you need to do. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Too many decisions, too fast, about too many strange and unfamiliar problems—not some imagined “lack of leadership”—explain the gross incompetence of political and governmental decisions today. Our institutions are reeling from a decisional implosion. Working with out-of-date political technology, our capacity for effective governmental decision-making is deteriorating rapidly. When all the decisions have to be made in the White House, there is often little time for considering fully any one of them. In fact, the White House is so squeezed for decisions—on everything from air pollution, hospital costs, and nuclear power to the elimination of hazardous toys (!)—that one presidential adviser confided to me, “We are all suffering from future shock here!” Nor are the executive agencies much better off. Each department is crushed under the mounting decision load. Each is compelled to enforce countless regulations and to generate vast numbers of decisions daily, under tremendous accelerative pressures. Thus, a recent investigation of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that its council spent all of four and a half minutes considering each class of grant applications. “The number of applications…have far outstripped the ability of the NEA to make quality decisions,” the report declared. Few good studies of this decisional logjam exist. One of the best is Trevor Armbrister’s analysis of the 1968 Pueblo incident involving the capture of a U.S.A. spy ship by the North Koreans and dangerous showdown between the two countries. According to Armbrister, the Pentagon official who performed the “risk evaluation” on the Pueblo mission, and approved it, had only a few hours to appraise the risks of 76 different proposed military missions. The official subsequently refused to estimate how much time he had actually spent considering the Pueblo. The way in probably worked is that he got the book on his desk one morning at nine o’clock with orders to return it by noon. That book is the size of a Sears, Roebuk catalogue. It would be a physical impossibility for him to study each mission in detail. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Nevertheless, under the pressure of time, the risk on the Pueblo mission was termed “minimal.” This could mean that every military mission evaluated that morning received less than two and a half minutes’ consideration. No wonder things do not work. In the years following the 9/11 attacks in the United States of American and its allies have fought a continuous war on terror. The taxpayer tab for the war totals about $5 trillion, or around $16 per person. Reports from the Inspector Generals’ offices of Ira and Afghanistan estimated that the United States of America’s military has lost $60 billion to waste and fraud in Iraq, $100 billion to Afghan reconstruction efforts, and billions more in wasted equipment either burned or left behind after the withdrawal forces. Part of the problem may be that the Pentagon has 1.7 million contracts open, which makes oversight difficult, if not impossible. In Iraq and Afghanistan there was a huge waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of companies like Halliburton and others that [these companies] were able to get away with in the fog of war because there was not enough scrutiny into what they were doing. In some cases billions of dollars went missing; contractors were overcharging for everything from simple task like doing the laundry for the troops and providing meals to building shoddy facilities for schools and things for water and electricity. Another impetus for fraud stems from the blank checks that the Pentagon write to contractors. The most common method of winning contracts is through the “cost-plus” contracting system, in which the government reimburses contractor expenses and tacks on a commission as profit. The system works in such a way that the more work contractors do, the more profit they get, even if their work is inefficient. It basically says, “If you spend a billion dollars building a weapons system, you will get a 10 percent profit or $100 million.” Essentially, for contractors, “you do better if you are wasteful.” Such spending has swelled the military industry to become the eighth-largest lobbying sector in the nations, spending over $100 million on lobbying the government when the troops all deserve more and maybe even a house for risking their lives, but you know they do it for love of America and the people and not for money. However, paying them more would make sure they get adequate health care and buying them a home would make sure they would not end up homeless after risking their lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

This multibillion-dollar bungle, according to a Department of Defense comptroller, has the “lethal potential of a loose cannon rolling around our deck.” He confesses, “The sad fact is that we do not really know how big this [confusion] really is. It will probably be five more years before we will be able to sort it all out.” However, you recall, President Trump wanted to audit budgets and decrease, if not stop, government spending on most foreign aid program. Nonetheless, if the Pentagon, with its complex to manage properly, as may well be the case, what about the government as a whole? The old decision-making institutions increasingly mirror the disarray in the outside World. The fragmentation of society into interest groups and the corresponding fragmentation of congressional authority into subgroups makes it difficult for a president to easily impose his will on Congress. Traditionally, an incumbent president could cut a deal with half a dozen elderly and powerful committee chairmen, and expect them to deliver the votes necessary to approve his legislative program. Today congressional committee chairmen and women can no more deliver the votes to the junior members of Congress than the AFL-CIO or the Catholic Church can deliver the votes of their followers. Unfortunate as it may seem to old-timers and hard-pressed presidents, people—including members of Congress—are doing more of their own thinking, and taking orders less submissively. All this makes it impossible, however, for Congress, as presently structured, to devote sustained attention to any issue or to respond quickly to the nation’s needs. Nonetheless, the roots of revolutionary wealth can be traced to 1956—the year when, for the first time, white-collar and service workers outnumbered blue-collar workers in the United States of America. This sea change in the composition of the labour force was arguably the kickoff point for the transition from an industrial economy based on manual labour to one based on knowledge or mind work. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

The knowledge-based wealth system is till called the “new economy”—and for convenience we will at times continue to call it that here—but the first computers, still huge and expensive, actually were migrating from government offices into the business World by the mid-1950s. And Princeton economist Fritz Machlup, as early as 1962, showed that in the 1950s knowledge production in the United States of America was already growing faster than the gross national product. The 1950s are often pictured as deadly dull decade. However, on October 4, 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, triggering a great space race with the United States of America that radically accelerated the development of systems theory, information science, software programming and training in project-management skills. It also promoted an emphasis on science and mathematics in the United States of America’s schools. All this began pumping new, wealth-relevant knowledge into the economy. Culture and politics began to change as well. Just as the industrial revolution centuries ago brought new ideas, art forms, values and political movements, along with new technology, so did the knowledge economy in the United States of America. Thus the 1950s saw the universalization of television and the introduction of Elvis Presley, the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, and rock ‘n’ roll. Hollywood shifted from heroes and happy endings to surely anti-heroes played by actors like James Dean, Sir Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Antonio Espino y Mora, Anna May Wong, and Marilyn Monroe. The literary Beats and their hippie followers glorified “doing your own thing”—a precision attack on the conformity values in industrial mass societies. By 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was pointing out that “today’s technology has…virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

NOW demanded the right of women to participate on fair terms in the “revolution created by automation” and in the economy generally. While the World’s media focused on these dramatic events, almost no attention was paid to the work of top scientists, funded by the Pentagon, on an obscure new technology called ARPANET—a forerunner of what became the World-changing Internet. Given this history, the common belief that the “new” economy was the products of a 1990s stock-market bubble, and that it is going to go away, is ridiculous. A highly exaggerated mystically sponsored Golden Age of the remote past is as supposititious as a materialistically sponsored one of the near future is unrealizable. It is a silly mistake which some mystically minded enthusiasts fall into, that everybody is soon going to follow mysticism! The only basis they have for this assertion would appear to be that they move within a tiny circle where everybody is following mysticism and that they are judging the larger World outside by what is happening inside the circle. The pathway of greedy acquisition upon which humanity now stands must be left for wise co-operation. The old motives will not work today. Destiny is at work and all the multitude of prayers to God are not going to save humanity from what it creates for itself. Nothing could have been more devastating than the bombs falling on Warsaw Cathedral when more than a thousand worshippers were inside praying for God’s protection on Poland. Many in America do not realize how serious, threatening a dangerous war is. There is no battle ground, where no one lives, like the moon, where troops have a video game style show down. People get hurt, populated cities and suburbs are attacked. National defense is very serious. The war period has shown how uncertain are all materialistic standards, how much they are at the mercy of military political and economic shifts. It must therefore articulate in thoughtful minds a quest of higher standards which shall transcend such uncertainties and shifts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Because humanity must find the solution to their troubles within themselves, all the so-called solutions offered from without have proved disappointing. And because the attempt to find scapegoats in other humans, other political parties, other doctrines of belief, and other nations is really an attempt to relieve themselves of this personal responsibility, they have so far failed to find an end to their troubles. Those inspirers of evil-doing and racial animosity who fondly believe that they can protect themselves against the forces of spiritual evolution which are stirring within the consciousness of humankind, are dwelling in an atmosphere of futile make-believe. To outgrow the instinctive cravings of the primitive terrestrial human and to try to supplant them by the noble aspirations of the well-advanced truly human being, is the only way to guarantee peace on Earth. We shall have to renounce this fetish of achieving absolute agreement and fully unity among those who differ from each other in fundamentals. Human nature and human mentality being in the present unregenerate and diverse conditions as they are, it is futile to purpose an unrealizable ideal. The attempts to prevent war and unify the nations can meet with no success while we make no attempt to discipline the violent impulses and greedy calculations which cause war. Only when human evolution has gone father, and the brute’s instincts have been sufficiently disciplined in us, shall we drop war. However, the clash of egoisms will still remain. Our frictions and battles will continue; their outer form will, however, change for the better and be lifted to a place more truly human and beyond the merely terrestrial. If present-day World misery demonstrates anything at all, it demonstrated the failure of the materialistic outlook, the futility of expecting peace and prosperity from purely material sources, the danger of ignoring the stubborn fact that personal character counts most in the making of a people’s happiness. The old way of sheer materialism has been tried and found to end in a dangerous morass. The new way of a nobler life and deeper faith does not look so tempting. Yet other way there is not except to sink in a still deeper morass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Types of government that are anti-capitalistic could be defeated and avoided if the appeal they make to the discontented could be eliminated. This in turn requires the cause of discontentment be itself eliminated. That cause is the too unequal distribution of profits, income, and capital. The remedy for profits is to make labour an equal partner with capital in the sharing profits by a system of co-partnership. The remedy to fix income is to correct maximum and minimum incomes. The remedy for capital is inheritance reform. Whatever benefit has come from politics physically has to be paid for spiritually, for it has poisoned human relationships. In the end society is only a society of separate persons; in the end we come back to the individual human problem. There is much demand today for various rights in their totality. Can the right to freedom be fully given to maniacs and those who pose a danger to living beings? Can the right to free expression in speech and writing be given at a level beyond the capacities of those who make it? If life is to be orderly, if crime is to be contained, then there must be limits as well as rights? There is no other way left for us today than the way of looking right through the facts of the contemporary situation, to their underlying significance, their foundational cause, if we are to understand it aright. We must have the courage to acknowledge them for what they are. We must have the strength to be pessimistic if pessimism is required by truth. We must have the humility to confess or errors. When we understand the forces which work being the curtain of history, we stop groping. The punishment of crime should be of such a nature as to be materially useful to society and morally useful to the criminal. When humans misuse their liberty to commit crime, we withdraw it and put them in prison However, legal punishment has two grave defects: it makes no provision for more re-education alongside of the physical punishment, and it makes no difference between the repentant sinner and the nonrepentant one. The criminal is simply a human who has misinterpreted life, failed in self-discipline, accepted the suggestions of an evil environment, or been hurt by a hard social system. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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The Houses for the Gods–Even the Ancient Bible Lands Swarmed with Demons!

The history of various religions from the earliest times shows belief in Satan and demons to be universal. According to the Christian Bible, degeneration from monotheism resulted in the blinding of humans by Satan and the most degrading forms of idolatry (Romans 1.21-32; 2 Corinthians 4.4). By the time of Abraham (c. 2000 B.C.), humans had sunk into a crass polytheism that swarmed with evil spirits. Spells, incantations, magical texts, exorcisms, and various forms of demonological phenomena abound in archaeological discoveries from Sumeria and Babylon. Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Greek, and Roman antiquity are rich in demonic phenomena. The deities worshipped were invisible demons represented by material idols and images. The great ethnic faiths of India, China, and Japan major in demonism, as well as the animistic religions of Africa, South America, and some islands. Even the ancient Bible lands swarmed with demons. As George W. Gilmore declares: “The entire religious provenience out of which Hebrew religion sprang is full of demonism.” Early Christianity rescued its converts from the chackles of Satan and Demons (Ephesians 2.2; Colossians 1.13). To an amazing degree, the history of religion is an account of demon-controlled religion, particularly in its clash with the Hebrew faith and later with Christianity. The crimes, atrocities, and immoralities of ancient and modern society point to the existence of vile spirits that take possession of human’s minds and bodies and drive them to wickedness and depravity (Romans 1.24-32; Ephesians 2.2-4; Revelation 9.20, 21). Because of human nature itself, “The belief in evil spirits is universal,” as Davies observes. Because humans sense the power of Satan and demons in their lives, their belief in evil supernaturalism has been as persistent and widespread as belief in God, in good angels, or in the soul’s immortality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Some mortals believe in Satan and demons because they know the power of Satan and demons in their lives, just as those who believe in Christ know God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Such belief is not only the result of experience but also of instinct. God as Creator of the human mind with its instinctive propensities, has given us a primitive revelation of both good and evil supernaturalism. The basic truths of this revelation have been perpetuated by a God-given instinct attested in human experience and verifiable by observation of psychic phenomena in the realm of the occult. The actions of the drunkard, the criminal, the libertine, the physically and disturbed, the dope addict, the gambler, and the suicidal person (John 8.44; Luke 22.3) are often caused by influence beyond mental of physical injury or disease. The strongest evidence outside the Bible that wicked and unclean spiritual agencies can enslave their victims and drive them to self-destruction is provided by people who deliberately plunge into evil, fully aware of the disastrous consequences. People who dabble in the occult and in magical arts may be recklessly flirting with demonism. Ancient pagan practices find their counterpart in today’s spiritistic activities and psychical research. Moses warned Israel of the dangers of occultism as the nation prepared to enter Canaan, where demon-energized practices flourished. “When you reach the land which the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the obnoxious ways of those nations. There must not be found among you anyone who makes one’s son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone practicing divination or soothsaying, observing omens, applying sorcery a charmer, a medium, a wizard, or necromancer. Human sacrifice to appease an angry deity (demon) was particularly loathsome practice of Israel’s neighbours, the Ammonites. They presented their children as a fire offering to the god Molech, a cruel form of worship that display all the marks of Satan (John 8.44; Kings 11.7; 2 King 21.6; 23.10). This murderous practice was rigidly banned from Israel (Leviticus 18.21; 20.1-5). #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Divination or soothsaying is the art of obtaining unlawful knowledge of the future. The methods violate God’s holiness. In inspirational divination, the medium is under the direct influence or control of evil spirits or demons. The same is true of the modern spirit séance. The spiritstic agent claims to obtain occult information from the deceased and is called a “medium” (id est, in Hebrew, “one making inquiry of a divining demon”) or “necromancer” (in Hebrew, “one seeking among the dead”). Angury, in contrast to divination, is based on the agent’s or augur’s interpretation of certain signs or omens in the sky, in the livers of animals, etcetera. This type of primitive occultism has its modern analogies in fortune-telling astrology, palmistry, cartomancy, the diving rod, or pendulum, a mirror or crystal ball 9mirror-matnic), and in forms of clairvoyance (called psychometry) in which objects are examined to give information about the owner. Sorcery is a more general term to designate the practice of magic through occult formulas, incantations, and mystic mutterings. It goes beyond augury and includes the whole field of divinatory occultism. A charmer is a sorcerer who performs supernatural feats. A wizard (in Hebrew, “one who knows”) is a male medium who receives superhuman knowledge through one’s contact with demons. The female medium who possesses such knowledge is called a witch in the Authorized Version, better translated sorceress by the Revisers of 1884. To the question, “Do demons actually exist?” the answer is an empathic “yes.” Evidence from Scripture, nature, history of comparative religions, and human experience all testify to the existence of evil supernaturalism. In this realm, the invisible, hierarchical, spiritual personalities operate who are called, “principalities…powers…World rulers of this darkness…spirits of wickedness in the Heavenly realms” Ephesians 6.12, Greek). These spiritual agencies are servants of Satan, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,” reports (Ephesians 2.2). #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

According to Scripture, Satan and demons not only exist, but they work among humanity, particularly in those who, like Satan, disdain God and openly rebel against his laws. Demonism certainly impinges on humans experience and human conduct (Ephesians 2.2). Pastoral counseling, psychiatric and psychological therapy, and even medical treatment should take these demonic factors into consideration. Who are the demons? The precise identity of demons cannot be determined, because the Bible is silent on the issues. Because Scripture does not reveal exactly who the demons are or how they came into being, numerous theories have been advanced to account for their origin. A popular outgrowth of astrology is the horoscope, a chart of the zodiacal signs and the position of the planets by which astrologers attempt to predict future events. The vast majority of the newspapers in the United States of America carry them daily, and the preparation of these horoscopes occupies about 10,000 full-time and 175,000 part-time workers in our country alone. These columns make predictions and give advice on the basis of the sign of the zodiac under which a person was born, and how it relates to the position of the planet on the date the horoscope appears in the newspaper. Astrologers have given names to the twelve constellations which were originally termed “the houses for the gods.” They belied these constellations have definite characteristics which distinguished them from one another, and which largely predetermine the personality of each individual. For example, if one came into the World between December 22 and January 19, one was born under the sign named Capricorn, which is the Goat. One’s personality would therefore bear some of the characteristics the goat is supped to symbolize. Birth between January 20 and February 18 places one under the sign of Aquarius, which is the Water Bearer; between February 19 and March 20, Pisces, which is the Fish. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Between March 21 and April 19, Aries, which is the Ram; Between April 20 and May 20, Taurus, which is the Bull; between May 21 and June 21, Gemini, which is The Twins; between June 22 and July 22, Cancer, which is the Crab; Between July 23 and August 22, Leo, which is the Lion; between August 23 and September 22, Virgo, which is the Virgin; between September 23 and October 23, Libra, which is the Scales; between October 24 and November 21, Scorpio, which is the Scorpion; and between November 22 and December 21, Sagittarius, which is the Archer. One can see that this is a highly subjective field, and that it gives free rein to the imagination. How tragic that thousands of people faithfully read the horoscopes printed in newspapers and magazines, sincerely believing the prediction they make and the advice they give are valid. The blindness of people who reject God is almost beyond comprehension. In addition, individuals willing to pay the fee may also purchase a personal horoscope. In fact, computers are able to turn out a 10,000-word personal horoscope reading in two minutes. The precise moment of a person’s birth is recorded, and then the exact position of the Heavenly bodies at that time is ascertained. This becomes the starting point for the computer to begin its program. The practitioners who sell horoscopes provide a great deal of incentive for the purchase of their services by saying that some of the information given is not an absolute, unchangeable decree. Some of the prognostications are in the form of conditional declarations which will depend to a great extent upon their circumstances. For example, a person is encouraged to read horoscopes to be forewarned about personality difficulties and impending disasters so one can take steps to avoid the problems and dangers. This makes the purchase of personal horoscopes extremely inviting. Though astrology is popular today, it must be condemned as unscriptural, unreliable, devious, and dangerous. Christians should not only avoid it, but also be informed so they can warn others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

As previously noted, the Bible strong forbids all forms of occultism, including astrology. “There shall not be found among you anyone who maketh one’s son or daughter pass through the fire, or who useth divination, or an observer of times. or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a charmer, or a consultor of mediums, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD; and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee,” reports Deuteronomy 18.10-12. Moses gave as one of the reasons the danger that it would lead the people into heathenism. Astrology originated with pagans who considered the stars to be gods, and anyone who began to dabble in this pseudoscientific practice would inevitably be drawn into the superstition and false beliefs inhere to the system. Therefore God pronounced death by stoning for any Israelite who participated in star worship. “If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman who hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any the hosts of Heaven, which I have not commanded, and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it and inquired diligently, and behold, it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, who hath committed that wicked thing unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die,” reports Deuteronomy 17.2-5. Later in Israel’s history, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed judgment upon the nation, and in biting sarcasm dared the people to seek deliverance through the sorcerers and the Babylonian astrologers in who they had placed their confidence. His words stand as a sharp denunciation of astrology, and indicate that God considered it a false religion. “Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, in which thou hast laboured from thy youth, if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so thou mayest prevail. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee,” reports Isaiah 47.12-13. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The prophet Jeremiah also warned the people of God that they were not to believe that omens for evil could be read in the Heavens. He declared, “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of Heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them,” reports Jeremiah 10.2. The day-to-day experience shows the suggestive powers and effects that horoscopes have. 63 percent of German people have occupied themselves with astrology at one time or another. The astrology section in the newspaper is so population Worldwide that the chief editor of large daily papers will not cancel them. Even though some of them are convinced that the horoscope is nonsense, it is a question of finance. The paper that includes no weekly horoscope in its Sunday edition must count on many cancellations. No newspaper can afford this. There was a humorous experience in this effort to keep scribers happy. One Friday the astrologer’s horoscope did not arrive on time. In the chief editor’s dilemma, he went to a storage room and picked out an old horoscope. Since he did not know the order of the Zodiac, it was an incorrect one. In spite of this, none of the readers noticed the mistake. Since all went well, he saved himself the astrologer’s fee, and on 22 occasions he used incorrect horoscopes from previous years. None of the hundreds of thousands of readers noticed this, till finally someone wrote in saying that it was impossible for the sign of Scorpion to rule in July. Now his trick was uncovered. He had to turn again to the “experts” for help. Having told his story, the editor then added with a smile, “During the time of the incorrect horoscopes everything went well. It does not depend on the horoscope, but on what the people believe.” What reasons do we have as Christians for not recognizing astrology as being providential to our lives and destinies? First of all, we should be repelled by its heathen background. With ancient people astrology has a religious accent. The stars were equivalent to gods. The heathen felt themselves to be led, influenced and threatened by the planet gods, and though, in the course of time, the religious character of astrology receded, the old rules were retained. Here we have another reason for rejecting it. The retention of these old rules involves an insoluble contradiction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Every 26,000 years the axis of the Earth prescribes the lateral area of a cone (precession). Today’s astrologer does not see the planets in the same position as one’s colleague for 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Besides, several other planets have been discovered; Uranus in 1787, Neptune in 1839, and Pluto in 1932 (which some are still questioning if it is a planet of not). Since these changes failed to sake the astrological system in any way, present astronomers reject astrology as one of the greatest frauds of all time. However, many people still appeal to astrology for answers, they believe it is real, they want to know their future, they are looking for salvation. And in many cases, the answers they find are true and relevant. Perhaps rerunning the astrology gave many the answers they were seeking and needed, until someone caught one error. Since the occult is real, it has to be right sometimes and it gives people the answers they are looking for. Normally people wake up happy and soft, but if you are exposed to an evil movie before class, it kind of toughens you up a little bit. I am not perfect, like many others, and just trying to get through this World with all the crazy people in it. When you have no real guidance, no one you can trust, no one coming from a totally good place, you have to find something you can depend on to connect you to the World. People who dabble in the occult do not all reject God. Some still believe God, but they also need answers right here and right now, and they do what they do to get them and that helps them remain stable. So, I am not passing judgement, just sharing information to show you this stuff is real. Spiritualism makes headlines and feature stories in the guise of horoscopes, ominous predictions, and bizarre cults, but its basic activity is the séance where many people can be influenced. And the key that opens the séance is the trance. The New Century Dictionary defines a trance as “a temporary state in which a medium, with suspension of personal consciousness, is controlled by an intelligence from without and used as a means of communication, as from the dead to the living.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

It defines a medium as “a person serving, or conceived as serving, as an instrument for the manifestation of another personality, or of some alleged supernatural agency (as a spiritualistic medium.” In the séance, the “alleged supernatural agency” is the control spirit who takes possession of the medium. This spirit is not the same as the familiar spirit. In spiritualist teaching, the familiar spirit is a spirit from God who is with us from birth and on into eternity. We may have many familiar spirits during a lifetime as we progress in moral goodness. They are assigned to individuals and come to know them better than they know themselves. Spiritualists believe in an evolutionary process of spiritual development. Individuals departing from this life are said to migrate to the spirit World and develop there with the help of other spirits. Theoretically, a person could advance in the spirit World to the level of God Himself. However, spiritualists believe that God also is evolving to higher and higher planes. Therefore, the best the spirit of the departed can do is reach a plane where God once was. What you do in life, the spiritualists say, determines the plane of spiritual development you enter after death. I learned in a séance that a person who lives a good life would immediately go after one’s death to the third or fourth plane. “I was told by my control spirit, who was in the eighth plane, that at death I would go directly to the sixth plane. That I did not drink alcoholic beverages or smoke tobacco or drugs and am celibate placed me on a higher plane that those who did. The fact that I was seeking to develop myself spiritually also advanced me. My control spirits, lectured me often on what was wrong in my thoughts, morals, and manners. They even stressed physical health and cleanliness, reminding me that my body was the temple of the spirit (not the Holy Spirit of God). People who lived very sinful lives would be Earthbound spirits when they die, we were told. Other spirits would come to their assistance, show them the error of their ways and try to get them to live better lives in the spirit World so they could begin evolving to the second and third planes. This is known as the school for Earthbound spirits,” said Mrs. Winchester in her journal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Spiritualists believe that the teachers in this school are the spirits of departed educators and scholars in educational, religious, and scientific fields. The foal of the spiritualist is to evolve as high as possible by becoming less self-centered. As one seeks to develop oneself and help one’s fellow humans, one is graduated from one spirit plane to the next. Spiritualists in the United States of America generally believe in eighteen planes of development. A spiritualist from England said on a Today telecast that they have discovered as many as thirty-three planes. Prophecy plays a large part in a spiritualist séance. This one séance Mrs. Winchester participated in, World War II was prophesied and the nations that would be engulfed in this gigantic conflict were named. She also wrote in her journal that the control spirit said, “At the end of World War II there would be no end of war upon the face of the Earth until the Kingdom of peace is come.” She later passed away in her sleep. Spiritualists believe that Jesus is the master medium of all mediums. God to them is a universal force, not a person. Spiritualists maintain that Heaven is nothing more than the series of planes where the spirit evolves. They teach there is no such place as hell—unless that would describe the existence of an Earthbound spirit. Yet, significantly—and ominously for all people who choose to live in sin rather than in God’s will—spiritualists recognize the existence of the devil, the source of all evil! Some of the spiritualists’ teachings are similar to the beliefs of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Theosophy, and other religions. And spiritualism’s rosy prospect of becoming gods over individual realms is matched by the similar teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). It is awesome to realize the penetration and power of these evil spirits wherever Jesus is denied as the complete and only Saviour from personal son. How does one know that they are evil, not from God? There is only one way, the way by which God set me free. Many people wonder about the origin of the belief in that mysterious island O’Brasil, lying far out in the western ocean. About the year 1665, a Quaker pretended that he had a revelation from Heaven that he was the man ordained to discover it, and accordingly fitted out a ship for the purpose. In 1674, Captain John Nisbet, formerly of Co. Fermanagh, actually landed there! At this period, it was located off Ulster. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Between the clergy and the witches a continuous state of warfare existed; the former, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, ever assumed the offensive, and were most diligent in their attempts to eradicate such a damnable heresy from the World—indeed with regret it must be confessed that their activity in this respect was frequently the means of stirring up the quiescent Secular Arm, thereby setting on foot bloody persecutions, in the course of which many innocent creatures were tortured and put to a cruel death. Consequently, human nature being what it is, it is not a matter of surprise to learn that witches occasionally appear as the aggressors, and cause the clergy as much uneasiness of mind and body as they possibly could. In or about the year 1670 and Irish clergyman, the Rev. James Shaw, Presbyterian minister of Carnmoney, “was much troubled with witches, one of them appearing in his chamber and showing her face behind his cloke hanging on the clock-pin, and then stepping to the door, disappeared. He was troubled with cats coming into his chamber and bed; he sickens ad dyes; his wyfe being dead before him, and, as was supposed, witched.” Some equally unpleasant experience befell his servant. “Before his death his man going out to the stable one night, sees as if it had been a great heap of hay rolling towards him, and then appeared in the shape and likeness of a bair [bear]. He charges it to appear it to appear in human shape, which it did. Then he asked, for what cause it troubled him? It bid him come to such a place and it should tell him, which he ingaged to do yet ere he did it, acquainted his master with it; his master forbids him to keep sic a tryst; he obeyed his master, and went not. That night he should have kept, there is a stone cast at him from the roof of the house, and only touches him, but does not hurt him; whereupon he conceives that had been done to him by the devil, because he kept not tryst; wherefore he resolutely goes forth that night to the place appointed, being a rash bold fellow, and the divill appears in human shape, with his heid running down with blood. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

He asks him again, why he troubles him? The devil replyes, that he was the spirit of a murdered man who lay under his bed, and buried in the ground, and who was murdered by such a man living in sic a place, but finds nothing of bones or anything lyke a grace, and causes send to such a place to search for such a man, but no such a one could be found, and shortly after this man dyes.” To which story Mr. Robert Law sagely adds the warning: “It’s not good to come in communing terms with Satan, there is a snare in the end of it, but resyst him by prayer and faith and to turn a deaf eat to his temptations.” Whatever explanation we may choose to give of the matter, there is no doubt but at the time the influence of witchcraft was firmly believed in, and the deaths of Mr. Shaw and his wife attributed to supernatural and diabolical sources. The Rev. Patrick Adair, a distinguished contemporary and co-religionist of Mr. Shaw, alludes to the incident as follows in his True Narrative: “There had been great ground of jealousy that she [Mrs. Shaw] in her child-bed had been wronged by sorcery of some witches in the parish. After her death, a considerable time, some spirit or spirits troubled the house by casting stones down at the chimney, appearing to the servants, and especially having got one of them, a young man, to keep appointed times and places, wherein it appeared in divers shapes, and spake audibly to him. The people of the perish watched the house while Mr. Shaw at this time lay sick in his bed, and indeed he did not wholly recover, but within a while died, it was thought not without the art of sorcery.” Classon Porter in his pamphlet gives an interesting account of the affair, especially of the trend of events between the deaths of the husband and wife respectively; according to this source the servant-boy was an accomplice of the Evil One, not a foolish victim. Mrs. Shaw was dead, and Mr. Shaw lay ill, and so was unable to go to the next monthly meeting of his brethren in the ministry to consult them about these strange occurrences. However, he sent this servant, who was supposed to be implicated in these transactions, with a request that his brethren would examine him about the matter, and deal with him as they thought best. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

The boy was accordingly questioned on the subject, and having confessed that he had conversed and conferred with the evil spirit, and even assisted it in its diabolical operations, he was commanded for the future to have no dealings of any kind with that spirit. The boy promised obedience, and was dismissed. However, the affair made a great commotion in the parish, so great that the brethren not only ordered the Communion (which was then approaching) to be delyed in Carnmoney “until the confusion shall fall a little,” but appointed to of their number to hold a special fast in the congregation of Carnmony, “in consideration of the troubled which had come upon the minister’s house by a spirit that appeared to some of the family, and the distemper of the minister’s own body, with other confusions that had followed this movement in the parish.” The ministers appointed this duty were, Kennedy of Templepatrick, and Patton of Ballyclare, who reported to the next meeting that they had kept the fast at Carnmoney, but with what resulted is not stated. Mr. Shaw died about two months later.” Now, on to, “A House Built for Spirits?” Mrs. Winchester has become immortal because of the tales about her and her beautiful castle. However, we may never know for sure if Mrs. Winchester built her house to accommodate the spirits, but over the years the story has come down that she believed her life was unavoidably affected by departed souls. Presumably she wanted to be friendly with the “good” spirits, it seemed, was to building them a nice place to visit. According to this theory, Mrs. Winchester accommodated the friendly spirits by giving them special attention. The Winchester mansion is a well-built Queen Anne Victorian one of the loveliest ever dreamed of out of fairyland. However, the estate was surrounded by a six-foot hedge, backed by a barbed wired wrought-iron gate, and patrolled by a pack of ferocious dogs, plus of course, her staff of armed bodyguards. People who passed by said it was a perfect pandemonium of barks and howls from the dogs, who seemed to be only held by force from flying at their throats. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Back in the late 1880s, I was debating, however, whether I would not brave his gun, and make a rush for the grand mansion at all costs, nature or vindictiveness got the better of his perversity; a dark figure staggered through the thick fog. Five minutes later we discovered it was nothing but the carcass of a dead dog, whose charred and blackened condition would explain the wailing sounds. Then I was startled by a cry and a sharp ringing of the bell. The bell in the belfry high in the gables tolled regularly at midnight to summon incoming flights of spirits. In her Blue Séance Room is where she donned ceremonial robes and communed nightly with spirits. The Winchester Mansion was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghost. Suddenly the windows opened, and I knew this was my chance to sneak in. I darted around the veranda to the back of the house. The drawing-room was empty, trembling with terror, I flung the study window open. Then I heard Mrs. Winchester shouting that there was someone hidden in the veranda or close by. Owning to the state of agitation she was in, it was not until the man-servant had searched the veranda, garden, and outbuildings, and found nothing, that I was able to understand what had frightened her. It appeared then that she had suddenly been awakened from sleep by the pressure of a heavy hand on her shoulder, and a hot breath—so close, it seemed as if someone were about to whisper in her ear—upon her cheek. She started up, crying out, “Who’s that? What is it?” but was only answered by a hasty withdrawal of the pressure, and the pit-pat of heavy but shoeless feet retreating through the dusk to the further end of the veranda. In a sudden access of ungovernable terror, she screamed out, sprang to her feet, ringing the bell to warn the spirits to return to their sepulchers. The servants searched high and low, and not a trace of any intruder could they find; nay, not me, not even a stray cat or dog. Although they garden was large, the gate leading into the road was fastened inside, and the wall was too high for easy climbing. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Once she awoke with a scream in the middle of the night, declaring, “Something was wrong with the baby. Nurse had gone away and left it’ she was sure of it!” To pacify her, the nurse threw on her dressing-gown and ran up to the nursey to see; and, true enough, though the baby girl was gone.” The Nurse was absent, having gone up to the cook’s room to get something for her back ache. The next morning, they found the dog and managed to scoop out a grave for it, and buried him. Mrs. Winchester was alternately tearing her hair and weeping over the murder of the baby while she packed her box for departure. She stopped for a moment and went to the kitchen for lunch. That is when Mrs. Winchester cried out, “Oh, Heaven! Look! what’s that—that great dog, all black and burnt looking, come out of my house? Oh, my baby! My baby!” The maid saw no dog, and stopped for an instant to look round for it, letting her mistress run on. Then she heard one wild shriek from within—such a shriek as she had never heard in all her life before—and followed. She found the nurse lying senseless on the floor, and in the cradle the child—stone dead! Its throat had been torn open by some strange savage animal, and on the bedclothes and the fresh white matting covering the floor were the blood-stained imprints of dog’s paws! Mrs. Winchester’s shrieks pierced the summer twilight—those shrieks which, from the moment of her being roused the merciful insensibility which held her for the first hours of her loss, she had never ceased to utter. She never regained consciousness. The doctors feared she never would. And she never did! Never once in all this time have I been tempted to share the horrible delusion which, beginning in a weak state of healthy, and confirmed by the awful coincidence of her baby’s death, upset the beautiful darlings brain. At nights she was alone, snuffing and scratching at the door outside, as though something were there. Once, the butler strode to it and threw it open, but there was nothing—nothing but a dark, fleeting shadow seen for one moment, and the sound of soft, unshod feet going pit, pat, pit, pat, upon the stairs as they retreated downwards. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

The butler rushed violently upstairs to the death chamber above. He shouted, “I have seen it. It was there! On her.” His face was livid with horror, and the exquisite cased, engraved, and gold-plated Model 1866 musket in his hand he said, “Better this than a madhouse! There is no escape from the Winchester Mansion,” and fired. He was dead ere even the servant could catch him. The white covering on the bed had been had been dragged off and torn, and on it were big, black dog’s paws. Demon possession is not merely a superstitious explanation of certain diseases. Such rationalizing does not define the phenomenon of evil spirits but merely explains them away. To say that demon possession in the time of Christ or in nineteenth-century China was nothing more than the effect of “certain diseases superstitiously regarded as due to demonical influence clashed with all the evidence of Scripture, history, and human experiences. Demons are the not spirits of deceased humans. Demons are the spirits of the wicked that enter into human’s that are alive. However, the Bible says that demons are not the disembodied spirits of a pre-Adamite race of humanity on the Earth. The whole idea of a pre-Adamite “human” race of “humans in the flesh” is pure conjecture. The only created beings revealed to have existed before the creation of humans are angels. Moreover, the rigid distinction between “angel” and “spirit,” which this theory demands, is questionable since Scriptures refers to angels as spirits (Psalm 104.4; Hebrew 1.14) and sometimes uses the term for “angel” for the spirit of humans (Matthew 18.10; Acts 12.15). The classical Greek meaning of the term “demons,” denoting “the good spirits of departed humans of the golden age” as in Hesiod, is at complete variance with the uniform New Testament usage of the word. The Word “demon,” like other distinctive biblical words in Greek, was divinely moulded through the pre-Christian centuries for its unique New Testament usage. To use its originally pagan concepts as the basis of a theory is totally unwarranted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Desire Deceives—We Only Know the Other as Reshaped by Our Desire!

It is never too late to be what you might have been. To be a leader means willingness to risk—and a willingness to love. To this point our picture is essentially that of the gradual formation of amino acids and other organic structural units by the action of electric discharge, heat, ultraviolet radiation, and high-energy radioactive particles on the gaseous ingredients of the atmosphere. These new substances, being heavier than the atmospheric gases, gradually rained down into the seas beneath. With the passage of time, the accumulation of this organic material steadily increased until, after a billion years or so, the seas that covered most of the surface of the Earth became what someone has vividly described as a “hot dilute soup.” The next step in the natural formation of protein material had to be the linking together of amino acid molecules into chains. We have seen that the backbone of each amino acid molecule has a structure that permits such linking, but we have also learned that, in the laboratory at least, it takes more than just stirring together a mixture of amino acids to cause chains to form. Specifically, energy has to be supplied to force the successive links of the chain together before they will lock in a stable configuration. In the artificial synthesis of protein, the necessary energy was supplied chemically, by the temporary attachment of energy-rich substances to the ends of the amino acid backbones. It turns out that there are other ways of doing the trick. For example, if a suitable mixture of amino acids is made hot enough, some of its molecules will have enough energy of motion to cause them to hook together. To be sure, this simple process does not easily occur in water, and probably would have been effective only on dried-out beach sediments. However, Calvin has recently described multiple-step chemical reactions involving a number of the molecular components of the “hot dilute soup,” that take place readily in water and include among their products linked chains of amino acid—that is protein molecules. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Similar reaction sequences have also been shown capable of assembling the available ingredients to form other relatively complex organic molecules, including nucleic acids. It is attractive to think of ponds or lakes, rather than the open pools surely were formed from time of time by local seismic raising or lowering of the land. Evaporation of most of the entrapped water would greatly increase the concentration of the amino acids and other organic constituents in the pool, thereby greatly accelerating their interaction form more complex substances. Further concentration probably resulted from the know affinity or organic molecules for certain clays and sands, which must have dotted the bottoms and shores of the primeval pools and constituted local gathering points for the active chemicals. If in addition a volcanically produced hot spot happened to be nearby, the resulting combination of high temperature and high concentration would constitute an efficient “factory” for the fabrication of proteinlike material as well as other relatively complex organic substances. In a qualitative description such as this there is a danger of making everything seem too easy. The processes we have postulated to explain the origin of organic matter seemed, until just the last few years, most improbable. In required such developments as Miller’s exciting synthesis of amino acids to raise what had previously been unsubstantial speculation to the states of a respectable scientific hypothesis. Although it has only been hinted at in this treatment, the problem of quantitative sufficiency has also been a difficult one for the theory cope with. Calculations of the probable concentrations of amino acids and other organic components attained in the vast quantity of close approach of two or more of the component molecules with just the right thermal energy to cause linking, have always led to rates of generation of organic compounds that would be completely negligible in terms of ordinary time scales. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

To be sure, factors of thousands in the speed of the reaction can be evoked by such assumptions as those concerning inland pools and local volcanic heating. Nevertheless, in the final analysis the only thing that makes the hypothesis. Although it has only been hinted at in this treatment, the problem of quantitative sufficiency has also been a difficult one for the theory to cope with. Calculations of the probably concentrations of amino acids and other organic components attained in the vast quantity of ocean water covering the Earth, and of the resulting probability of close approach of two or more of the component molecules with just the right thermal energy to cause linking, have always led to rates of generation of organic compounds that would be completely negligible in terms of ordinary time scales. To be sure, factors of thousands in the speed of the reaction can be evoked by such assumptions as those concerning inland pools and local volcanic heating. Nevertheless, in the final analysis the only thing that makes the hypothesis quantitatively tenable is the tremendous period of time that was available for increasing the thickness of the hot dilute soup and sustaining the chemical interactions of the ingredients. In this connection there at first appeared to be a troublesome problem. Even though organic constituents continually rained out of the primeval sky for a billion years or more, did their concentration in the surface waters continue to increase during all this time? If put into the ocean today, we know that such organic materials would disappear rapidly. Fortunately, we also know the reasons for their limited lifetimes, and these reasons were not valid in the preanimate era. Specifically, any constituent of organic matter disappears rapidly today for one of two reasons: it is either eaten by bacteria or it is destroyed by oxidation. Dr. Charles Darwin, whose preoccupation with evolutionary phenomena logically compelled him to speculate on the origin of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Dr. Darwin said: “It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etcetera, present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.” Defenseless though the components of organic material are against their animate enemies and the destructive effects of the free oxygen produced by living plants, in the preanimate period there appears no reason to question their ability to survive indefinitely, as seems required by the hypotheses we are considering. We may observe incidentally how fortunate it is that evolutionary processes ultimately resulted in different means of production of the materials essential to living organism. Otherwise, it seems certain that the development of higher life forms would ultimately have been markedly limited by the decreasing availability of the basic ingredients of life arising out of the destructive properties of the new organism themselves. However, we are getting ahead of our story. The important point is that, with the help of some laboratory results and various hopefully reasonable assumptions, we have developed a fairly strong case of the existence in the seas, lakes, and tidal pools of the preanimate Earth of significant concentrations of proteinlike chains of amino acids and of other typically organic materials such as carbohydrates, fats, oils, and nucleic acids. This is not yet “life” as we understand it, but at least in constitutes a group of promising ingredients for use in the further development of our theories. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

If one wants their offspring to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders. In our economy of abundance it is still subject to discussion whether or not there is as much poverty as there was in the Thirties when “one-third of a nation was ill houses, ill clothed, ill fed.” The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019. (However, it is hard to determine a criterion of poverty. Exempli Gratia, an individual in the rich country of Westchester, New York, might have an income of $41,000, which is consider very low for an individual, yet have to pay so much rent for substandard housing that it cannot make both ends meet. In New York City novice individuals are fleeced four times as much for a quarter of the space that experienced citizens manage to find in the same neighbourhood.) Nevertheless, all students would agree on two propositions: The composition of the poor has changed immensely; it now consists of all races and cultures, including migrant farm labour. And the economic relations of the poor to the system has importantly changed: simply, the earlier African America, Irish, Jewish, Italians, Hispanics, poured into an expanding economy that needed people; the new com into an expanding economy that does not need people. There is another difference: The relation of the other classes to the poor has changed. For instance, many readers are no doubt surprised that there are so many poor and, reading about it, feel that it is a mere lag, a matter of mopping up in our general productive advance. Everything looks pretty streamlined. In income pyramid has changed. In shape. It used to be that the most were the poor at the bottom and then, evenly, fewer and few at each level up to a few at the top. However, the meaning of the economy of abundance is that there are now very many, perhaps even a bulge, at the lower-middle-income level. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

These are the people with semiprofessional and service jobs, the occupational category that has grown the most, and who get status salaries; the skilled and semiskilled in semimonoploy factory jobs, strongly unionized; the families in which, in our artificially maintained nearly full employment, the man has two jobs or the woman also has a job; and families in newly industrialized areas in the South and Middle West. However, conversely, the poorly paying unskilled jobs have diminished. It is here that simple automation (exempli gratia self-checkout lanes in the supermarket, ATM machines, Internet Transactions, and sweeping the factory floor) is allowed full development. Many categories are not unionized. Sometimes even the minimum wage does not apply. Migratory farm labour is not covered by social insurance. By the connivance of union and management, marginalized populations are often rejected for apprenticeship. These less affluent groups, behindhand to begin with, get less schooling. That is, the economy of abundance, the bulge in the pyramid, means also that those at the bottom tend to fall out of “society” altogether. Consider it. There is a higher standard of living, more to conform to in order to be “decent”; it is more expensive to be decently poor. Yet there is a tighter organization above that is harder to belong to, so that the standard is increasingly unattainable for the underprivileged. So far as economic and vocational causes, poverty and job uselessness, are factors—and they are mighty important factors when they add up to being “out” of society—this is a sufficient explanation for juvenile delinquency. One need go no further. For in such hopeless condition, any grounds, of family hostility, unusual childhood frustration, or a gang on the street, will tip the balance. The question is whether or not this structure is organic in our present system. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

(Let me say at this point, however, that many of the humble jobs of the poor are precisely not useless, morally. Farm labour, janitoring, messenger, serving and dish washing—these jobs resist remarkably well the imputation of uselessness made against the productive society as a whole. In the potency-ideology of teenage delinquents, of course, such jobs are contemptible and emasculating. However, we shall see that they are important for the poverty-mystique of the more thoughtful of the Generation Alpha.) “Dear Mom, Dad, and everyone else, I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but I loved you all and I always will, for eternity. Please, please, do not blame it on yourselves. It was all my fault and not yours or anyone else’s. If I didn’t do this now, I would have done it later anyway. We all die some day, I just died sooner. Love, John.” The suicide of John, age 17, was not an unusual occurrence. Suicidal actions become much more common after the age of 14 than at any earlier age. According to official records, over 2,000 teenagers, or 11 of every 100,00, commit suicide in the United Stares of American each year, although some clinicians believe that actual rate to be up to three times higher than this. In addition, as many as 500,000 teenagers may make attempts. Because fatal illnesses are uncommon among the young, suicide has become the third leading cause of death in this age group, after accidents and homicides. Furthermore, as many as half of all teenagers have thought about killing themselves. Although young European Americas are more prone to suicide than young African Americans, the rates of the two groups are becoming closer. The European American rate was 157 percent greater than the African American rates in 1980; today it is only 42 percent greater. This trend may reflect increasingly similar pressures on young African Americans and European Americans may also be linked to economic inflation and the demand for skilled labour, the many anxieties of inner-city life and the rate felt by many young African Americas over racial inequities in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

About half of teenage suicides, like those of people in other age groups, have been tied to clinical depression, low self-esteem, and feelings of hopelessness, but many teenagers who try to kill themselves also appear to struggle with anger and impulsiveness. Many suicidal teens appear to have serious alcohol or drug problems. In addition, a number may have deficiencies in their ability to sort out and solve problems. Moreover, teenagers who consider or attempt suicide are often under great stress. They may experience long-term pressures such as poor (or missing) relations with their parents, family conflict, inadequate peer relationships, and social isolation. Alternatively, their actions also may be triggered by more immediate stress, such as a parent’s unemployment or medical illness, financial setbacks for the family, or problems with a boyfriend or girlfriend. The angst, confusion, conflict, and impulsivity that typically characterize adolescence provide fertile ground for the growth of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Stress at school seems to be a particularly common problem for teenagers who attempt suicide. Some have trouble keeping up at school, while others may be high achievers who feel pressured to be perfect and to stay at the top of the class. Some theorists believe that the period of adolescence itself produces a stressful climate in which suicidal actions are more likely. Adolescence is a period of rapid growth, and it is often marked by conflicts, depressed feelings, tensions, and difficulties at home and school. Adolescents tend to react to events more sensitively, angrily, dramatically, and impulsively than individuals in other age groups; thus the likelihood of suicidal acts during times of stress is increased. Finally, the suggestibility of adolescents and their eagerness to imitate others, including others who attempt suicide, may set the stage for suicidal action. One study found 93 percent of adolescent suicide attempts had known someone who attempted suicide. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Far more teenagers attempt suicide than actually kill themselves—the ratio may be as high as 200 to 1. The unusually large number of unsuccessful suicides may mean that teenagers are less certain than other persons who make such attempts while some do indeed wish to die, many may simply want to make others understand how desperate they are, get help, or teach others a lesson. Up to half of teenage attempters make new suicide attempt in the future, and as many as 14 percent eventually die by suicide. In countries around the World, the suicide rate for adolescents is not only high but increasing. Overall, it has more than doubled in the past two decades, as has the rate for young adults. Several theories, most pointing to societal changes, have been proposed to explain the dramatic rises in these two age groups. First, as the number and proportion of teenagers and young adults in the general population keep rising, the competition of teenagers and young adults and non-citizens in the general population keeps rising, the competition for jobs, college positions, and academic and athletic honours intensifies for them, leading increasingly to shattered dreams, and ambitions. Other explanations point to weakening ties in the family (which may produce feelings of alienation and rejection in many of today’s young people) and to the increased availability of alcohol and other drugs and the pressure to use them among teenagers and young adults. The mass media coverage of suicide attempts by teenagers and young adults may also contribute to the rise in the suicide rate among the young. The detailed descriptions of teenage suicide that the media and the arts have offered in recent years may serve as models for young people who are contemplating suicide. Within days of the highly publicized suicides of four adolescents in one New Jersey town in 1987, dozens of teenagers across the United States of America took similar actions (at least 12 of them fatal)—two in the same garage just one week later. Similarly, a 1986 study found that the rate of adolescent suicide rose about 7 percent in New York City during the week following a television film on suicides, in contrast to a 0.5 percent increase in adult suicide rate during the same week. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Therefore, the task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity. On this basis we may judge asceticism in the light of the principle of agape. First, nothing created is bad in itself. Matter is not an antidivine principle from which the “soul” has to be liberated. The desire for union with material reality through the senses is an expression of love as libido. And in libido, elements of eros, philia, and agape are present, as libido is present in them. As in all other instances, the problem is how much agape is effective in the libido drives of love—in the desire for food, drink, pleasures of the flesh, and aesthetic enjoyment. If the libido quality overpowers the agape element, and with it also the eros and philia elements, resistance in the name of agape is necessary and, under some conditions, partial or total asceticism with respect to things that are in themselves good. This “disciplinary” asceticism is quite different from the “ontological” asceticism which avoids things because of the material element in them. The former is affirmed by agape, the latter rejected by it. This distinction applies also to the ecstatic element of religion which has a definite psychosomatic dimension in unity with its spiritual dimension. The union of these two factors characterizes every genuine ecstasy, including every serious prayer that reaches to the divine Presence. The libido element in love prevents agape from becoming a rational calculation of how to give the best possible help to others, as the agape element in love prevents libido from running wild and destroying the centered person, and with it the power of eros and philia. Love is one. Its different qualities belong to each other, although they may become isolated and antagonistic toward each other. Decisive in all situations is agape, because it is united with justice and transcends the finite limits of human love. Therefore, in any conflict of the qualities of love, agape is the determining element. Only on this basis can love be called the ultimate source of moral demands. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

If love is understood in this way a second answer to the question of religion and morality is provided. The first was the unconditional character of the moral imperative. The second is the transcendent character of the ultimate source of moral demands. If love is understood in this way a second answer to the question of religion and morality is provided. The first was the unconditional character of the ultimate source of moral demands—love under the dominance of agape. This again demonstrates that morality has a religious quality even when independent of any system of ethics that belongs to a religion in the narrower sense of the word. In calling love the source of moral norms we have answered the first question of this report, namely, that of the relativity of ethics. For love is both absolute and relative by its very nature. An unchanging principle, it nevertheless always changes in its concrete application. It “listens” to the particular situation. Abstract justice cannot do this; but justice taken into love and becoming “creative justice” or agape can do so. Agape acts in relation to come to the concrete demands of the situation—its conditions, its possible consequences, the inner status of the people involved, their hidden motives, their limiting complexes, and their unconscious desires and anxieties. Love perceives all these—and more deeply the stronger the agape element is. (In line with this thought we might interject that the discovery of the psychology of the unconscious was a work not only of creative eros, but also of creative justice or agape, in spite of the antireligious bias of many representatives of the psychoanalytic movement.) Christian theology has dealt with the problem of the concrete moral decision in terms of the doctrine of the divine Spirit. The “Spiritual Presence,” the presence of the divine Ground of Being toward and in the human spirit, opens living soul’s eyes and ears to the moral demand implicit in the concrete situation. Tables of laws can never wholly apply to the unique situation. This is true of the Tend Commandments as well as of the demands of the Sermon on the Mount and the moral prescriptions in the Epistles of Paul. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

“The letter kills” not only because it judges one who cannot fulfill the law, but because it suppresses the creative potentialities of the unique moment which never was before and never will come again. This Spirit, on the contrary, opens the mind to these potentialities and determines the decision of love in a particular situation. In this way the problem of the absolute and the relative character of the moral demands is solved in principle. Love, as the ultimate principle of morality, is always the same. Love entering the unique situation, in the power of the Spirit, is always different. Therefore love liberates us from the bondage to absolute ethical traditions, to conventional morals, and to authorities that claim to know the right decision perhaps without having listened to the demand of the unique moment. This Spirit is the Spirit of newness. It breaks the prison of any absolute moral laws, even when vested with the authority of a sacred tradition. Love can reject as well as utilize every moral tradition, and it always scrutinizes the validity of a moral convention. However, love itself cannot question itself and it cannot be questioned by anything else. The problem is the religious source of the moral demands has so far been answered, concerning the ultimate principle of ethical norms. The first statement is the idea of justice, the affirmation of every person as a person. The second problem described love, taking justice into itself, as the ultimate principle of moral demands. And the third points out the dependence of moral demands on the concrete situation in its uniqueness. Desire deceives. We never know the real other out there, know only that other as reshaped by our desire. We take our fantasy, go looking for a suitable place to lodge it, reshaping reality with longing, stumbling through our years, seeking out stand-ins with whom we can act out again and again the old script, hoping this time for a happy ending, believing all the while that we are into something new. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

And in the rain of conflicts to come, we remind ourselves that, our papier-mâché angel will turn into a witch or a drab. Yet this passion for a falsified other may be the only thing in life really worthwhile. Without it one lives in a World of dailiness, of hearth love, the ordinary love of husband and wife, of parent and child, of friends. Such love may be constant, caring, loyal, may protect against loneliness and despair, provide the only security possible in a World of hazard, all these good things, and it may be, if we were wise, we would settle for it, renouncing that fever in the blood. However, it does not transcend, does not lift us up and out, does not take us to the other side. The assumption that it always desirable to see the World as it is may be in error. That undistorted and hence unexalted life may not be worth living. Desire is endless and unappeasable, is most intense where most forbidden, and is never far from despair. Sylvester Graham, S.B. Woodward, and William Alcott were among the founders of the America’s Male Purity Movement, dating from 1830. The chaos, formlessness, and surging changes in this new America horrified these men. Paternal control over sons was eroding and with it, the attendant lessons in discipline, manhood, and morality. Apprenticeships, the traditional job training system, were disappearing. The Male Purity Movement could not force all American males into premarital celibacy. It did, however, influence many—how many we shall never know—and was the only concerted chastity campaign ever to focus exclusively on bachelors. However, a parallel development directed to women preached purity in the context of piety, submissiveness, and domesticity, with motherhood the only possible object of pleasures of the flesh—postmarital, of course. Pure women deserved the pure males the reformers were attempting to create. The Male Purity Movement’s propagandists preached temperance, vegetarianism, moral reform, and chastity before marriage. Alcohol and rich spiced foods overstimulated and led to eroticism, and eroticism, often self-administered, corrupted, caused mental illness, disease, and the decay of the entire society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Fear of disease and insanity were part of the reason for the male celibacy. Also the recommended bland diet—the diet that cured pleasures of the flesh—unseasoned vegetables and wholesome, taste-free bread and biscuits, Graham crackers, made of Graham’s new flour, and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s breakfast cereal—cornflakes, then advertised as a healthsome assistant to subduing eroticism, now (more accurately) touted as a healthsome assistance to sound nutritional balance and good, plain, time-honoured taste. It was also recommended that men should spend fifteen years in celibate Christian courtship, preparatory to marriage. When he finally wed his frigid, Very Good wife. The American Male Purity Movement rolled through the decades, converting some bachelors, many more parents, a host of other reformers, and briefly, physicians. These young men, however, were still encouraged to be celibate after marriage. Cold morning shows, coarse toweling, restricted meat and spieces, and frequent defecation were also highly recommended. And at age forty-five or thereabouts, pleasures of the flesh as to be completely terminated. The Male Purity Movement, and the related Moral Purity Movement, which also included women, cut an ideological swath in the fabric of American society that resonates to this day. It is fervour and authoritarian tone were captivating. The prestige of many of its crusaders and its temporary endorsement by much of the medical profession lent it great credibility. Its Christian base and its rigorous formula for a pure life appealed to those distressed by the turbulence of a changing America. A century and a half later, echoes of its urgent message resound in the agenda of the Moral Majority, the Promise Keepers, and True Love waits. If choosing the “best” leader were all we had to worry about, our problem could be solved within the framework of the existing political system. In fact, however, the problem cuts far deeper. In a nutshell, leaders—even the “best”—are crippled because the institutions they must work through are obsolete. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Our political and governmental structures, to begin with, were designated at a time when the nation-state was still coming into its own. Each government could make more or less independent decisions. Today, as we have seen, this is no longer possible, though we retain the myth of sovereignty. Inflation has become so transnational a disease that no one can prevent the contagion from crossing the border. The Communist industrial countries, even though partially severed from the World economy and rigidly controlled from within, are dependent upon external sources of oil, food, technology, credit, and other necessities. In 2021, America was forced to hike many consumer prices. California nearly doubled its price on fuel and by boosting electricity, for some consumers, with new peak time rates 51 percent. Each decision in one country forces problems or calls for responses from the next. For instance, when France built a nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hauge (which is closer to London than the British Windscale reactor) at a place where radioactive dust or gas, if released, would be wafted toward Britain by the prevailing winds. Mexican oil spills imperil the Texas coastline 500 miles away. And if Saudi Arabia of Libya raises or lowers petroleum production quotas, it has immediate or long-range effects on the ecology of many nations. In this tightly wired web national leaders lose much of their effectiveness no matter what rhetoric they employ of sabers they rattle. Their decisions typically trigger costly, unwanted, frequently dangerous repercussions at both the global and the local level. The scale of government and the distribution of decision-making authority are hopelessly wrong for today’s World. This, however, is only one of the reasons why existing political structures are obsolete. In devoting time to spiritual reform, we go to the root of all other reforms. If humans get rid of their spiritual ignorance it is inevitable that they will more quickly get rid of undesirable conditions in every other department of their life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Nowadays we must especially guard ourselves against the one-sided unbalanced doctrines, the selfish degrading ethos, and the false materialistic ideas which have so widely permeated the political, cultural, commercial, and religious terrain of our time. No Marxian magic and no financial wizardry can turn a planet people by humans still dominated by hates, greeds, selfishness, and lusts into a physical utopia. Ultimately the experience of all history, both individual and national, teaches the lesson that physical well-being alone is not enough. It contributes toward the true happiness of humans on Earth but does not complete it. The welfare of the body is not an end in itself but only a means to a higher end. Hence philosophy, in its consideration of the methods to be used to achieve such an end, says that external re-arrangement of social forms will not of itself bring about fully satisfactory results. A re-arrangement from within is equally if not much more necessary. Only those who refuse the lessons of humankind’s historic past can suppose that peace, which it has never had for more than short periods, will suddenly bloom all over the Earth and remain here continuously, in defiance of the violent and destructive instincts which still lurk in humankind. The opportunities to wage war can be brought under international control by external means, and within our time they will be so brought when humankind is driven by necessity to take such a measure for the sake of the race’s own survival. However, the psychological causes that urge humans to wage war—these remnants of the terrestrial being lift in humans—can only be dealt with by internal means. This drawing-together of the different peoples out of their earlier isolation, which modern civilization has brought about, has not only increased their knowledge of each other but also increased their effect upon the lives and fortunes of one another. Out of this has grown the complexity of contemporary political, economic, gender, and racial problems. What one nation does is liable to affect not only its neighbours but also far-away nations to the point of actual war. Therefore, there is much greater need of learning for what purpose all the human race has been placed on this Earth than there was in earlier and more isolated times. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Not any military, political, or economic preparation—whether defensive or aggressive—has any hope for humankind’s true protection, if it does not include learning and obeying these higher laws. There are healing, restorative, guiding, and protective forces amid us even today, trying to reach the human race and to penetrate the dense, dark conditions surrounding it. If they are recognized and received in time, it will be saved from a frightfully destructive event. However, if human blindness and inertia prevent this from happening, the penalty will have to be paid. In the heart’s deepest place, where the burden of ego is dropped and the mystery of soul is penetrated, a human finds the consciousness there not different in any way from what all other humans may find. The mutuality of the human race is thus revealed as existing only on a plane where its humanness is transcended. This is why all attempts to express it in political and economic terms, no less than the theosophic attempts to form a universal brotherhood, being premature, must be also artificial. This is why they failed. None of the Powers, great or small, has been able to resolve the World crisis. It drags on through the years, getting aggravated with each year. This is because all the Powers try to resolve it against the wrong background, using ideas and methods which may have formerly been right but now are obsolete and inapplicable. This is the Nuclear Age. It requires a totally new approach. If God is in His Heaven and all is well with the World, are we in error to attempt reforms where they are obviously needed or to right wrongs where they are heavily oppressive? No—this is no error, for the attempts itself will then be introduced by the divine presence. Humans who have lost the sense of life’s spiritual significance, and who do not even have any insistent questions about it, will not respond to such events in the correct ways. Hitherto religion has provided the ordinary human with the truth in a form one was capable of comprehending. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

However, owning to the wider spread and quickened evolution which one has undergone in recent centuries, one has become capable of comprehending more deeply that which was formerly kept apart from popular religion and reserved for mysticism, the next higher form. Consequently it is no longer enough to limit one to merely religious strict and rigid doctrines and practices; these must now be intermixed with mystical doctrines and practices also. It is a fact that war and crisis have multiplied by many times the number of mystical seekers. However, the new group is still, relative to the total population, extremely small, insignificant and uninfluential. Yet the benefits of mysticism could be of untold help to countless others. The temporary forgetfulness from current turmoils and personal burdens which mental quietism offers its votaries should prove attractive to quite a number of persons in these times. For the need of personal, firsthand experience of the soul is greater today than ever before. Therefore the importance of this work is unquestionable. So many are discussing the new economic World which they hope, except, or demand to emerge during the postwar period, and so few the new spiritual World without which it can only be a failure. The truth is that both are needed, that one without the other will be an imperfect incomplete thing. Because we live in an era of flux, we need a better-exercised intelligence and intuition to negotiate it aright. The real war today is within the human mind. The real choice is between allegiances being made there. As individuals give themselves up to, or cleanse themselves from, the base emotions, they carry on this inner war. The interminable quarrels over ownership of countries will always produce recurring wars. So long as Nature’s proprietorship is ignored and unacknowledged, so long will humans and nations stake out their selfish claims to perpetual possession. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18


This home was designed to impress. From the foyer, the great room stretches into an impressive kitchen and dining room. This entertainer’s dream.

It Takes More than Strong Leadership to Make the Trains Run on Time!

Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. What is worth doing is worth doing well. Therefore, the task to which you dedicate yourself can never become a drudgery. The unexpected success of S.L Millers experiment of a mixture of water vapor, ammonia, methane, and hydrogen past an electric discharge to simulate the ultraviolet radiation of the sun, which at the end of the experiment created unmistakable traces of “organic” compounds, including several of the amino acids, neatly inspired others to undertake similar investigations. It was soon learned that Miller’s results could be duplicated and extended. Some of the most important results were obtained by the University of California chemist Melvin Calvin. (Some of Calvin’s work actually preceded Miller’s discovery, but in his earlier work ammonia was not present so that nothing as complex and significant as amino acids had been observed.) Calin employed high-energy electrons, rather than ultraviolet radiation, as his source of disruptive energy. Using the facilities of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, he was able to simulate the kind of electron bombardment that might have resulted in primordial times from the natural disintegration of the radioactive elements. When a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen was subjected to the high-energy electrons and then analyzed for new ingredients, a veritable storehouse of complex molecules was discovered. In addition to amino acids of several kinds, there were sugars, fatty acids, hydroxy acids, urea, and even several of the bases that, as we shall learn later, play in the nucleic acid molecules a component role similar to that played by the side chains of the amino acids in protein molecules. In short, Calvin’s experiment yielded an impressive number of the different kinds of molecular units employed in nature in the construction not only of proteins but also of carbohydrates, fates, oils, and nucleic acids—the essential materials of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The results of Calvin and Miller have been repeated and extended by other experimenters. It has been shown that a methane-ammonia-water mixture, heated to high temperatures such as would have been occasionally produced by meteoritic impact in the primordial atmosphere, produced by meteorite impact in the primordial atmosphere, produces at least 14 of the 20 amino acids that occur in living organisms. And ultraviolet irradiation at cool temperatures of a mixture of water and hydrogen cyanide—a compound that is frequently formed in experiments such as those of Miller and Calvin—has been found to result in two of the key nucleic acid bases. Similar treatment of mixtures of water and formaldehyde—another common product of the experiments—has produced the two sugars that are found in the nucleic acid. In short, it has by now been demonstrated that almost any kind of input to a suitable atmosphere of energy—whether from heart, ultraviolet, electric discharge, or radioactivity—will synthesize the building blocks of life’s molecules. Of course, it should not be imagined that the only new ingredients produced by the irradiation or bombardment of a “primeval atmosphere” are those which are essential to the construction of organic molecules. In Calvin’s work, for example, there were in addition a number of other molecular products, not all of which were completely analyzed. However, the important point is that, when the simple molecules of water, ammonia, methane, and hydrogen believed to have comprised the major part of the primeval atmosphere are torn asunder by electric discharge, heat, radiation, or radioactive bombardment, an appreciable fraction of the resulting fragments automatically recombine into just the kinds of molecules that have turned out to be the basic structural units of all living matter. In experiments such as these described, the variety of organic building blocks produced was, of course, limited by the starting ingredients used. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

In a real primeval atmosphere, there would be traces of sulfur, phosphorous, sodium, potassium, and other elements that would presumably permit the formation of amino acids and other organic molecules with side chains including these materials. Although such experiments convincingly establish the point that we need in order to get on with our task of reactivating the doctrine of spontaneous generation, it is hard to avoid a digression at this point to consider a troublesome question. Why do things work out this way? Why should amino acids, for example, just happen to have been among the prominent products formed when the primeval atmosphere was disrupted by the naturally existing forces of the heat, lightening, ultraviolet radiation, and radioactive bombardment? There is an answer to this question. In physico/chemical terms, there are various stable configurations of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms. Their mutual electric forces of attraction and repulsion are that, if such atoms of the four species are brought near one another and jostled about by the effects of external sources of energy, they will tend to stick together in one or another of these stable three-dimensional arrangements. Depending upon the accidental details of atomic juxtaposition and jostling, the result may be one or another amino acid, a sugar, a nucleic acid base, or an inorganic molecule. Such an explanation may convince us of the prosaic inevitability of the early formation of amino acids, but it is not likely thereby to suppress our tendency to feel that there is still something peculiar going on here. Granted that amnio acids had to be formed out of the inevitable workings of the laws of physics on the atmospheric ingredients of the preanimate World, how did it happen that they were just the structural units needed for the clues that, a billion or so years later, contributed to the appearance of the remarkable new phenomenon of life? This question, too, has a nonvitalistic answer. It epitomized in the assertion that modern organisms are based on amino-acids-containing substances because they constitute a class of long-chain, complex molecular material that happened to be available in the primordial Earth, not because they were uniquely required for the creation of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

As we move along into aspects of our treatment in which the principles of evolution and natural selection come into play in the development of the progenitors of living organisms, we shall encounter no reason to believe that the specific kind of chemistry that could support life. If we only imagine that the only form of life possible is that which we know, which is so strongly dependent on just the kinds of products that they looked for and found in their experiments, then the results obtained by Calvin and Miller seem mysterious. If instead we imagine that there are various possible molecular components on which life might be based, that among them are those found in the experiments and presumably therefore generated in the atmosphere of our preanimate Earth, and that the natural processes of evolution and selection (yet to be treated) did the rest, the mystery vanishes. Evolution is a gradual change to the DNA of s species over many generations. It can occur by natural selection, when certain traits created by genetic mutations help an organism survive or reproduce. Such mutations are thus more likely to be passed on to the next generation, so they increase in frequency in a population. Gradually, these mutations and their associated traits become more common among the whole group. By looking at global studies of our DNA, we can see evidence that natural selection has recently made changes and continues to do so. Though modern healthcare frees us from many causes of death, in countries without access to good healthcare, populations are continuing to evolve. Survivours of infectious diseases outbreaks drive natural selection by giving their genetic resistance to offspring. Our DNA shows evidence for recent selection for resistance of killer diseases like Lassa fever and malaria. Selection in response to malaria is still ongoing in regions where the diseases remain common. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Humans are also adapting to their environment. Mutations allowing humans to live at high altitudes have become more common in populations in Tibet, Ethiopia, and the Andes. The spread of genetic mutations in Tibet is possibly the fastest evolutionary change in humans, occurring over the last 3,000 years. This rapid surge in frequency of a mutated gene that increases blood oxygen content gives locals a survival advantage in higher altitudes, resulting in more surviving children. Diet is another source of adaptations. Evidence from Inuit DNA shows a recent adaptation that allows them to thrive on their fat-rich diet of Arctic mammals. Studies also show that natural selection favouring a mutation allow adults to produce lactase—the enzyme that breaks down milk sugars—is why some groups of people can digest milk after weaning. Over 80 percent of north-west Europeans can, but in parts of East Asia, where milk is much less commonly drunk, an inability to digest lactose is the norm. Like high altitude adaptation, selection to digest milk had evolved more than once in humans and may be the strongest kind of recent selection. We may well be adapting to unhealthy diets too. One study of family genetic changes in the United States of America during the 20th century found selection for reduced blood pressure and cholesterol levels, both of which can be lethally raised by modern diets. Yet, despite these changes, natural selection only affects about 8 percent of our genome. According to the neutral evolution theory, mutations in the rest of the genome may freely change frequency in populations by chance. If natural selection is weakened, mutations it would normally purge are not removed as efficiently, which could increase their frequency and so increase the rate of evolution. However, neutral evolution cannot explain why some genes are evolving much faster than others. We measure the speed of gene evolution by comparing human DNA with that of other species, which also allows us to determine which genes are fast-evolving in humans alone. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

One fast-evolving gene is human accelerated region 1 (HAR1), which is needed during brain development. A random section of human DNA is on average more than 98 percent identical to the chimp comparator, but HAR1 is so fast evolving that it is only around 85 percent similar. Though scientist can see these changes are happening—and how quickly—we still do not fully understand why fast evolution happens to some genes but not to others. Originally thought to be the result of natural selection exclusively, we now know this is not always true. Realizing evolution does not only happen by natural selection makes it clear the process is not likely to ever stop. Freeing our genomes from the pressures of natural selection only opens them up to other evolutionary processes—making it even harder to predict what future humans will be like. However, it is quite possible that with modern medicine’s protections, there will be more genetic problems in store for future generations. Historically, male sexuality has been perceived as both a moral issues and a physical phenomenon. The moral plane involves passion and lust, seduction and conquest, lack of restraint and weakness. It is interesting, however, that Hippocrates told women is was best to be unchaste and had a different message for men, who he advised to abstain from pleasures of the flesh to retain their seed, which energized their bodies. Pleasures of the flesh, though salutary for women, was detrimental to men because it brained away their lifeforce. He was cited as warning a young man who was over active in pleasures of the flesh who had actually died, raving mad, after a simple stomach ailment escalated to fatal illness, so drastically had he weakened his body by recklessly depleting his stores of seed. The practical significance of this was not entirely clear, because what was beneficial for women might be detrimental for men. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Celibacy was, after all, simply another tool, like diet, exercise, message, and bathing, to improve health in a fanatically health-conscious people. By the early second century, creeping asceticism was reflected in medical writings. Galen, the great second-century Greek doctor who supplanted Hippocrates as the medical genius, reached conclusions that clashed with previous medical wisdom. Galen’s personal preference was virginity for both men and women, but as a doctor, he worried about the disorder celibacy could cause. Specifically, a glut of surplus seed, like putrefying garbage, could cause health problems such as slothfulness and listlessness. His prescription? Pleasures of the flesh. However, he warned that pleasures of the flesh was tiring because the seed consisted of pneuma or vital spirit, and orgasms warmed the blood, a debilitating process. Young men who overindulged in pleasures of the flesh, for example, dried out their bodies and require humidification. Galen believed in moderation. However, through Adam’s semen, the entire human race had inherited a nature irrevocably marred by sin. The mechanism for this tragic collective flaw? “The nature of the semen from which we are to be propagated, Adam’s semen was shackled by the bond of death, and so every human born through semen is contaminated by sin. Only Christ, conceived without semen, is devoid of sin. In Augustine’s mind, semen was inherently evil, a virulent poison that has infected the World since the time of the Fall. When one looks at it through the lenses of moral and social issues—celibacy and its opposite were seen purely as prescriptions for health, little different from a course of exercise of diet. Some thinkers interpreted this vital force as magnetism, electricity, galvanism, animal heart, nervous energy, or never force; other preferred simply the vital force. What all systems had in common was the belief that vital energy transmitted life itself and that energy from pleasures of the flesh as the great conductor. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Swiss doctor Samuel A. Tissot thought celibacy was a good idea because loss of once ounce of this vital force would weaken more than [the loss of] of forty ounces of bloody. Of course this was also because this vital force, when it is preserved in the chaste body was reabsorbed, enriching the blood and revitalizing the brain. Celibacy, therefore, was presented not merely as a moral choice but a physiological necessity. Chastity was in vogue as part of the respectable gentleman’s gear, with John Locke and William Pitt, who held up as models for lifetime celibates. Dr. William Acton, a British proselytizer for the ideal of respectable chastity, recommended daily baths, a hard bed, a balanced diet without alcohol, intellectual stimulation, religious study, and rigorous physical exercise. The latter was incorporated enthusiastically into school curricula and idealized as Muscular Christianity. Celibacy was considered the accumulation of capital. Incontinence, on the other hand, was bad and provoked too early marriages and poverty. Based on these premises, it followed that celibacy—until appropriately late marriage, after enough wealth has been amassed to buy a decent house—should be an integral part of England’s new industrial society. After all, were not continence dealing with pleasures of the flesh and industry linked as values in a single system? The same vaunted thrift that had build England’s industrial empire could, applied to an individual’s limited supply of seed, stabilize society and produce fewer but superior citizens. The Male Purity Movement, as it was known, everywhere rolled over the decades successfully, until it was finally spent. There is, however, a limit to the formulation of the moral principle of justice thus far. The acknowledgement of somebody as a person remains an external act that can be performed with legal detachment or cool objectivity. It can achieve justice without creating a relationship. Under many conditions this is the only way of actualizing justice, especially in encounters of social groups. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

However, mere objectivity never occurs between human beings. Accompanying “pure” detachment is always an element of involvement. In the encounter of person with person within a community of persons, “community” also expresses involvement. In the encounter of person with person within a community of person, community also expressed involvement because it implies mutual participation, and, by participation, union. And the desire for union of the separated (which is ultimately re-union) is love. All communions are embodiments of love, the urge for participation in the other one. If the acknowledgment of the other person as person is not detached but involved. In this way, loved becomes the ultimate moral principle, including justice and transcending it at the same time. However, at this point it is necessary to combat several misinterpretations of the principle of love. First, it must be emphasized that is love takes justice into itself, justice is not diminished but enhanced. It has become creative justice in the sense of the Old and New Testament concepts of the Yedaquah and Dikaiosyne of God that both judges and saves. The frequent cry of the Jewish people who has suffered immeasurable injustice through two millennia of church history—“We do not want love, we want justice”—is based on a misunderstanding of the biblical idea of love. Love, in the sese of agape, contains justice in itself as its unconditional element and as its weapon against its own sentimentalization. It is regrettable that Christianity has often concealed its unwillingness to do justice, or to fight for it, by setting off love against injustice, and performing works of love in the sense of “charity” instead of battling for the removal of social injustice. One of the reasons for this misunderstanding of love it the identification of love with emotion. Love, like every human experience, of course includes an emotional element, and this can in the case of love prove to be overwhelmingly strong. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

However, this element is not the whole of love. Above all, love as agape is far removed from pity, although it can have elements of pity within a particular situation. Nietzsche’s attack on the Christian idea of love is caused by this confusion. However, it should serve to warn the Christian church to demonstrate in teaching, preaching, and liturgy the unconditional demand for justice in the very nature of agape. (If the word “love” in the sense of agape could be avoided for a long time, and the word agape introduced into modern language, I believe it would be salutary.) Agape is a quality of love, that quality which expresses the self-transcendence of the religious element in love. If love is the ultimate norm of all moral demands, its agape quality points to the transcendent source of the content of the moral imperative. For agape transcends the finite possibilities of humans. Paul indicates this is his great hymn to love (I Corinthians 13) when he describes agape as the highest work of the divine Spirit, and as an element of the eternal life, even beyond faith and hope. Agape as the self-transcending element of love is not separated from the other elements that usually are described as epithymia—the libido quality of love, philia—the friendship quality of love, and eros—the mystical quality of love. In all of them what we have called “the urge toward the union of the separated” is effective, and all of them stand under the judgment of agape. For love is one, even if one of tis qualities predominates. None of the qualities is every completely absent. There is, for example, the compassion element of philia and eros in agape, and there is the agape quality in genuine compassion (a fact important for the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism). It is this agape element that prevents participation in the other one from becoming mere identification with one, as compassion prevents agape from becoming a detached act of mere obedience to the “law of love.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

And there is eros in agape, and agape in eros, a fact that permitted Christianity to receive into itself the eros-created classical culture, both rational and mystical. It is the agape element in eros that prevents culture from becoming a nonserious, merely transitory entertainment, just as eros prevents agape from becoming a moralistic turning away from the creative potentialities in nature and humans toward an exclusive commitment to a God who can only be feared or obeyed, but not loved. For without eros toward the ultimate good there is no love toward God. Even the libidinous quality of love is always present in the highest forms of eros, philia, and agape. Humans are multidimensional unity and not a composite of parts. Therefore, all elements of a living soul being participate in every moral decision and action. When, in the evolution of human life, consciousness so expands that the individual sees oneself as separate from the group, unique, possessed of an inner life oriented by fixed memories, living out a personal history that moves toward its own termination, one becomes aware that the drive for pleasures of the flesh which impels one so powerfully will not safeguard that uniqueness. Pleasures of the flesh is being used, and used up, and soon discarded, by a life force that cares nothing for the individual. All those monuments and spires, the swooning sonnets, like flaking paint, the crashing chords, are the residue of protest against such waste. Uniqueness and morality are our condition, impel us to create legacies meant to last forever. The creative impulses, writes Otto Rank, is anti-pleasures of the flesh in its yearning for immortality. Whereas Dr. Freud had traced the repressions of pleasures of the flesh to social constraint, Mrs. Rank sees it as driven by an individual dread of death no less inherent in the individual than the impulse of pleasures of the flesh. Hers is an offering of self that hold nothing back. Nothing in reserve, she gives it all. No barter, no exception of return, no maneuvering for advantage. Just upfront conversation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Who could resist such a gift? The fact that it is free both renders it more enchanting and breaks your heart, moves you to an unfamiliar generosity, you want to protect this vulnerable being who cannot arrange for her own security. However, what is offered as love, I warn myself, is in fact a camouflaged raid, and if the gift is accepted she will begin to exact in exchange what then is due and payable, the tribute owed the victorious weak by the vanquished strong; and whatever the outcome of those unhappy negotiations, love, it will transpire, will have played no part at all. A beautiful woman is always in danger of becoming a witch. Because beauty evokes desire, and desire enslaves; and when the slave eventually rebels, the angel who evoked the desire and, as one then sees it, cast the spell becomes a witch. “The recurring comforts us,” she says, “the singular is tragic, must not be missed. This is singular. Once, only once, never again. I love you. I trust you. I have never, until now, trusted any being I have become a different person. The wildness is gone. It was like a storm. All is calm now. All my life I have moved from person to person, denying possession to any. However, you have tamed me. No one could have predicted it. I would not have thought it possible. With you I would stay forever.” The master teacher that lurks within each of us is likelier to burst forth within the intellectual atmosphere that collegiality can create. Absolutely, the delinquent behavior seems to speak clearly enough. It asks for what we cannot give, but it is in this direction we must go. It asks for manly opportunities to work, make a little money, and have self-esteem; to have some space to bang around in, that is not always somebody’s property; to have better schools to open for them horizons of interest; to have more and better friendships without fear or shame; to share somehow in the symbolic goods (like the cars) that are made so much of; to have a community and a country to be loyal to; to claim attention and have a voice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

These are not outlandish demands. Certainly they cannot be satisfied directly in our present system; they are baffling. That is why the problem is baffling, and the final recourse is to a curfew, to ordinances against carrying knives (imagine that, people feel that unsafe), to threatening the parents, to reformatories with newfangled names, and having 696,644 full-time law enforcement officers employed in the United States of America. The Number of full-time officers reached a peak in 2008 with 708,569 officers, and hit a low in 2012 with 626,942 officers. Sources of information interviews indicate that elementary school children learn about suicide most often from television and discussions with other children, and rarely discuss suicide with adults. Where we turn to—one survey of 396 high school students indicated that teenagers are unlikely to initiate contact with a counselor during a suicidal crisis, but over half would probably tell a friend. Teenage Anomie, in a study across several midwestern states, half of the 300 homeless and runaway teenagers said that they had thought of suicide, and over one-quarter had attempted suicide in the previous year. The likelihood of committing suicide generally increases with age, although people of all ages may try to kill themselves. Recently clinicians have paid particular attention to self-destructive behaviour in three age groups: children, partly because suicide at their young age contradicts society’s perception that childhood is an enjoyable period; adolescents, because of the steady and highly publicized rise in their suicide rate; and the elderly, because suicide is more prevalent in this age group than any other. Although the features and theories of suicide we discuss apply to all age groups, each of these groups faces unique problems that may play key roles in the suicidal acts of its members. Tommy [age 7] and his younger brother were playing together, and an altercation arose that was settled by the mother, who then left the room. The mother recalled nothing to distinguish this incident from innumerable similar ones. Several minutes after she left, she considered Tommy strangely and quiet and returned to find him crimson-faced and struggling for air, having knotted a jumping rope around his neck and jerked it tight. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Although suicide is infrequent among children, it has been increasing over the past several decades. “Dear Mom and Dad, I love you. Please tell my teacher that I cannot take it anymore. I quit. Please don’t take me to school anymore. Please help me. I will run away so don’t stop me. I will kill myself. So don’t look for me because I will be dead. I love you. I will always love you. Remember me. Help me. Love Justin [age 10].” Approximately 500 children under 14 years of age in the United States of America now commit suicide each year—around 0.9 per 100,000 in this age group, a rate nearly 800 percent higher than that of 1950. Boys outnumber girls by as much as 5 to 1. In addition, it has been estimated that one of every 100 children tries to harm him- or herself, and many thousands of children are hospitalized each year for deliberately self-destructive acts, such as stabbing, cutting, burning, overdosing, or jumping from high places. One study of suicide attempts by children revealed that the majority had taken an overdose of drugs at home, half were living with only one parent, and a quarter had attempted suicide before. Recent studies further suggest that the use of guns is increasing among children who attempt suicide. Researchers have found that suicide attempts by the very young are commonly preceded by such behavioural patterns as running away from home, accident proneness, acting out, temper tantrums, self-depreciation, social withdrawal and loneliness, extreme sensitivity to criticism, low tolerance of frustration, dark fantasies and daydreams, marked personality change, and overwhelming interest in death and suicide. Studies have further linked child suicides to the recent or anticipated loss of a loved one, family stress and parent unemployment, abuse by parents, and a clinical level of depression. Most people find it hard to believe that children fully comprehend the meaning of a suicidal act. They argue that because a child’s thinking is so limited, children who attempt suicide fall into Shneidman’s category of “death ignorers,” like Billy who sought to join his mother in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Many child suicides, however, appear to be based on a clear understanding of death and on a clear wish to die. In addition, suicidal thinking among even normal children is apparently more common than most people once believed. Clinical interviews with schoolchildren have revealed that between 6 and 33 percent have thought about suicide. Changing suicide rates—the suicide rates of elderly people has been generally declining for over half a century, while that of young adults is increasing. Still, older people continue to be at higher risk for suicide. “O Lord, correct, instruct, and chastise me, but with judgment and in just measure—not in Your anger, lest You diminish me and bring me to nothing. Put out Your wrath upon the nations that do not know or recognize You and upon the peoples that do not call upon Your name. For they have devoured Jacob, yes, devoured him and consumed him and made his habitation a desolate waste,” Jeremiah 10.24-25. The Messiah Complex is the illusion that we can somehow save ourselves by changing the man (or woman) on top. Watching Second Wave politician stumble and flail drunkenly at the problem arising from the emergence of the Fourth Wave, millions of people, spurred on by the press, have arrived at a single, simply, easy-to-understand explanation of our woes: the “failure of leadership.” If only a messiah would appear on the political horizon and pit things back together again! This craving for a masterful, macho leader is voiced today by even the most well-meaning of people as their familiar World crumbles, as their environment grows more unpredictable and their hunger for order, structure, and predictability increases. Thus, a formidable cry, rising like the howling of innumerable dogs to the stars, asking for someone or something to take command. In the United States of America, President Joe Biden is violently condemned for “lack of leadership.” However, in the Communist industrial nations, where leadership is anything but timid, the pressure from still “stronger leadership” is intensifying. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Modern Russia glorifies Stalin’s ability to draw the necessary political conclusions. To this day, little pictures of Stalin sprout on windshields, in homes, hotels, and kiosks. Stalin on the windshield today is an upsurge from below…a protest, however paradoxical, against the present disintegration and lack of leadership. As dangerous decade opens, today’s demand for “leadership” strikes at a moment when long-forgotten dark forces are stirring anew in our midst. Because the Republican Party had been viewed as racist in the past, many egalitarians were happy to see the country to become more Democratic. However, now, America is stuck in a dangerous cycle of Democratic overdrive that is ripping the country apart. As a result, after more than three decades in hibernation, small but influential right-wing groups are again seeking the intellectual limelight, expounding theories on race, biology and political elitism discredited by the fascism of the Democracy majority. Aryan racial supremacy used to control several journalistic outlets. Some believe that the races are born unequal. Across the globe in Japan, my wife and I not long ago spent 45 minutes in a massive traffic pile-up watching a procession of trucks crawl by, bearing uniformed and helmeted political toughs, chanting and flinging their fists skyward to protest some government policy. Our Japanese friends tell us these proto-storm troopers are linked to the mafia-like yakuza hangs and are financed by powerful political figures eager to see a return to prewar authoritarianism. Each of these phenomena in turn has its “left” counterpart-terrorist gangs who mouth the slogans of socialist democracy but are prepared to impose their own brand of totalitarian leadership on society with Kalashnikovs and plastic bombs. In the United Sates of American, among other unsettling signs. There is a surge of demand for “stronger leadership” coincides precisely with the recrudescence of highly authoritarian groups who hope to profit from the breakdown of representative government. The tinder and the spark are coming perilously close to one another. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

This intensifying cry for leadership is based on three misconceptions, the first of which is the myth of authoritarian efficiency. If nothing else, few ideas are more widely held than the conation that the train must run on time. Today so many institutions are breaking down and unpredictability is so rife that millions of people would willingly trade some freedom (someone else’s, preferably) to make their economic, social, and political trains run on time. Yet stronger leadership—and even totalitarianism—has little to do with efficiency. There is not much evidence to suggest that counties with assuredly stronger and more authoritarian than that United States of America, France, or Sweden are run more efficiently. Apart from the military, the secret police, and a few other functions vital to the perpetuation of these tyrannical countries are run much better, but they are more loyal to their leaders, more serious and more willing to accept authority. When a society is crippled by waste, irresponsibility, inertia, and corruption—in short, by lassie fare inefficiency, it will fail. Sloppy ships use scientists very poorly. Much of the breakthrough technology and inventions of great significance never get into production because of the prevailing inefficiency and regulation. It takes more than strong leadership, as we shall see, to make the trains run on time. Different civilizations require vastly different leadership qualities. And what is strong in one may be inept and disastrously weak in another. During the First Wave, peasant-based civilization, leadership typically derived from birth, not achievement. A monarch needed certain limited practical skills—the ability to lead men in combat, the shrewdness to play off his barons against one another, the cleverness to consummate an advantageous marriage. Literacy and broad powers of abstract thought were not among the basic requirements. Moreover, the leader was typically free to exercise sweeping personal authority in the most capricious, even whimsical fashion, unchecked by constitution, legislature, or public opinion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

If approval was needed, it was only from a small coterie of nobles, lords, and ministers. The leader able to mobilize this support was “strong.” The Second Wave leader, by contrast, dealt in impersonal and increasingly abstract power. One had many more decisions to make on a far wider variety of matters, from manipulating the media to managing the marco-economy. One’s decisions had to be implemented through a chain of organizations and agencies whose complex relationships to one another he understood and orchestrated. One had to be literate and capable of abstract reasoning. Instead of a handful of barons, one has to play off a complex array of elites and sub-elites. Moreover, one’s authority—even if one were a totalitarian dictator—was at least nominally constrained by constitution, legal precedent, party political requirements, and the force of mass opinion. Given these contrasts, the “strongest” First Wave leader plunged into a Second Wave political framework would have appeared even more weak, confused, erratic, and inept then the “weakest” Second Wave leader. Similarly today, as we race into a new stage of civilization—the strong leaders of the Fourth Wave Capitalistic society, like President Trump, were illegally ousted for a confused President, who is unwilling to help the American people advance. However, people are still searching for seemingly decisive, jut-jawed, sharply opinionated leaders—whether Trumps, Lincolns, Reagans, Chiracs, or Thatchers—is in exercise in nostalgia, a search for father- or mother-figure based on obsolete assumptions. For the “weakness” of today’s leaders is less a reflection of personal qualities than it is a consequence of the breakdown of the institutions on which their power depends. In fact, their seeming “weakness” is the exact result of their increased “power.” Thus, as the Fourth Wave continues to transform society, raising it to a much higher level of diversity and complexity, all leaders become dependent on increasing numbers of people for help in making and implementing decisions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The more powerful the tools at a leader’s command—supersonic fighters, nuclear weapons, computers, telecommunications—the more, not less, dependent the leader becomes. This is an unbreakable relationship because it reflects the rising complexity on which power today necessarily rests. This is why the American President can sit next to the nuclear push button, which give one the power to pulverize the planet, and still feel as helpless as though there were “nobody at the other end” of one’s telephone line. Power and powerlessness are opposite sides of the same semiconductor chip. The emerging civilization of the Fourth Wave demands, for these reasons, a wholly new type of leadership. The requisite qualities of the Fourth Wave leaders are not yet entirely clear. We may well find that strength lies not in a leader’s assertiveness but precisely in one’s ability to listen to others; not in bulldozer force but in imagination; not in megalomania but in a recognition of the limited nature of leadership in the New World. The leaders of tomorrow may well have to deal with a far more decentralized and participator society—one even more diverse than today’s. They can never again be all things to all people. Indeed, it is unlikely that one human being will ever embody all the traits required. Leadership may well prove to be more temporary, collegial, and consensual. As the World shrinks, the problems are so general, so basic and so interdependent that they cannot be solved, as once problems were, by one human or one Government’s initiative. In short, we are moving painfully toward a new kind of leader not because someone thinks this a good thing but because the nature of the problems makes it necessary. Yesterday’s strong human may turn out to be tomorrow’s 98-pound weakling. Whether or not this proves to be the case, there is one final, even more damming flaw in the argument that some political messiah is needed to save us from disaster. For this nation presupposed that our basic problem is personnel. And it is not. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Even if we had saints, geniuses, and heroes in charge, we would still be facing the terminal crisis of representative government—the political technology of the Third Wave era. The descent into materialism will be intellectually checked by science reversing its own nineteenth-century conclusions; the lapse into immorality by the vivid demonstration of its tragic results in recent national and individual history; the fall into irreligion by the uprise of a more personal and more mystical faith. The first social goal which philosophy sets before its votary is the dropping of class race and creed prejudices—not, be it remembered, of their actualities. Although racial differences must be taken into account, cultural variations must be recognized and the contrasts of living standards must be noted; although the oneness of humankind is a metaphysical and not a practical uniformity, all this is no excuse for racial prejudices and hatreds or for unfair partialities and discriminations. In the case of the colour bar, this has been particularly cruel in the past and will be dangerous in the future. One must be too wise, too tolerant, and too decent to be caught up by the fanatic nationalisms, the unashamed savageries, the battling brutalities, the social hostilities, the racial animosities and religious intolerances of unenlightened humans. Whoever breathes the rarefied atmosphere of truth can only regard with sorrow those who insist on breathing the murky fogs of overweening race, nationality, sect, or colour discriminations. Whoever practices the philosophic discipline is walking the path to the consciousness of being a World citizen. One cannot help but be a confirmed internationalist. This is a logical and practical result of one’s knowledge and attitude. One sees clearly that we are all children of the same supreme Father, all rooted in the same infinite Mind, all brought together on this planet to carry out the same noble tasks of self-regeneration and self-realization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Consequently one is friendly to humans of all nationalities, all races, all countries. They are not disliked, suspected, nor hated, ignored, neglected, nor ill-treated because in the flesh they happen to be foreigners. One sees that the truth is there are no Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Germans, but only human beings harbouring stuffy mental complexes that they are English, French, or Germany. Nevertheless, the human who has liberated oneself from this fleshly materialism need not cease thinking of oneself as a citizen of one’s particular country. However, one will alongside of that think of oneself as a citizen of the World. Their high pitched baying as if in prayer’s unison, remote, undistracted, given over utterly to belief, the skein of geese voyages south, hierarchic arrow of its convergence toward the point of grace swinging and rippling, ribbon tail of a kite, loftily over lakes where they have not elected to rest, over humans who suppose Earth is human’s, over golden Earth preparing itself for night and winter. We humans are smaller than they, and crawl unnoticed, about and about the smoky map. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the light of the fire. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who didst make a distinction between America and the heathen, between the seventh day and the six working days. Praised be Thou, O Lord, who makest a distinction between holy and profane. May He who sets the holy and profane apart, blot out our sins before His sight, and make our numbers as the sand again, and as the stars of night. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy precepts, and hast enjoined upon us the kindling of the Hanukkah and Kwanza and Christmas light. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who art this season wroughtest miracles for our fathers in the old days. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast kept us in life, and hast preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

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Laundry is fun when you’ve got all the space you need; not to mention that chic floor in the Mills Station Residence 2 model.

The very thought of you, and I forget to do, the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do. I’m living in a kind of day dream. I’m happy as a King in my Cresleigh Homes. To me that is everything. The mere idea of you, the longing to be near you.

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There is a summer place, where it may rain or storm, yet I’m safe and for within my Cresleigh Home, your arms reach out to me and my heart is free from all care.

For it knows there are no gloomy skies. I am blessed with the secret of a forever home. I used to daze at the doorstep and picture me there. Chances are my Cresleigh Home is my Valentine! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/













































