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People have forgotten how to tell stories. Stories do not have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning. One simple thing that will happen in the future is that they will streamline the family. The typical pre-industrial family not only had a good many children, but numerous other dependent as well—grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Such “extended” families were well suited for survival in slow paced agricultural societies. However, such families are hard to transport or transplant. They are immobile. Industrialism demanded masses of workers ready and able to move off the land in pursuit of jobs, and to move again whenever necessary. Thus the extended family gradually shed its excess weight and the so-called “nuclear” family emerged—a stripped-down, portable family unit consisting only of parents and a small set of children. This new style family, far more mobile than the traditional extended family, became the standard model in all the industrial countries. Super-age of information, however, the next stage of ecotechnological development, requires even higher mobility. Thus we may expect many among the people of the future to carry the streamlining process a step further by remaining childless, cutting the family down to its most elemental components, two adults who are spouses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Adults will form relationships, two people, perhaps with matched careers, will prove more efficient at navigating through education and social shoals, through job changes and geographic relocations, than the ordinary child-cluttered family. Indeed, anthropologist Margaret Mead has pointed out that we may already be moving toward a system under which, as she puts it, “parenthood would be limited to a smaller number of families whose principal functions would be childrearing,” leaving the rest of the population “free to function—for the first time in history—as individuals.” A compromise may be the postponement of children, rather than childlessness. Men and women today are often torn in conflict between a commitment to career and a commitment to children. In the future, many couples will sidestep this problem by deferring the entire task of raising children until after retirement. This may strike people of the present as odd. Yet once childbearing is broken away from its biological base, nothing more than tradition suggests having children at an early age. Why not wait, and buy your embryos later, after your career is over? Thus childlessness is likely to spear among young and middle-aged couples; sexagenarians who raise infants may be far more common. The post-retirement family could become a recognized social institution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
In Tokyo, Japan, for example, in 2017, the population fell by 300,000 people and there were fewer than 1 million births. The reason is because Japan’s young people are not focused on romance, they are more interested in their careers and becoming successful. Women and men are putting their careers before marriage. Experts also speculate that the birth rate could be falling because there are fewer good opportunities for young people. In a country where men are still widely expected to be the primary providers for the family, a lack of good jobs may be creating a class of men who do not marry and have children because they—and their potential partners—know they cannot afford to. The gender roles are pretty consistent with trends in all developed nations—men are having a harder time. The birth rate is down, even the coupling rate is decreasing. People say the number-one reason is economic insecurity. Economic insecurity may seem like a surprise in a country like Japan, with an unemployment rate below 3 percent. However, it may not just be the shrinking economic trends. Most developed nations have less land, so there is less room for people, and housing is more expensive. Because plots of land are growing smaller and more expensive, people may not have a desire to have children. If a smaller number of families raise children, however, why do the children have to be their own? Why not a system under which “professional parents” take on the childrearing function for others? Raising children, after all, requires skills that are by no means universal. We do not let “just anyone: perform brain surgery or, for that matter, sell stocks and bonds. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Even civil servants with modest skill levels are required to pass tests proving competence. Yet we allow virtually anyone, almost without regard for mental or moral qualification, to try his or her hand at raising young human beings, so long as these humans are biological offspring. Despite the increasing complexity of the task, parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur. As the present system cracks and the super-age of informational revolution rolls over us, as the armies of juvenile delinquents swell, as hundreds of thousands of youngsters flee their homes, and students rampage at universities in all the techno-societies, we can expect vociferous demands for an end to parental dilettantism. There are far better ways to cope with the problems of youth, but professional parenthood is certain to be proposed, if only because it fits so perfectly with the society’s overall push toward specialization. Moreover, there is a powerful, pent-up demand for this social innovation. Even now millions of parents, given the opportunity, would happily relinquish their parental responsibilities—and not necessarily through irresponsibility or lack of love. Harried, frenzied, up against the wall, they have come to see themselves as inadequate to the tasks. The intuition must lead all the rest of human’s faculties. Even when they do not agree with its guidance, one must follow it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Intuition sees father than the individual ever can, being an efflux from the godlike part of oneself which is in its way a portion of the universal deity. If one can be sure that it is not pseudo-intuition truth in it will lead one to life’s best, whether spiritual or Worldly. Given affluence and the existence of specially-equipped and licensed professional parents, many of today’s biological parents would not only gladly surrender their children to them, but would look upon it as an act of live, rather than rejection. Parental professionals would not be therapists, but actual family units assigned to, and well paid for, rearing children. Such families might be multi-generational by design, offering children in them an opportunity to observe and learn from a variety of adult models, as was the case in the old farm homestead. With the adults paid to be professional parents, they would be free of the occupational necessity to relocate repeatedly. Such families would take in new children as old ones “graduate” so that age-segregation would be minimized. Thus newspapers of the future might well carry advertisements addressed to young married couples: “Why let parenthood tie you down? Let us raise your infant into a responsible, successful adult. Class A Pro-family offers: father age 39, mother, 36, grandmother, 67. Uncle and aunt, age 30, live in, hold part-time local employment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Four-child-unit has opening for one, age 6-8. Regulated diet exceeds government standards. All adults are certified in child development and management and pass federal background checks. Bio-parents permitted frequent visits. Telephone contact allow and Cisco Telepresence can be used daily. Child may spend summer vacation with bio-parents. Religion, art, music encouraged by special arrangement. Five-year contract, minimum. Write for further details.” The “real” or “bio-parents” could, as the advertisement suggests, fil the role presently played by interested godparents, namely that of friendly and helpful outsiders. In such a way, the society could continue to breed a wide diversity of genetic types, yet turn the care of children over to mother-father groups who are equipped, both intellectually and emotionally, for the task. Quite a different alternative lies in the communal family. As transience increases the loneliness and alienation in society, we can anticipate increasing experimentation with various forms of group marriage. The banding together of several adults and children into a single “family” provides kind of insurance against isolation. Even if one or two members of the household leave, the remaining members have one another. Communes are springing up modeled after those described by psychologist B.F. Skinner in Walden Two and novelist Robert Rimmer in The Harrad Experiment and Proposition 31. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
In the latter work, Rimmer seriously propose the legalization of a “corporate family” in which from three to six adults adopt a single name, live and raise children in common, and legally incorporate to obtain certain economic and tax advantages. According to some observers, there are already hundreds of open or covert communes dotting the American map. Not all, by any means, are composed of young people or hippies. Some are organized around specific goals—like the group, quietly financed by three East Coast colleges—which has taken as its function the task of counseling college freshmen, helping to orient them to campus life. The goals may be social, religious, political, even recreational. Thus, if they do not already, we shall before long begin to see communal families of surfers dotting the beaches of California and Southern France. We shall see the emergence of communes based on political doctrines and religious faiths. In Denmark, a bill to legalize group marriage has already been introduced in the Folketing (Parliament). While passage is not imminent, the act of introduction it itself a significant symbol of change. In Chicago, 250 adults and children already live together in “family-style monasticism” under the auspices of a new fast-growing religious organization, the Ecumenical Institute (EI). Members share the same quarters, cook and eat together, worship and tend children in common, and pool their incomes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
At least 90,000 people have taken “EI” courses and similar communes have begun to spring up all over North America, and over 2,000 in various counties of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There are at least 300 successful locally-managed initiatives in 53 countries. “A brand-new World is emerging,” says Professor Joseph W. Mathews, leader of the Ecumenical Institute, “But people are still operating in terms of the old one. We seek to re-educate people and give them the tools to build a new social context.” Still another type of family unit likely to win adherents in the future might be called the “geriatric commune”—a group of marriage of elderly people drawn together in a common search for companionship and assistance. Disengaged from the productive economy that makes mobility necessary, they will settle in a single place, band together, pool funds, collectively hire domestic or nursing help, and proceed—within limits—to have the “time of the lives.” Communalism runs counter to the pressure for ever greater geographical and social mobility generated by the thrust toward super-industrialism. It presupposed groups of people who “stay put.” For this reason, communal experiments will first proliferate among those in the society who are free from the industrial discipline—the retired population, the young, the dropouts, the students, as well as among self-employed professional and technical people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Later, when advanced technology and information systems make it possible for much of the work of society to be done at home via computer-telecommunication hookups, communalism will become feasible for larger numbers. We shall, however, also see many more “family” units consisting of a single unmarried adult and one or more children. Nor will all of these adults be women. It is already possible in some places for unmarried men to adopt children. In 1965 in Oregon, for example, a thirty-eight-year-old musician named Tony Piazza became the first unmarried man in that state, and perhaps in the United States of America, to be granted the right to adopt a baby. Courts are more readily granting custody to divorced fathers, too. In London, photographer Michael Cooper, married at twenty and divorced soon after, won the right to raise his infant son, and expressed an interest in adopting other children. Observing that he did not particularly wish to remarry, but that he liked children, Mr. Cooper mused aloud: “I wish you could just ask beautiful women to have babies for you. Or any woman you like, or who had something you admired. Ideally, I would like a big house full of children—all different colours, shapes and sizes.” Romantic? Unmanly? Perhaps. Yet attitudes like these will be widely held by men in the future. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Two pressures are even now softening up the culture, preparing for acceptance of the idea of childrearing by men. First, adoptable children are in oversupply in some places. Thus, in California, disc jockeys blare commercials: “We have many wonderful babies of all races and nationalities waiting to bring love and happiness to the right families…Call the Los Angeles County Bureau of Adoption.” At the same time, the mass media, in a strange non-conspiratorial fashion, appear to have decided simultaneously that men who raise children hold special interest for public. Extremely popular television shows in recent seasons have glamorized womanless households in which men scrub floors, cook, and most significantly, raise children. My Three Son, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Bachelor Father, and Walker are five examples. As alternative family compositions become more socially acceptable, we see same gender couples having biological children and the partners adopting children. With the rapidity with which alternative families are winning respectability in the techno-societies distinctly points in this direction. In the 1960s, in Holland, a Catholic priest married two homosexuals, explaining to critics that “they are among the faithful to be helped.” And in the United States and in other countries around the World, homosexual marriages are now legal. The courts have decided that a couple of stable, well-educated homosexuals can make decent parents. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In the future, however we might even see the gradual relations of bars against polygamy. Polygamous families exist even now, more widely than generally believed, in the midst of “normal” society. Writer Ben Merson, after visiting several such families in Utah where polygamy is still regarded as essential by certain Mormon fundamentalist, estimated that there are some 50,000 people living in underground family units of this type in the United States of America. As people become more accepting of other cultures, as property rights become less important because of rising affluence, the social repression of polygamy may come to be regarded as irrational. This shift may be facilitated by the very mobility that compels men to spend considerable time away from their present homes. The old male fantasy of the Captain’s Paradise may become a reality for some, although it is likely that, under such circumstances, the wives left behind will demand extramarital affair rights. Yesterday’s “captain” would hardly consider this possibility. Tomorrow’s may feel quite differently about it. Still another family form is even now springing up in our midst, a novel childrearing unit that I call the “aggregate family”—a family based on relationships between divorced and remarried couples, in which all the children become part of “one being family.” Though sociologist have paid little attention as yet to this phenomenon, it is already so prevalent that it formed the basis for a hilarious scene in an American movie entitled Divorce American Style. We may expect aggregate families to take on increasing importance in the decades ahead. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Childless marriage, professional parenthood, post-retirement childrearing, corporate families, communes, geriatric group marriages, homosexual family units, polygamy—these, then, are a few of the family forms and practices with which innovative underrepresented groups will experiment in the decades ahead. Not all of us, however will be willing to participate in such experimentation. What of the majority? The pain which alone could rouse the bad human to acknowledge that all was not well, might also lead to a final and unrepented rebellion. And it has been admitted throughout that humans have free will and that all gifts t them are therefore two-edged. From these premises it follows directly that the Divine labour to redeem the World cannot be certain of succeeding as regards every individual soul. Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. However, it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but oneself (though many can help one to make it) and one may refuse. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully “All will be saved.” However, my reason retorts “Without their will, or with it?” If I say “Without their will” I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say “With their will,” my reason replies “How if they will not give in?” The Dominical utterances about Hell, like all Dominical sayings, are addressed to the conscience and the will, not to our intellectual curiosity. When they have roused us into action by convincing us of a terrible possibility, they have done, probably, all they were intended to do; and if all the World were convinced Christians its would be unnecessary to say a word more on the subject. As things are, however, this doctrine is one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous, and the goodness of God impugned. We are told that it is a detestable doctrine—and indeed, I too detest it from the bottom of my heart—and are reminded of the tragedies in human life which have come from believing it. Of other tragedies which come from not believing it we are told less. For these reasons, and these alone, it becomes necessary to discuss the matter. The problem is not simply that of a God who consigns some of His creatures to final ruin. If we were Mahometans, that would be the problem. #RandlphHarris 13 of 21
Christianity, true, as always, to the complexity of the real, presents us with something knottier and more ambiguous—a God so full of mercy that He becomes man and dies by torture to avert that final ruin from His creatures, and who yet, where that heroic remedy fails, seems unwilling, or even unable, to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power. I said glibly a moment ago that I would pay “any price” to remove this doctrine. I lied. I could not pay one-thousandth part of the price that God has already paid to remove the fact. And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is Hell. I am not going to try to prove the doctrine tolerable. Let us make no mistake; it is not tolerable. However, I think the doctrine can be shown to be moral, by a critique of the objections ordinarily made, or felt, against it. First, there is an objection, in many minds, to the idea of retributive punishment as such. This has been partly dealt with before. It is, however, maintained that if the ideas of ill-desert and retribution were removed from it, all punishment became unjust; and a core of righteousness was discovered within the vindictive passion itself, in the demand that the evil human must not be left perfectly satisfied with one’s own evil, that it must be made to appear to one what it rightly appears to others—evil. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Pains plant the flag of truth within a rebel fortress. However, what kind of pain might still lead to repentance? If no further conquest than the planting of the flag ever takes place, it does not. Let us try to be honest with ourselves. Picture to yourself a human who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty, by exploiting for purely selfish ends the noble motions of one’s victims, laughing the while at their simplicity; who, having thus attained success, uses it for gratification of lust and hatred and finally parts with the last rag of honour among thieves by betraying one’s own accomplices and jeering at their last moments of bewildered disillusionment. Suppose, further, that one does all this, not (as we like to imagine) tormented by remorse or even misgiving, but eating like a schoolboy and sleeping like a healthy infant fat and butter and strong as an ox—a jolly, ruddy-cheeked man, without a care in the world, unshakably confident to the very end that one alone has fund the answer to the riddle of life, that God and humans are fools whom one has got the better of, that is one’s way of life is utterly successful satisfactory, unassailable. We must be careful at this point. The least indulgence of the passion for revenge is very deadly sin. Christian charity counsels us to make every effort for the conversion of such a human: to prefer one’s conversation, at the peril of our own lives, perhaps of our own souls, to one’s punishment; to prefer it infinitely. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
However, that is not the question. Supposing one will not be converted, what destiny in the eternal World can you regard as proper for one? Can you really desire that such a human being, remaining what one is (and if one has free will, one must be able to do that) should be confirmed forever in one’s present happiness—should continue, for all eternity, to be perfectly convinced that the laugh is on one’s side? And if you cannot regard this as tolerable, is it only your wickedness—only spite—that prevents you from doing so? Or do you find that conflict between Justice and Mercy, which has sometimes seemed to you such an outmoded piece of theology, now actually at work in your own mind, and feeling very much as if it came to you from above, not from below? You are moved not by a desire for the wretched creature’s pain as such, but by a truly ethical demand that, soon or late, the right should be asserted, the flag planted in this horribly rebellious soul, even if no fuller and better conquest is to follow. In a sense, it is better for the creature itself, even if it never becomes good, that it should know itself a failure, a mistake. Even mercy can hardly wish to such a human one’s eternal, contented continuance in such a ghastly illusion. Thomas Aquinas said suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself; but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
That is to say, if evil is present, pain at recognition of the evil being a kind of knowledge, is relatively good; for the alternative is that the soul should be ignorant of the evil, or ignorant that the evil is contrary to its nature, “either of which,” says the philosopher, “is manifestly bad.” And I think, though we tremble, we agree. The demand that God should forgive such a human while one remains what one is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. However, if it is to be complete, forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered. A human who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness. If Mind is to be regarded aright, we must put our thought even the notion of the cosmic Ever-Becoming. However, to do this is to enter a virtual Void? Precisely. When we take away all the forms of external physical existence and all the differences of internal mental existence, what we get is an utter emptiness of being which can hardly be differentiated after we have taken away its features and individualities, its finite times and finite distances. There is then nothing but a great void. What is the nature of this void? It is pure Thought. It is out of this empty Thought that the fullness of the Universe has paradoxically evolved. Hence it is said that the World’s reality is a secondary whereas Mind’s reality is primary. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
In the Void the hidden oneness of things is disengaged from the things themselves. Silence therefore is not merely the negation of sound but rather the element in which, as Carlyle said, great things fashion themselves. It is the supreme storehouse of power. There is here no form to be perceived, no image born of the senses to be worshipped, no oracular utterance to be listened for, and no emotional ecstasy to be reveled in. In eternal non-existence, one must look for the spirituality of things! The philosopher perceives that there is no such thing as creation out of nothing for the simple reason that Mind is eternally and universally present. “Nothing” is merely an appearance. Here indeed there is neither tie nor space. It is like a great silent boundless circle wherein no life seems to stir, no consciousness seems to be at work, and no activity is in sway. Yet the seer will know by a pure insight which will grip one’s consciousness as it has never been gripped before, that here indeed is the root of all life, all consciousness, and all activity. However, how it is so is as inexplicable intellectually as what its nature is. With the Mind the last word of human comprehension is uttered. With the Mind the last World of possible being is explored. However, whereas the utterance is comprehensible by one’s consciousness, the speaker is not. Silence which speaks but what it says is only that it IS; more than that none can hear. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The Godhead is as void as though it were not. Pass from the station of “I” and “We” and choose for thy home Non-entity. For when thou hast done the like of this, thou shalt reach the supreme felicity. We may begin to grasp the meaning of such statements by grasping the conception that Infinite Mind is the formless, matterless, Void, Spirit. Mortal error is mistaking forms for final realities instead of penetrating to their essence, Mind. Whatever can be said about the unnameable “Void” will be not enough at least and merely symbolic at most. The mystic’s last Word is the Freemason’s lost Word. It can never be spoken for it can never be heard. It is the one idea which can never be transferred to another mind, the one meaning which can never get through any pen or any lip. Yet it is there—the supreme Fact behind all myriad facts of universal existence. To elevate any form by external worship or an internal meditation which should be given only to the formless Void is to elevate an idol in the place of God. Worship of any one other than the Great God, id est, the Beginningless, the Endless, is the first of major sins. Yet to honour the sublime No-thing by thought or rite is hard for the unmetaphysical. And it requires much metaphysical insight to perceive its truth. The cold impersonality of this idea is at first repelled by us with sometime like horror. A change in this attitude can come about only gradually at most. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
However, if we perseveringly pursue our quest of truth, we shall overcome our aversion in the end. If it be truth that Truth is not something we can utter, that the Nameless cannot fitly be represented by any name, we may however continue to use any word we like, provided we keep its limitations clearly in our understanding of it. After all, although the thinking intellect creates its own image of truth, it is the Overself that starts the creative process working. However, in the end, we shall have to reserve our best worship not for a particular manifestation in time but for the Timeless itself, not for a historical personage but for the impersonal Infinite. It would be completely false to regard the Void as being nothing and containing nothing. It is Being itself, and contains reality behind all things. Nor is it a kind of inertia, of paralysis. All action springs out of it, all the World-forces derive from it. The Void is not a nothing-at-all-ness in the absolute sense, or how could the whole cosmos come forth out of it, how could I myself be released by it, how could the very intellect which thinks this concept appear from it into activity and produce thoughts? Is this not the greatest of Paradoxes that the origin of all things is seeming Nothingness? Within that seeming Void lie the vanished planets of yesterday and the evolving Worlds of tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Since all things are limited in some way or other, or conditioned by some circumstances or others, THAT which is unlimited and unconditioned, which does not exist as they do, cannot rightly be called a ting. It is no-thing, the Void. There is no other, no thing, no experience of an object for it. It is alone in the Void. IT is the Principle being both consciousness and unconsciousness, making the first possible and the second significant. Yet neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, as we humans know them, resembles it. There is a single Consciousness without beginning or end, ever the same in itself, beyond and behind which there is nothing else. God with your enfolding wings, please wrap them about me, Lord; please keep fear and danger at bay. May I mount your throne and rest there in peace. God, please wrap your wings about my family and me and bring us through danger in safety. Please remember us this day, O Lord our God for our good, and please be mindful of us for a life of blessing. With Thy promise of salvation and mercy, please deliver us and please be gracious unto us, please have compassion upon us and please save us. Unto Thee do we lift our eyes for Thou art a gracious and merciful God and King. O may our eyes witness Thy return to America. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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If truth is less shapely than fiction, still it is more honest. The most obviously upsetting force likely to strike the family in the decades immediately ahead will be the impact of new birth technology. The ability to pre-set the gender of one’s baby, or even to “program” its IQ, looks and personality traits, must now be regarded as a real possibility. Embryo implants, babies grown in vitro, gene editing, the ability to swallow a pill and guarantee oneself twins or triplets or, even more, the ability to walk into a “babytorium” and actually purchase embryos—all this reaches so far beyond any previous human experience that one need to look at the future through the eyes of the poet or painter, rather than those of the sociologist or conventional philosopher. It is regarded as somehow unscholarly, even frivolous, to discuss these matters. Yet advances in science and technology, or in reproductive biology alone, could with in a short time, smash all orthodox ideas about the family and its responsibilities. When babies can be grown in a laboratory jar what happens to the very notion of maternity? And what happens to the self-image of the female in societies which, since the very beginnings of humans, have taught one that one’s primary mission is the propagation of and nurture of the race? Few social scientists have begun as yet to concern themselves with such questions. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
One who has concerned oneself with birth technology and the woman’s role in the family and society is psychiatrist Hyman G. Weitzen, director of Neuropsychiatric Service at Polyclinic Hospital in New York. The cycle of birth, Dr. Weitzen suggests, “fulfills for most women a major creative need…Most women are proud of their ability to bear children…The special aura that glorifies the pregnant woman has figured largely in the art and literature of both East and West.” What happens to the cult of motherhood, Dr. Weitzen asks, if “her offspring might literally not be hers, but that of a genetically ‘superior’ ovum, implanted in her womb from another woman, or even grown in a Petri dish?” If women are to be important at all, he suggests, it will no longer be because they alone can bear children. If nothing else, we are about to end the mystique of motherhood. Not merely motherhood, but the concept of parenthood itself may be in for radical revision. Indeed, the day may soon dawn when it is possible for a child to have more than two biological parents. Dr. Beatrice Mintz, a developmental biologist at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, has grown what are coming to be known as “multi-mice”—baby mice each of which has more than the usual number of parents. Embryos are placed in a laboratory dish and nurtured until they form a single growing mass. This is then implanted in the womb of a third female mouse. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Then, a baby is born that clearly shares the genetic characteristics of both sets of doners. Thus a typical multi-mouse, born of two pairs of parents, has white fur and whiskers on one side of its face, ark fur and dark hair covering the rest of the body. Some 700 multi-mice bred in this fashion have already produced more than 35,000 offspring themselves. If multi-mouse is here, can “multi-human” be far behind? Under such circumstances, what or who is the mother? And just exactly who is the father? If a couple can actually purchase an embryo, then parenthood becomes a legal, not a biological matter. Unless such transactions are tightly controlled, one can imagine such grotesqueries as a couple buying an embryo, raising it in vitro, then buying another in the name of the first, as though for a trust fund. In that case, they might be regarded as legal “grandparents” before their first child is out of infancy. We shall need a whole new vocabulary to describe kinship ties. Furthermore, if embryos are for sale, can a corporation buy one? Can it buy ten thousand? Can it resell them? And if not a corporation, how about a non-commercial research laboratory? If we buy and sell living embryos, are we back to a new form of slavery? Such are the nightmarish questions soon to be debated by us. To continue to think of the family therefore, in purely conventional terms is to defy all reason. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Faced by rapid social change and the staggering implications of the scientific revolution, super-industrial humans may be forced to experiment with novel family forms. Innovative marginalized members of the community can be expected to try out a colourful variety of family arrangements. They will begin by tinkering with existing forms. We expect a well-ordered society, but we know that in reality some serious violations of justice nevertheless do occur. Conscientious refusal is noncompliance with a more or less direct legal injunction or administrative order. It is refusal since an order is addressed to us and, given the nature of the situation, whether we accede to it is known to the authorities. Typical examples are the refusal of the early Christians to preform certain acts of piety prescribed by the pagan state, and the refusal of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag. Other examples are the unwillingness of a pacifist to serve in the armed forces, or of a soldier to obey an order that one thinks is manifestly contrary to the moral laws as it applies to war. Or gain, in Thoreau’s case, the refusal to pay a tax on the grounds that to do so would make one an agent of grace injustice to another. One’s action is assumed to be known to the authorities, however much one might wish, in some cases, to conceal it. Where it can be covert, one might speak of conscientious evasion rather than conscientious refusal. Covert infractions of a fugitive slave law are instances of conscientious evasion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
There are several contrasts between conscientious refusal (or evasion) and civil disobedience. First of all, conscientious refusal is not a form of address appealing to the sense of justice of the majority. To be sure, such acts are not generally secretive or covert, as concealment is often impossible anyway. One simply refuses on conscientious grounds to obey a command or to comply with a legal injunction. One does not invoke the convictions of the community, and in this sense conscientious refusal is not an act in the public forum. Those ready to withhold obedience recognize that there may be no basis for mutual understanding; they do not seek out occasions for disobedience as a way to state their cause. Rather, they bide their time hoping that the necessity to disobey will not arise. They are less optimistic than those undertaking civil disobedience and they may entertain no expectation of changing laws or policies. The situation may allow no time for them to make their case, or again there may not be any chance that the majority will be receptive to their claims. Conscientious refusal is not necessarily based on political principles; it may be founded on religious or other principles at variance with the constitutional order. Civil disobedience is an appeal to a commonly shared conception of justice, whereas conscientious refusal may have other grounds. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
For example, assuming that early Christians would not justify their refusal to comply with the religious customs of the Empire by reasons of justice but simply as being contrary to their religious convictions, their argument would not be political; nor, with similar qualifications, are the views of a pacifist, assuming that wars of self-defense at least are recognized by the conception of justice that underlies a constitutional regime. Conscientious refusal may, however, be grounded on political principles. One many decline to go along with a law thinking that it is so unjust that complying with it is simply out of the question. This would be the case if, say, the law were to enjoin our being the agent of enslaving another, or to require us to submit to a similar fate. These are patent violations of recognized political principles. It is a difficult matter to find the right course when some humans appeal to religious principles in refusing to do actions which, it seems, are required by principle of political justice. Does the pacifist posses an immunity from military service in a just war, assuming that there are such wars? Or is the state permitted to impose certain hardships for noncompliance? There is a temptation to day that the law must always respect the dictates of conscience, but this cannot be right. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
As we have seen in the case of the intolerant, the legal order must regulate human’s pursuit of their religious interests so as to realize the principle of equal liberty; and it may certainly forbid religious practices such as human sacrifice, to take an extreme case. Neither religiosity nor conscientiousness suffices to protect this practice. A theory of justice must work out from its own point of view how to treat those who dissent from it. The aim of a well-ordered society, or one in a state of near justice, is to preserve and strengthen the institutions of justice. If a religion is denied its full expression, it is presumably because it is in violation of the equal liberties of others. In general, the degree of tolerance accorded opposing moral conceptions depends upon the extent to which they can be allowed an equal place within a just system of liberty. If pacifism is to be treated with respect and not merely tolerated, the explanation must be that it accords reasonably well with the principles of justice, the main exception arising from its attitude toward engaging in a just war (assuming here that in some situations wars of self-defense are justified). The political principles recognized by the community have a certain affinity with the doctrine the pacifist professes. There is a common abhorrence of war and the use of force, and a belief in the equal status of humans are moral persons. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
And given the tendency of nations, particularly great power, to engage in war unjustifiably and to set in motion the apparatus of the state to suppress dissent, the respect accorded to pacifism serves the purpose of altering citizens to the wrongs that governments are prone to commit in their name. Even though one’s views are not altogether sound, the warnings and protests that a pacifist is disposed to express may have the result that on balance the principles of justice are more rather than less secure. Pacifism as a natural departure from the correct doctrine conceivably compensates for the weakness of humans living up to their professions. It should be noted that there is, of course, in actual situations no sharp distinction between civil disobedience and conscientious refusal. Moreover the same action (or sequence of actions) may have strong elements of both. While there are clear cases of each, the contrast between them is intended as a way of elucidating the interpretation of civil disobedience and its role in a democratic society. Given the nature of this way of acting as a special kind of political appeal, it is not usually justified until other steps have been taken within the legal framework. By contrast this requirement often fails in the obvious case of legitimate conscientious refusal. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
In a free society no one may be compelled, as the early Christians were, to preform religious acts in violation of equal liberty, not must a soldier comply with inherently evil commands while awaiting an appeal to a higher authority. These remarks lead up to the question of justification. The reason people like to keep society busy with fake news and chaos is because as long as the people’s passions are spent on each other, they are not being vented on their conquerors. However, “The God of Heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed,” the prophecies said. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to release the oppressed. The true Kingdom of Heaven is already a present reality. However, the Kingdom of God is a rule, not realm. It is the declaration of God’s absolute sovereignty, of His total order of life in this World and the next. That this Kingdom is not of this World, as Jesus later explained, and that it is spiritual rather than temporal makes it no less authoritative; that it is a rule not a realm makes it no less an actual kingdom, its laws less binding than those of nations and states, any more than unseen physical laws are less binding than the laws of legislatures. Jesus is ushering in the Kingdom of God. Almost all of His parables focused on the Kingdom in one aspect or another, while His miracles authenticated His message. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
In converting water to wine, calming storms, multiplying loaves and fishes, healing the sick, and raising the dead, Jesus was not working magic to gather crowds; nor was He showing His power to gain credibility. He was demonstrating the reality of His rule. By exercising dominion over every phase of Earthly existence, He reveled that in fact the Kingdom of God had come. Many people miss Christ’s message because they, like many today, are conditioned to look for salvation in political solutions. People long for a military messiah who will stamp out their hated oppressors. Another reason that people miss the full significance of the message of the Kingdom of God is that Jesus speaks about a Kingdom that has come and a Kingdom that is still to come—one Kingdom in two stages. This still confused people today. A holy God would not take dominion over a sinful World. So He first sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay the debt for human’s sin and thereby provide for humans to be made holy and fit for God’s rule. Christ’s death and resurrection—the D-Day of human history—assure His ultimate victory. However, we are still on the beaches. The enemy has not yet been vanquished, and the fighting is still ugly. Christ’s invasion has assured the ultimate outcome, however—victory for God and His people at some future date. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
The second stage, which will take place when Christ returns, will assert God’s rule over all the Universe; His Kingdom will be visible without imperfection. At that time there will be a final judgment of all people, peace on Earth, and the restoration of harmony unknow since Eden. Many soldiers died to bring about the victory in Europe. However, in the Kingdom of God, it was the death of the king that assured the victory. And this leads to another reason that the Kingdom is often misunderstood: the nature of the King Himself. What king would ever sacrifice oneself for one’s people? Kings sacrifice their subjects, not themselves. What kind would wash one’s servants’ feet, as Jesus did, or freely befriend one’s lowest subjects? Potentates maintain the mystique of leadership by keeping a distance from those they rule. A certain grandeur seems to robe those who occupy high office. There is a certain aloofness, a power that is exuded by great humans that people feel and want to follow. Jesus Christ exhibited none of this self-conscious aloofness. He served other first; He spoke to those to whom no one spoke; He dined with the lowest members of society; He touched the untouchable. He had no throne, no crown, no bevy of servants or armoured guards. A borrowed manger and a borrowed tomb framed His Earthly life. Kings and presidents and governors and mayors and prime ministers surround themselves with minions who rush ahead, swing the doors wide, and stand at the attention as they wait for the great to pass. Jesus said that He Himself stands at the door and knocks, patiently waiting to enter our lives. Christ came as the Lamb of God. However, lambs were for sacrifice. Where was the mighty warrior who would tear Rome to shreds? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Because the nature of the King and the price He paid for His Kingdom, much is required of its citizens, and Jesus made these demands of the Kingdom clear. Through the centuries, however, many of His followers have watered down His teachings, stripped away His demands for the building of a righteous society, and preached an insipid religion concerned only with personal benefit. This distorted view portrays Christianity not as the powerful source of spiritual rebirth and the mediating force for justice, mercy, and love in the World, but as the ultimate self-fulfillment plan. The gospel is not a release for the captives, but confidence for the shy. It is the spiritual equivalent of racy sports cars, designer clothes—a commodity to help one get more out of life. Many humanists have failed to understand human nature. However, many Christians have failed also—failed to understand the utterly radical nature of the central message of Christianity. Other great leaders have expounded creeds, philosophies, and mystical visions. Many are wise and moral, but they are only belief systems: rules to live by, value codes. Humans require more than rules; they require what Jesus’ message of the Kingdom uniquely provides: answers to their most basic needs. What are these needs? To know God. The heat of humans is restless until it finds its rest in Thee. Humans most primal yearning—the need to know God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In announcing His messiahship Jesus was saying that God’s love and just rule has come to Earth—in Him. Humans would thereafter be able to find rest not in a law they could never hope to fulfill, but in the actual person of Jesus Christ. To find salvation. However, how does one come to a personal relationship with this Christ? That is the archetypal question asked by the apostle Paul’s jailer: “What must I do to be saved?” Because we interpret it from our perspective and not God’s, salvation has always been misunderstood. People want salvation from their oppressor. However, Christ same to save them from a much greater oppressor—the sin within one. Sin is essentially rebellion against the rule of God. This is why Jesus coupled the message of the Kingdom with the call to repent and believe. Faith and repentance, the opposite of rebellion, are necessary human responses to the divine initiative of spiritual rebirth, resulting in salvation. When Christ first used the term born again, it was not the evangelical cliché or secular slur it is today. He used it in late-night conversation with Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish religious community, telling him it was the key to entering into the Kingdom of God. Imagine the shock of the religious elite when they heard Jesus’ words: Salvation was not to be found in proud piety or scrupulous adherence to religious rules, but in turning from evil and humble faith in One greater the oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Just as one is born physically in a particular nation, so one is born spiritually by submitting to God’s rule in His holy nation. To find meaning. This relationship with God meets human’s deepest psychological need. As we have already seen, human beings cannot live in a vacuum. We are not a chance collision of atoms in an indifferent Universe or islands amid cold currents of modern culture. We each have a personal purpose in history, which is to be found under the purposeful rule of God, as a beloved citizen of His Kingdom. To find authority. Christianity is more than simply a relationship between humans and God, however. The Kingdom of God embraces every aspect of life: ethical, spiritual, and temporal, and it determines the patter, purpose and dynamic by which God orders life of the Heavenly polis in this World. In announcing this all-encompassing Kingdom, Jesus was no using a clever metaphor; He was expressing the literal theme of history—that God was King and the people were His subjects. This tradition dated back to the days of Abraham and the patriarchs, when God made His original covenant with the Jews to be His “holy nation.” Americans, steeped in the tradition of democracy, find a monarchy, even with Christ on the throne, an alien concept. We think in terms of human rulers whose limitless lust for power is a constant peril to humankind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
However, God is not a mirror reflection of human rulers. He is God—and as such, is entitled to rule over all things. His character, as revealed in the Bible and in the person of Christ, reveals absolute justice, mercy, and love. Prophets promised the coming of Messiah and the eventual establishment of the Kingdom of God. Christ was the fulfillment of the prophecy; He was the final king in David’s royal line. However, Jesus was not just a king for Israel; He was king for all people. His message, then, assumes the ultimate authority humans require: God rules every aspect of what He has made. Life, death, relationships, and Earthly kingdoms are all in His hands. When Christ commanded His followers to “seek first the kingdom of God,” He was exhorting them to seek to be ruled by God and gratefully acknowledge His power and authority over them. That means that the Christian’s goal is not to strive to rule, but to be ruled. While God’s rule is authoritarian, it is also voluntary. The Good News is that the price has been paid, and His Kingdom is open to all who desire admission. If the joyful news of the rule of God is proclaimed, if humans humble themselves and do justice to its claims, if evil is overcome and humans are made free for God, then the Rule of God has already become actual among them, then the Reign of God is in their midst. If every other entity in the Universe and the Universe itself disappeared, God would remain. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
That which always remains the same, never changes, that is reality. Reality is God. THAT is real being which is faultless and partless, and without a single one of the characteristic properties belonging to this physical World. It never varies whereas that World is constantly changing. Such everlasting being is incomparable, unique, and beyond human picturization. THAT is the essence of all things, the base whence, eventually, the Universe is projected. That is the Real which not only is not subject to any change but also would still abide even if the entire Universe vanished. Everything and everyone else must come out of some prior element which traces itself down even to the first and original element, but the Real alone is self-abiding and self-existing. It has its own independent Being. There is no period so far off in the future, no tie so distant in the past, no area anywhere in space, that will be or has been without Being. If humans can find it today, they will find it then as they found it in antiquity. If they commune with it on this Earth, or enter into some relationship with it here, they can do likewise on other planets. Moreover it remains ever the Same, the Unchanged and Unchangeable. Reality being what it is, a gigantic fact which is utterly impregnable against time and change, even the total disappearance of the exponents of that truth which points to it could not alter its own status. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
We must never forget that the entire dynamic movement occurs inseparably within a static blessed repose. Becoming is not apart from Being. Its kinetic movement takes pace in the eternal stillness. World-Mind is forever working in the Universe whereas Mind is forever at rest and its still motionlessness paradoxically makes all activity and motion possible. The infinite unconditioned Essence could never become confined within or subject to the finite limited World-form. The one dwells in a transcendental timelessness whereas the other exists in a continuous time. There cannot be two eternal principles, two ultimate realities, for each will limit the other’s existence and thus deprive it of its absolute character. There is only the One, which is beyond all phenomena and yet includes them. The manifestation of the cosmic order, filled with countless objects and entities though it be, does not in any way or to any extent alter the character of the absolute Reality in which it appears. That character is unvarying—is never reduced to a lower form, never confined in a limited one, never modified by conditions, never deprived of a single iota of its being, substance, amplitude, or quality. It always is what it was. It is the ultimate origin of everything and everyone in this Universe, yet it remains as unchanged by their death as by their birth, by their absence as by their presence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Everything in the Universe is liable to changes, because it was born and must die. We venerate God because He is not liable to change, being ever-existent and self-subsisting, birthless and deathless. Considered from its own standpoint, the infinite can never manifest as the finite, the Real can never alter its nature and evolve into the unreal; hence the pictures of creation or evolution belong to the realm of dream and illusion. The gran verity is that the Universal self has never incarnated into matter, nor ever shall. It remains what it was, is, must forever be—the Unchanged and Unchangeable. The infinite has never, can never, become the finite. The Real is neither the Many nor the Changing but THAT from which these are both derived. Such a truth will never need to be replaced by a newer one: it will hold its place, and satisfy the searching mind, in a thousand years’ time as much as it does today. Bradley’s errors are: (a) to turn the Absolute into a system or a process, and (b) to identify the Absolute with its contents. God of Gentle hands, with arms held wide in benediction: please come between my enemies and me and join us together in peace. Our God and God of our fathers, may our remembrance and the remembrance of our forefathers come before Thee. Please Remember the Messiah of the house of David, thy servant, and America, Thy holy city, and all Thy people, the house of America. Please grant us deliverance and well being, loving kindness, life and peace on this day and forever. Please restore America back to a land of sanity, prosperity, law and order so we can earn the American Dream, which always includes freedom and homeownership. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Cresleigh Homes
Whether you’re admiring the guest bedroom or getting ready for spa night in the Primary bedroom’s ensuite, living life at #MillsStation Residence 2 means enjoying clean, modern lines in a familiar family home layout. 😍
Residence Two at Mills Station is a two story home that has all the conveniences of a single story! At 2,317 square feet, this home features the Owner’s suite on the first floor with two secondary bedrooms on the “pop top” second story. Take advantage of the vaulted ceilings offered in this plan! The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows.
The kitchen opens directly to the dining room allowing for perfect flow. The large kitchen island makes food prep and entertaining easy while the walk in pantry provides ample storage. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light with a covered patio! The Owner’s suite is located on the first floor of this home providing easy access and eliminating the hassle of climbing stairs daily. The Owner’s bathroom is spacious and tranquil including a large free standing soaking tub, walk in shower and large walk-in closet.
This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today!
Check out the interactive floor plan on our website! Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-2/
Sit Down and I Will Tell You a Story, Stand Up and We Will Play a Game!
Some people try to find things in this game that do not exist. Football is two things. It is blocking and tackling. One important class of experiential products will be based on simulated environments that offer the customer a taste of adventure, excitement, titillation or other pleasure without risk to one’s real life or reputation. Thus computer experts, roboteers, designers, historians, architects, automotive engineers, and museum specialists will join to create experiential enclaves that reproduce, as skillfully as sophisticated technology will permit, the splendor of ancient Rome, the pomp of Queen Elizabeth’s court, the traditional arts, ceremonies, calligraphy and flower arranging of Japan, the economic prosperity and rapid development and advancement of China, the rich culture and mysterious of Africa, the superior engineering of Germany, the liveness and flavour of Latin culture, the intelligence of the Middle East, and the hardworking and orderly conduct of America. Customers entering these pleasure domes will leave their everyday clothes (and cares) behind, don costumes, and run through a planned sequence of activities intended to provide them with a first-hand taste of what the original—id est, unstimulated—reality must have felt like. They will be invited, in effect, to live in the past or perhaps even in the future. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Production of such experiences is closer than one might think. It is clearly foreshadowed in the participatory techniques now being pioneered in the arts. Thus “happenings” in which the members of the audience take part may be regarded as a first stumbling step toward these simulations of the future. The same is true of more formal works as well. When Dionysus in 69 was performed in New York, a critic summed up the theories of its playwright, Richard Schechner, in the following words. “Theater has traditionally said to an audience, ‘Sit down and I will tell you a story.’ Why cannot it also say, ‘Stand up and we will play a game?’” Mr. Schechner’s work, based loosely on Euripides, says precisely this, and that audience is literally invited to join in dancing to celebrate the rites of Dionysus. Artists also have begun to create whole “environments”—works of art into which the audience may actually walk, and inside which things happens. For instance, BMW believes that design should always be a reflection of your identity, and so they make cars with a strong personality. When designing the BMW Concept i4, the goal was to make it organic, and less industrial. In its captivating dynamic, engineers wanted to add more nature-inspired elements. More handworked wood, intelligent fabrics—designs for all the sense so one feels like the cabin of the car is a living room. The artists who produce these are really “experiential engineers.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Knowledge gained for research on creating experiences will permit the construction of fantastic simulations. However, it will also lead to complex live environments that subject the customer to significant risks and rewards. The African safari today is a colourless example. Future experience designers will, for example, create gambling casinos in which the customer plays not for money, but for experiential payoffs. Certain American television programs, such as Survivor and The Bachelor, already pay players off in experiential rewards. In the future, simulated and non-simulated experiences will also be combined in ways that will sharply challenge human’s grasp of reality. In Ray Bradbury’s vivid novel, Fahrenheit 451, suburban couples desperately save their money to enable them to buy three-wall or four-wall video sets that permit them to enter into a kind of televised psycho-drama. They become actor-participants in soap operas that continue for weeks or months. Their participation in these stories is highly involving. We are, in fact, beginning to move toward the actual development of such “interactive” films with the help of advanced communications technology. The combination of simulation and “reals” will vastly multiply the number and variety of experiential products. However, the great psych-corps of tomorrow will not only sell individual, discrete experiences. They will offer sequences of experiences so organized that their very juxtaposition with other another will contribute colour, harmony or contrast to lives that lack these qualities. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Beauty, excitement, suspense or delicious sensuality will be programmed to enhance one another. By offering such experiential chains or sequences, the psych-corps (working closely, no doubt, with community mental health centers) will provide partial frameworks for those whose lives are otherwise too chaotic and unstructured. In effect, they will say: “Let us plan (part of) your life for you.” In the transient, change-filled World of tomorrow, that proposition will find many eager takers. Many architects are now designing homes to feel like luxury hotels. These places are all about lifestyles—inviting the community to become part of the property. Adding unique vantage points, creating indoor/outdoor experiences, and making homes larger, function, bright and comfortable is what is making architecture exciting these days. People are always looking for a home that is special, affluent home buyers are seeking homes that are destinations with purpose and meaning, where lifelong memories can be created because luxury is the absence of worry. Home buyers want to know they are in good hands with gorgeous detail abound. Creative space segmentation is necessary, providing both intimae and social zones, as well as furniture delivering comfort and functionality. More extravagant entrance features are emerging, which include large green walls, indoor waterfalls, large chandeliers and multimedia stations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
No longer is the classic bed-table-closet combo enough to make a guest bedroom or primary bedroom feel inviting. Home buyers are looking for creative offices for those who are business travelers, interesting looking TV panels and an extra sofa or accent chairs next to the king-sized bed are just some of the key ingredients for a trendy guest bedroom or primary bedroom. We have also seen colourful walls and eclectic décor mixes, which can definitely appeal to guests or the home’s primary occupant wanting to experience unique accommodation. Bathrooms stopped being perceived as auxiliary rooms, spaces to be minimized, in order to expand living areas. The modern individual expects more than one got in the past. A resort bathroom with spa-like features is an open invite to relaxation and a sure-proof method of alluring potential buyers through the promise of ephemeral luxury. Think en-suite bedrooms, water fall showers, over-sized bathtubs, dual sinks, giant towels, beauty items and plenty of space. Fewer home builder base the appeal of the kitchen strictly on practicability. Cooking is an art and so should be the exhibition space. We have seen more and more home builders come up with exciting designs and turn the kitchen design into a memorable space. Theme are highly recommended, pushing creativity to new heights. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Sensory experiences go a log way. Beside open concept, the blurring of indoor-outdoor boundaries is well integrated in the array of services offered by modern homes builders, who strive to keep their indoor-outdoor transition as ethereal as possible. Not only are the offering more windows, larger windows, walls of glass, but also expanding the patio spaces so nature is brought inside in every possible way. Wood paneling, stone decorations, lush greenery, vibrant lawns, indoor waterfalls—these are just some of the elements employed to release the tension of residents. Sustainability is a delicate issue for home owners as they are doing their best to minimize short term costs. However, being ahead of the game is important, which leads to innovative ideas. Over-sized windows for natural lighting, solar panels to conserve electricity, luxury vinyl wood plank floors, and energy efficient appliances are just a few of the trends for staying green. It is a fact that a home will stay in a buyer’s mind for a long time if the accommodation is unique. With this in mind, home builders are offering individual personalized spaces as never before. With home hubs, butler’s pantries, build-in furniture, card rooms, super family rooms, and workspaces in the house. And more than anything, homes should provide comfort, that feeling of being home away from home, in your own home. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
No mater how luxurious, technology friendly and well-themed the home, coziness is a major factor to consider. Wood additions, inspired decorating items, carpets, a fireplace, build-in tables, uniquely shaped kitchen islands all add up to a memorable home. In the World outside of the home, agriculture and the manufacture of goods will become economic backwaters, employing fewer and fewer people. Highly automated, the making and growing of goods will be relatively simple. The design of new goods and the process of coating them with stronger, brighter, more emotion-packed psychological connotations, however, will challenge the ingenuity of tomorrow’s best and most resourceful entrepreneurs. The service sector, as defined today, will be vastly enlarged, and once more the design of psychological rewards will occupy a growing percentage of corporate time, energy, and money. Investment services, such as mutual funds, for example, may introduce elements of experiential gambling to provide both additional excitement and non-economic payoffs to their shareholders. Insurance companies may offer not merely to pay death benefits, but to care for the window or widower for several months after bereavement, providing nurses, psychological counseling and other assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Based on banks of detail data about their customers, they may offer a computerized mating service to help the survivor locate a new life partner. Services, in short, will be greatly elaborated. Attention will be paid to the psychological overtones of every step or component of the product. Finally, we shall watch the irresistible growth of companies already in the experiential field, and the formation of entirely new enterprises, both profit and non-profit, to design, package and distribute planned or programmed experiences. The arts will expand, becoming as Ruskin or Morris might have said, the handmaiden of the industry. Psych-corps and other businesses will employ actors, directors, musicians, and designers in large numbers. Recreational industries will grow, as the whole nature of leisure is redefined in experimental terms. Education, already exploding in size, will become one of the key experiences industries as it is beginning to employ experiential techniques to convey both knowledge and values to the students. The communication and computer industries will find in experiential production a major market for their machines and for their software as well. With COVID-19 and more people working from home and going to school at home, I would expect Cisco TelePresence IX5000 Series to become more people. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
This system allows immersive collaboration beyond the boardroom. Cisco TelePresence IX5000 Series offers a triples screen, high-fidelity audio and video, and rich collaboration tools, and more bandwidth of existing products. The IX5000 Series brings people together to make decisions faster with high-definition video and theater-quality audio. The immersive, lifelike experience increases engagement, which helps teams build relationships and trust. Participants can share multiple content sources on three 70-inche LCD screens. The 4K cameras allow flexible whiteboard placement and the series features industry-first support for H.265 video on a triple-screen product. This product allows people to work from home, teach from home, attend class from home and interact with others as if they are in the same room. In short, those industries that in one way or another associate themselves with behavioural technology, those industries that transcend the production of tangible goods and traditional services, will expand most rapidly. Eventually, the experience-makers will form a basic—if not the basic—sector of the economy. The process of psychologization will be complete. With more people working from home, spending less on transportation, they will be able to afford larger homes with real offices or even classrooms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The essence of tomorrow’s economy is an emphasis upon the inner as well as the material need for individuals and groups. This new emphasis will arise not merely from the demands of the consumer, but from the very need of the economy to survive. In a nation where all essential material needs can be filled by perhaps no more than three-fourth or even half of the productive capacity, a basic adjustment is required to keep the economy healthy. It is this convergence of pressures—from the consumer and from those who wish to keep the economy growing—that will propel the techno-societies toward the experiential production of the future. The movement in this direction can be delayed. The poverty-stricken masses of the World may not stand idly by as the World’s favoured few traverse the path toward psychological self-indulgence. There is something morally repellent about one group seeking to gratify itself psychologically, pursuing novel and rarified pleasures, while the majority of humankind lives in wretchedness or starvation. The techno-societies could maintain a more conventional production, shifting resources to environmental quality control, and then launching absolutely massive anti-poverty and foreign assistance programs. By creaming off “excess” productivity and, in effect, giving it away, the factories can be kept running, the agricultural surpluses used up, and the society can continue to focus on the satisfaction of material wants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
A fifty-year campaign to erase hunger from the World and family planning methods, for example, would not only make excellent moral sense, but would buy the techno-societies badly needed time for an easier transition to the economy of the future. Such a pause might give us tine to contemplate the philosophical and psychological impact of experiential production. If consumers can no longer distinguish clearly between the real and the simulated, if whole stretches of one’s life may be commercially programmed, we enter into a set of psycho-economic problems of breathtaking complexity. These problems challenge our most fundamental beliefs, not merely about democracy or economics, but about the very nature of rationality and sanity. One of the great unasked questions of our time has to do with the balance between vicarious and non-vicarious experience in our lives. No previous generation has been exposed to one-tenth the amount of vicarious experiences that we lavish on ourselves and our children today, and no one, anywhere, has any real idea about the impact of this monumental shift on personality. Our children mature physically more rapidly than we did. The age of first menstruation continues to drop four to six month every decade. The population grows taller sooner. It is clear that many of our young people, products of television and instance accesses to oceans of information, also become precocious intellectually. However, what happens to emotion development as the ratio of vicarious experience to “real” experience rises? Does the step-up of vicariousness contribute to emotional maturity? Or does it, in fact, make it as slow as molasses on a Winter’s day? #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
And what, then, happens when an economy in search of a new purpose, seriously begins to enter into the production of experience for their own sake, experience that blur the distinction between the vicarious and the non-vicarious, the simulated and the real? One of the definitions of sanity, itself, is the ability to tell real from unreal. Shall we need a new definition? We must begin to reflect on these problems, for unless we do—and perhaps even if we do—service will in the end triumph over manufacture, and experiential production over service. The growth of the experiential sector might just be an inevitable consequence of affluence. For the satisfaction of human’s elemental material needs opens the way for new, more sophisticated gratifications. We are moving from a “gut” economy to a “psyche” economy because there is only so much gut to be satisfied. Beyond this, we are also moving swiftly in the direction of a society in which objects, things, physical constructs, are increasingly transient. Not merely human’s relationships with them, but the very things themselves. It may be that experiences are the only products which, once brought by the consumer, cannot be taken away from one, cannot be disposed of like non-returnable soda pop bottles or nicked razor blades. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
For the ancient Japanese nobility every flower, every serving bowl or obi, was freighted with surplus meaning; each carried a heavy load of coded symbolism and ritual significance. The movement toward the psychologization of manufactured goods takes us in this direction; but it collides with the powerful thrust toward transience that makes the objects themselves so perishable. Thus we shall find it easier to adorn our services with symbolic significance than our products. And, in the end, we shall pass beyond the service economy, beyond the imagination of today’s economists; we shall become the first culture in history to employ high technology to manufacture than most transient, yet lasting of products: the human experience. The flood of novelty about to crash down upon us will spread from universities and research centers to factories and offices, from the marketplace and mass media into our social relationships, from the community into the home. Penetrating deep into our private lives, it will place absolutely unprecedented strains on the family itself. The family has been called the “giant shock absorber” of society—the place to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the World, the one stable point in an increasingly flux-filled environment. As the super-age of information revolution unfolds, this “shock absorber” will come in for some of its own shocks. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Social critics have a field day speculating about the family. The family is “near the point of complete extinction,” says Ferdinand Lundberg, author of The Coming World Transformation. “The family is dead except for the first year or two of child raising,” according to psychoanalyst William Wolf. “This will be its only function.” Pessimists tell us what will take place. Family optimists, in contrast, contend that the family, having existed all this time, will continue to exist. Some go so far as to argue that the family is in for a Golden Age. As leisure spreads, they theorize, families will spend more time together and will derive great satisfaction from joint activity. “The family that play together, stays together,” et cetera. A more sophisticated view hold that the very turbulence of tomorrow will drive people deeper into their families. “People will marry for stable structure,” says Dr. Irwin M. Greenberg, Professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. According to this view, the family serves as one’s “portable root,” anchoring one against the storm of change. In short, the more transient and novel the environment, the more important the family will become. It may be that both ideas in this debate are wrong. For the future is more open than it might appear. #RandolphHrris 14 of 21
The family may neither vanish nor enter upon new Golden Age. It may—and this far more likely—break up, shatter, only to come together again in weird and novel ways. If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till Go sees the World to be either redeemed or no further redeemable. A Christian cannot, therefore, believe any of those who promise that if only some reform in our economic, political, or hygienic system were made, a Heaven on Earth would follow. This might seem to have a discouraging effect on the social worker, but it is not found in practice to discourage one. On the contrary, a strong sense of our common miseries, simply as humans, is at last as good a spur to the removal of all the miseries we can, as any of those wild hopes which tempt humans to seek their realization by breaking the moral law and prove such dust and ashes when they are realized. If applied to individual life, the doctrine that an imagined Heaven on Earth is necessary for vigorous attempts to remove present evil, would at once reveal is absurdity. Hungry human seeks food and sick humans healing none the less because they know that after the meal of the cure the ordinary ups and downs of life still await them. I am not, of course, discussing whether very drastic changes in our social system are, or are not, desirable; I am only reminder the reader that a particular medicine is not to be mistake for the elixir of life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Since political issues have here crossed our path, it is clear that the Christian doctrine of self-surrender and obedience is a purely theological, and not in the least a political, doctrine. Of forms of government, of civil authority and civil obedience, I have nothing to say. The kind and degree of obedience which a creatures owes to its Creator is unique because the relation between creature and Creator is unique: no inference can be drawn from it to any political proposition whatsoever. The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the World we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the World: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in the World and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. We must never mistake the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the “unimaginable sum of human misery.” When a human hesitates too long over taking a course which intuition tells one, he or she should take, and in which one’s higher life is concerned, it may be that destiny will intervene and make one suddenly realize that this is the way, and that all doubts should be thrown out. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
An intuition may be sudden and unexpected, quite contrary to the line of previous thought about the matter. This is certainly true of many appearances but it is not true of other ones. An intuition may come into the mind apparently by hazard, unsummoned, experience. Every thought which comes down to us from that serene height comes with a divine authority and penetrating force which are absent from all other thoughts. We receive the visitant with eagerness and obey it with confidence. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When we have reached he maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the Universe. The addition of a million sufferers adds no more pain. Intuition is not the equal but rather the superior of all other human faculties. It delivers the gentlest of whispers, commands from the Overself, whereas the other faculties merely carry them out. It is the master, they are the servants. The intellect things, the will works, and the emotion drives towards the fulfilment of intuitively felt guidance in the properly developed spiritually erect human. Of all evils, pain only is sterilized or disinfected evil. Intellectual evil, or error, may recur because the cause of the first error (such as fatigue or bad handwriting) continues to operate; but quite apart from that, error in its own right breeds error—if the first step in an argument is wrong, everything that follows will be wrong. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Sin may recur because the original temptation continues: but quite apart from that, sin of its very nature breeds sin by strengthening sinful habit and weakening the conscience. Now pain, like the other evils, may of course recur because the cause of the first pain (disease, or an enemy) is still operative: but pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate. When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy. This distinction may be put the other way round. After an error you need not only to remove the causes (the fatigue or bad writing) but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an “undoing” is required. Pain requires no such undoing. You may need to heal the disease which caused it, but the pain, once over is sterile—whereas every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time. Again, when I err, my error infects every one who believes me When I sin publicly, every spectator either condones it, thus sharing my guilt, or condemns it with imminent danger to one’s charity and humility. However, suffering naturally produces in the spectators (unless they are unusually depraved) no bad effect, but a good one—piety. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Thus that evil which God chiefly uses to produce the “complex good” is most markedly disinfected, or deprived of that proliferous tendency which is the worst characteristic of evil in general. The Real is forever and unalterably the same, whether it be the unmanifest Void or the manifested World. It has never been born and consequently can never die. It cannot divide itself into different “realities” with different space-time levels or multiply itself beyond its own primal oneness. It cannot evolve or diminish, improve or deteriorate. Whereas everything else exists in dependence upon Mind and exists for a limited time, however prolonged, and therefore has only a relative existence, Mind is the absolute, the unique, the ultimate reality because with all its innumerable manifestations in the Universe it has never at any moment ceased to be itself. Only its appearances suffers change because they are in time and space, never itself, which is out of time and space. The divisions of time into past, present, and future are meaningless here; we may speak only of its “everness.” The truth about it is timeless, as no scientific truth could ever be, in the sense that whatever fate the Universe undergoes its own ultimate significance remains unchanged. If the Absolute appears to us as the first in the time-series, as the First Cause of the Universe, this is only true from our limited standpoint. It is in fact only our human idea. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The human mind can take itself the truth of transcendental being only by taking out of itself the screens of time, space, and person. For being eternally self-existence, reality is utterly timeless. Space divisions are equally unmeaning in its “Be-ness.” The Absolute is both everywhere and nowhere. It cannot be considered in spatial terms. Even the word “infinite” is really such a term. If it is used here because no other is available, let me be clearly understood, then, that it is used merely as a suggestive metaphor. If the infinite did not include the finite then it would be less than infinite. It is erroneous to make them both mutually exclusive. The finite alone must exclude the infinite from its experience but not vice versa. In the same way the infinite Duration does not exclude finite time. Hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the defect in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good: for the corruption of ne is the generation of another, and through this it is that a species is kept in existence. Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the Universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much god would be absent from the Universe. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
A lion would cease to life, if there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution. Thus Augustine says (Enchiridion 2): “Almighty God would in wo wise permit evil to exist in His works, unless He were so almighty and so good as to produce good even from evil.” It would appear that is was on account of these two arguments to which we have just replied, that some were persuaded to consider corruptible things—exempli gratia, casual evil things—as removed from the care of divine providence. Dear Lord in Heaven, your bow’s swift arrows: are they blessing or destruction? Please show your blasting face to those who need it. Please show your blessing face to those who deserve it. Whether beating down mercilessly or shining benevolently, please bring what is right to each, God. Whether by fighting off enemies or singing them to peace, please be my protector, and I will always speak sweety of You. Our God and God of our fathers, please accept our rest. Please Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and please grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and please make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Please purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, please grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may America who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people of America and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of America. May the worships of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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It Was Not Merely the Affluence of the Surroundings, but their Programmed Pleasantness!
Supermarkets are all right, but it is much more fun to shop for food in nature. Here, again, we are already moving in the predictable direction, as a glance at air travel demonstrates. Once flying was simply a matter of getting from here to there. Before long, the airlines began to compete on the basis of pretty stewardesses, gourmet food, luxurious surroundings, cocktails, and in-flight entertainment. Americans Airlines, in the past, carried this process one step further by offering what it called “International accent” flights between major American cities. The American Airlines passengers were able to choose a jet on which the food, the music, the magazines, the movies, and the stewardess’ miniskirt were all French. One could choose a “Roman” flight on which the women wore togas. One could have opted for a “Manhattan Penthouse” flight. Or one could have selected the “Olde English” flight on which the women were called “serving wenches” and the décor supposedly suggest that of an English pub. It is clear that American Airlines is no longer selling transportation, as such, but a carefully designed psychological package as well. We can expect the airlines before long to make use of lights and multi-media projections to create total, but temporary, environments providing the passenger with something approaching a theatrical experience. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The experience may, in fact, soon go beyond theater. The experience was expected to go beyond theater. British Airways once considered pointing a wavering finger at the future when it announced a plan to provide unmarried American male passengers with “scientifically chose” blind dates in London. In the event the computer-selected date failed to show up, an alternate would be provided. Moreover, a party would be arranged to which “several additional Londoners of both genders of varying ages” would be invited so that the traveler, who would also be given a tour of discotheques and restaurants, would under no circumstances be alone. The program, called “The Beautiful Singles of London,” was abruptly called off when the government-owned airline came under Parliamentary criticism. Nevertheless, we can anticipate further colourful attempts to paint a psychic coating on many consumer service fields, including retail. Anyone who has strolled through Newport Center, once an incredibly lavish new shopping plaza in Newport Beach, California, could not fail to be impressed by the attention paid by its designers to aesthetic and psychological factors. Tall white arches and columns outlined against a blue sky, fountains, statues, carefully planned illumination, a pop art playground, and an enormous Japanese wind-bell were all used to create a mood of casual elegance for the shopper. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
It was not merely the affluence of the surroundings, but their programmed pleasantness that made shopping there a quite memorable experience. Once could anticipate fantastic variations and elaborations of the same principles in the planning of retail stores in the future. We shall go far beyond any “functional” necessity, turning the service, whether it is shopping, dining, or having one’s haircut, into a pre-fabricated experience. People are not paying big money to eat in dirty plastic tents in the streets, they want the ambiance of dining in luxury that will make the meal worth the cost. We shall watch movies or listen to chamber music as we have or haircut, and the mechanical bowl that fits over the skull of a woman in the beauty parlor will do more than simply dry her hair. By directing electronic waves to her brain, it may, quite literally, tickle her fancy. Bankers and brokers, real estate and insurance companies will employ the most carefully chosen décor, music, closed circuit colour television, engineered tastes and smells, along with the most advanced mixed-media equipment to heighten (or neutralize) the psychological change that accompanies even the most routine transaction. No important service will be offered to the consumer before it has been analyzed by teams of behavioural engineers to improve its psychic loading. Reaching beyond these simple elaborations of the present, we shall also witness a revolutionary expansion of certain industries whose sole output consists not of manufacture goods, nor even of ordinary services, but of pre-programmed “experiences.” The experience industry could turn out to be one of the pillars of super-age of informationalism, the very foundation, in fact, of the post-service economy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
As rising affluence and transience ruthlessly undercut the old urge to possess, consumers begin to collect experiences as consciously and passionately as they once collected things. Today, as the airline example suggests, experiences are sold as an adjunct to some more traditional services. The experience is, so to speak, the frosting on the cake. As we advance into the future, however, more and more experiences will be sold strictly on their own merits, exactly as if they were things. Precisely this is beginning to happen, in fact. This accounts for the high growth rate visible in certain industries that have always been, at least partly, engaged in the production of experiences for their own sake. The arts are a good example. Much of the “culture industry” is devoted to the certation or staging of specialized psychological experiences. Today we find art-based “experience industries” booming in virtually all the techno-societies. The same is true of recreation, mass entertainment, education, and certain psychiatric services, all of which participate in what might be called experiential production. When Club Mediterrancee used to sell a package holiday that took a young French secretary to Tahiti or Israel for a week or two of sun and pleasures of the flesh, it was manufacturing an experience for one quite as carefully and systematically as Bayerische Motoren Werke AG Ultimate Driving Machines. Its advertisements underscore the point. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Thus a two-page spread in The New York Times Magazine began with the headline: “Take 300 men and women. Strand them on an exotic island. And strip them of every social pressure.” Based in France, Club Mediterranee now operates over seventy-four vacation “villages” in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, North America, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Asia, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Similarly, when the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, offers weekend seminars in “body-awareness’ and “non-verbal communication” at $730 per person, or seven-day workshops starting at $900 and costs $1,700 per person for a couple in a private room, it promises not to simply teach, but to plunge its affluent customers into “joyous” new interpersonal experiences—a phrase some readers take to mean adventures deeper spiritual possibilities that will enlighten them and open gateways to change. Group therapy and sensitivity training sessions are packaged experiences. So are certain classes. Thus, going to an Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire studio to learn the latest dance step may provide the student with a skill that will bring enjoyment in the future, but it also provides a pleasurable here-and-now experience for the lonely bachelor or spinster. The learning experience, itself, is a major attraction for the customer. All these, however, provide only the palest clue as to the nature of the experience industry of the future and the great psychological corporations, or psychcorps, that will dominate it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
They that deny God destroy human’s nobility; for certainly, humans are akin to the beast by one’s body; and if one be not of kin to God by one’s spirit, one is a base and ignoble creature. In Aleksandr Solzhenisyn’s masterful novel The Cancer Ward, a young cancerous political prisoner named Oleg finds momentary escape from the hospital’s horrors in an attractive nurse, Zoya. One day Oleg volunteers to help Zoya with her reports. Reading from patient records, Oleg notices hardly any deaths in the hospital. “I see they do not allow them to die here,” he says. “They manage to discharge them in time.” “What else can they do?” responds Zoya. “Judge for yourself. If it is obvious a patient is beyond help and there is nothing left for him but to live out the few last weeks or months, why should he take up a bed? People who could be cured are kept waiting.” Days later, one of Oleg’s gravely ill friends is told he is being released from the hospital. The man struggles to dress, weakly bids adieu to his comrades, and sets out for the streets. The best he can hope for is an empty bench where he can lie down and wait to die. This account may be cruel, but it is not illogical. The Soviet system is committed to the eradication of any vital practice of religion. God is officially dead there. However, the death of God ultimately spells the death of what it means to be truly human. For it worth is not God-given, it must be established by man. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
And atheistic philosophies, such as the Soviet system, treat humans as an object whose value is determined solely by one’s usefulness to society. Why not, then, subject one to whatever will achieve the government’s objectives: oppression, torture, genocide? In utilitarian terms, sending terminal patients out to die is not inhumane, but eminently sensible. Why waste a bed on someone who will not survive? Now contrast The Cancer Ward with the Winchester Clinic of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut, that Mrs. Winchester left a substantial sum of cash to, in memory of William Wirt Winchester, for the care and treatment of tuberculosis patients. This faithful heiress has provided shelter and help for those patients some of who are treatable and suffering or dying in pain, afraid, and alone. Sometimes she is criticized: “Why care for those who are doomed anyway?” But she explains, “They are created by God; they deserve to die with dignity.” Christianity can never be utilitarian; it holds every human being as precious because human beings are created in the image of God. To understand the unique nature of this Judeo-Christian view, we need only compare the ancient Hebrew law codes in the Old Testament with, say, the Assyrian laws of Hammurabi, another Middle Eastern legal code from the same period. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Historian Paul Johnson has noted that the Assyrian code made the rights of property ultimate, while “the Hebrew [laws] emphasized the essential rights and obligations of man and their laws were framed with deliberate respect for moral values.” Jesus continued—and expanded—the Old Testament law. He constantly affirmed the dignity and worth of the lowest member of first-century society—women, children, Gentiles, tax-collectors, lepers. Today’s calmour for human rights is ironic. Much of the activism emanates from those who claim no belief in God. However, consider what many who have had a major influence on modern thinking believed. Karl Marx, for example, thought humans a victim of economic forces. Dr. Sigmund Freud believed all was lost in the dark web of the psyche. Dr. B.F. Skinner insisted that freedom was an illusion and dignity a lost case. More extreme philosophers get downright angry at the snobbery of specialists—those of us who see humans as the highest species—and assert that humans enjoy no special standing in the Universe. We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing a soul. We must learn from Jesus Christ and even love our planet and animal neighbour’s as ourselves. Although we may continue to see normal members of our species as possessing greater capacities…than members of any other species; but we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each and every member of our species. Species membership alone is not morally relevant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
In this light, human dignity and human rights are tenuous assertions. If humans are merely a fortuitous collection of molecules in a meaningless cosmos, why should they have any inhere rights? Humans build their kingdoms in accord with their concept of God. The rise of atheism in the twenty-first century has thus provided unlimited license for tyrants. If there is no morally binding standard above the state, becomes god and human beings mere beasts of bureaucratic burden. A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life. The Judeo-Christian ethic does more than affirm human dignity, however; it also insists that we are inclined to do evil. Humans are more than a beast, but they are not angels. This dual nature is not properly understood apart from what theologians called original sin. No modern parable portrays human’s sinful nature more powerfully than Nobel prize-winning author William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies, in which a planeload of English schoolboys is wrecked on a tropical island. Good British subjects that they are, they attempt to organize themselves into an orderly society while awaiting rescue. However, darker urges soon grip the boys. The veneer of civilization melts away, and many of them revert to savagery, first as a game, then in deadly earnest. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
One of the wounds a boar. Suddenly, “the desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering.” Soon the boys are chanting with ritualistic fevour, “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Bash him in!” A sow is caught and killed in a primitive sacrifice, the head cut off and placed on a post, allegedly to assuage the “beast” some of the boys have encountered. Great black and iridescent green files buzz insistently around the severed head. The boys’ “chieftain” giggles as he rubs his bloodied hands n the next boy’s face. The young savages soon turn on a fat, asthmatic, bespectacled lad nicknamed Piggy, who retains more civility than they care to have on their island. “Which is better,” Piggy asks plaintively as they advance on him, “to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?” Moments later, Piggy is knocked off a cliff. His skull cracks open, his arms and legs twitching. Eventually the pounding waves suck his body into the sea. Piggy’s friend Ralph collapses in a spasm of grief. “With filthy body, mattered hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of the man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise, friend called Piggy.” Later, when the group is rescued, a shocked naval officer asks how such savagery could have happened. “I should have thought that a pack of British boys—your are all British, are you not?—would have been able to put up a better show than that—I mean.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Civilization, empire, education, all of the trappings of human progress had clothed these young innocents. Now, their faces smeared with blood, their consciences apparently inoperative, they bear the guilt of death of two playmates. When William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, the Swedish Academy declared that his novels “illuminate the human condition in the World today.” They reflect as well what Golding described as “an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system, however apparently logical or respectable.” Golding’s views sound grimly anachronistic in a culture constantly heralding human’s ability to achieve utopia through modern science, education, and technology. This notion was given impetus by, among others, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Enlightenment writer who insisted the human misery was rooted in the structures of society. Change the structures and you can the man, he said. Rousseau looked to primitive human experience as a rosy time of innocence free of socially induced vices. From the beginning of human’s history, however, we see not guilelessness, but betrayal and evil. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
After the account of the Garden of Eden the Bible tells the story of the first four people on the planet—and before long, one of them killed his brother. This murder was committed long before the urban blight and social deprivations. There were—and are—no noble savages. Human nature has not changed since Cain. This is vividly illustrated in the memoirs of Cuban poet Armando Valladares, Against All Hope, in which he recounts his twenty-two-year imprisonment by Fidel Castro for speaking out “against Communism because it went against my religious beliefs and some of my more idealistic notions of the World.” For such treason, Valladares was thrown into the human-made hell of a Cuban prison. He was given showers of human urine and excrement by sadistic guards. During an escape attempt he broke three bones in his legal and was captured and brought back to his cell. “Guards stripped us again,” he writes. “They were armed with thick twisted electric cables and truncheons. Suddenly, everything was a whirl—my head spun around in terrible vertigo…The beatings felt as if they were branding me with a red-hot branding iron, but then I suddenly experienced the most intense, unbearable, and brutal pain of my life. One of the guards had jumped with all his weight on my broken, throbbing leg.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
One cannot read this and explain the torture, the sadism, and the evil only in terms of godless political systems. The problem is human nature. The only progress between Cain and the Communist jailers of Armando Valladares has bee the technological sophistication of cruelty. Given the wealth of such examples today, why is it so difficult for modern humans to acknowledge the inherent evil in the human heart? Why is sin an outmoded term, used only by Bible-thumping preachers, born-again zealots, or the titillating covers of paperback thrillers? The core of sadism is s passion to have absolute and unrestricted control over a living being, whether an animal, a child, a man, or a woman. To force someone to endure pain or humiliation without being able to defend oneself is one of the manifestations of absolute control, but it is by no means the only one. The person who has complete control over another living being makes this being into one’s thing, one’s property, while one becomes the other being’s god. Sometimes the control can even be helpful, and in that case we might speak of a benevolent sadism, such as one finds in instances where one persons rules another for the other’s own good, and in fact furthers one in many ways, expect that one keeps holding one in bondage. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, most sadism is malevolent and orthodox psychoanalysis claims that there is a particular aspect of sexuality common in all forms of sadism. That it somehow arouses tyrants sexually to terrorize their victims. Complete control over another human being means crippling one, strangling one, thwarting one. Such control can have all forms and all degrees. Albert Camus’s play, Caligula, provides an example of an extreme type of sadistic control which amounts to a desire for omnipotence. We see how Caligula, brought by circumstances to a position of unlimited power, gets ever-more deeply involved in the craving for power. He sleeps with the wives of the senators and enjoys their humiliation when they have to act like admiring and fawning friends. He kills some of them, and those that remain have to smile and joke. However, even all this power does not satisfy him; he wants absolute power, he wants the impossible. As Camus has him say, “I want the moon.” It is easy enough to say that Caligula is mad, but his madness is a way of life; it is one solution of the problem of human existence, because it serves the illusion of omnipotence, of transcending the frontiers of human existence. In the process of trying to win absolute power Caligula lost all contact with humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Caligula became an outcast by casting them out; he had to become mad because, when the bid for omnipotence failed, he was left a lonely, important individual. The case of Caligula is of course exceptional. Few people ever have the chance to attain so much power that they can seduce themselves into the delusion that it might be absolute. However, some have existed throughout history, up to our time; if they are defeated, they are considered mad-humans or criminals. This extreme solution to the problem of human existence is barred to the average person. Yet in most social systems, including our, even those on lower social levels can have control over somebody who is subject to their power. There are always children, wives, or dogs available; or there are helpless people, such as inmates of prisons, patients in hospitals, if they are not well-to-do (especially the mentally sick), pupils in schools, members of civilian bureaucracies. It depends on the social structure to what degree the factual power of superiors in each of these instances is controlled or restricted and, hence, how much possibility for sadistic satisfactions these situations offer. Aside from all these situations, religious and racially marginalized groups, as far as they are powerless, offer a vast opportunity for sadistic satisfaction for even the poorest of the majority. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Sadism is one of the answers to the problem of being born human when better ones are not attainable. The experience of absolute control over another being, of omnipotence as far as one, or it is concerned, creates the illusion of transcending the limitations of human existence, particularly for one whose real life is deprived of productivity and joy. Sadism has essentially no particular aim; it is not trivial but not devotional. It is the transformation of importance into the experience of omnipotence; it is the religion of psychical cripples. The misreading of the nature of human beings has resulted in the denial of personal responsibility, and is institutionalized into various social reforms; these contributed markedly to the social pathologies of American inner cities. What many of these reforms shared (in varying ways and degrees) was an assumption that people are not in control of their own behaviour and should not properly be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. The economic system is to blame; the social environment is to blame; perhaps accidents and conceivably genetics are to blame. However, there is some truth to that. If people are not raised properly and not taught right from wrong, they may not know what decisions to make. If people are born with intellectual disabilities, they may not know what is correct behaviour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
If people are oppressed by corruption, they may not have any choice but to become a criminal to survive. If politicians and their families are not held accountable by laws, they may continue down the path of evil and sin and keep hurting people because they can get away with it and think it is fun. So, there are factors in society that can contribute to corruption and sin in humans. It can be because they do not know better, or they never face civil and legal consequences for their actions. Any effort to encourage individual initiative and responsibility among America’s politicians and urban poor was derided as “blaming the victim.” Blaming the system rather than the “victim” further eradicated individual responsibility and dignity. However, the elimination of individual responsibility has encouraged the corresponding utopian belief in human’s collective perfectibility. While Christian teaching emphasizes that each person has worth and responsibility before God, utopianism argues that salvation can only be achieved collectively. Utopianism always spells disaster because the utopian holds that if the goal is goodness and perfection, then the use of force is justified. In contrast, the Christian realization that perfection eludes us in this life resists the tyranny and bloodshed of the dictator who promises a brave new World. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Thus, twenty-first century men and woman have inherited a stark dilemma. With God dead or ill, they are stripped of their source of dignity and reduced to sophisticated beasts. At the same time, society denies individual sin, blaming all social ills on environment, and illogically assumes human perfectibility. Both propositions run counter to the evidence of history. Humans are neither ape nor angel. Deep down inside, humans know they are created. They desperately long to know the Power beyond us and discover a transcendent purpose for living. That is why Mrs. Winchester conducted mystic meetings with the spirits in her famous Blue Séance Room. We long as well to shed the guilt of sin, to be free people, forgiven in the sight of the God we know is there. Many search for God through bizarre spiritual journeys, attested to by the popularity of religion and tabloid psychics, reincarnation, Beverly Hills spiritual gurus, crystals, cosmic energy and symbols, seaweed, and channeling. Such contraband only intensify desire to seek contact with God and Jesus and the spiritual World. The occult is a question to discover more than the material World. Modern men and women do not want to be left to thrash about in darkness while the World worships the fake news industry and their favourite tool, politicians, as gods. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The fake news media and politicians will only lead us to a journey that ends gruesomely and shockingly, like the piles of bones at Jonestown. The people’s frustration inevitably deepens into despair. For some, like Hemingway, who accept the logic of this age, the despair turns to tragedy; for millions of others, it fosters a brooding sense of alienation and helplessness. And so we come full circle, back to where we began. For it is this pervasive sense of impotence that has paved the way for the emergence of political saviours and the all-powerful state that promise salvation through changed structures. Before we discuss our future further, we must pray. Your arms are strong, Father; they can hug a child or restrain one from harm. Please wrap them around this planet Earth and all of your children and please heal us and protect us from harm. Please give us a sign that you are alive and love you human children. We trust You to know what is needed. The children of America shall keep the Sabbath and observe it throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant. It is a sign between our Heavenly Father and the children of American forever; for in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and rested. May the people who sanctify the seventh day be sated and delighted with Thy bounty. For Thou didst find pleasure in the seventh day, and didst sanctify it, calling it the desirable of days, in remembrance of creation. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Mansion Designed by Spirits
San Jose, California
California Historical Landmark Number 868
During a Connecticut thunder storm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire. Foretelling her future, one seer warned her of all the countless spirits seeking her soul and to protect herself, she was told to plan a castle and continue its building indefinitely because as long as it I was under construction, she would live; cessation would prove immediately fatal. As the massive mansion was nearing completion, the Winchester House was the midnight rendezvous for legions of ghosts, with special attention accorded those created by a Winchester rifle slug.
Frightened by the death of Mrs. Winchester, the family sought to disappear from society and go into hiding because they did not want to bare the cruse, and the gatekeeper for the spirits was no longer around to protect the family from the spirits. Rumors have it that the Winchester family died out, but others say they simply went into hiding and do not want to be found. Legends have it that they have other castles around the World, in hope of never being discovered. It has been over three months since the doors of the World’s most beautiful and bizarre mansion closed, and the spirits that walk these halls are just as restless as you are. The doors to the Winchester Mystery House are wide open once more!
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If You Do His Work, You Must Prepare for His Wages!
I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things are not what they used to be, I always forget to include myself. The theory of civil disobedience is designed only for a special case of a nearly just society, one that is well-ordered for the most part but in which some serious violations of justice nevertheless do occur. A state of near justice requires a democratic regime, and the theory concerns the role and the appropriateness of civil disobedience to legitimately established democratic authority. It does not apply to the other forms of government nor, except incidentally, to other kinds of dissent or resistance. It is not necessary to discuss this mode of protect, along with militant action and resistance, as a tactic for transforming or even overturning an unjust and corrupt system. There is no difficulty about such action in this case. If any means to this end are justified, then surely nonviolent opposition is justified. The problem of civil disobedience, arises only within a more or less just democratic state for those citizens who recognize and accept the legitimacy of the constitution. The difficulty is one of a conflict of duties. At what point does the duty to comply with laws enacted by a legislative majority (or with executive acts supported by such a majority) cease to be binding in view of the right to defend one’s liberties and the duty to oppose injustice? This question involves the nature and limits of majority rule. For this reason the problem of civil disobedience is a crucial test case for any theory of the moral basis of democracy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A constitutional theory of civil disobedience has three parts. First, it defines this kind of dissent and separated it from other forms of opposition to democratic authority. These rand from legal demonstrations and infractions of law designed to raise test cases before the courts to militant action and organized resistance. A theory specifies the place of civil disobedience in this spectrum of possibilities. Next, it set out the grounds of civil disobedience and the conditions under which such action is justified in a (more or less) just democratic regime. And finally, a theory should explain the role of civil disobedience within a constitutional system and account for the appropriateness of this mode of protest within a free society. As a word of caution, we should not expect too much of a theory of civil disobedience, even one framed for special circumstances. Precise principles that straightway decide actual cases are clearly out of the question. Instead, a useful theory defines a perspective within which the problem of civil disobedience can be approached; it identifies the relevant considerations and helps us to assign them their correct weights in the more important instances. If a theory about these matters appears to us, on reflection, to have cleared our vision and to have made our considered judgments more coherent, then it has been worthwhile. The theory has done what, for the present, ne may reasonably expect it to do: namely, to narrow the disparity between the conscientious convictions of those who accept the basic principles of a democratic society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Civil disobedience as a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law is usually done with the aims of being about change in the law or policies of the government. Civil disobedience can also be considered a deliberate, discriminate violations of the law for a vital social purpose. By acting in this way one addresses the sense of justice of the majority of the community and declares that in one’s considered opinion the principles of social cooperation among free and equal humans are not being respected. A preliminary gloss on this definition is that it does not require that the civilly disobedient act breach the same law that is being protested. It allows for what some have called indirect as well as direct civil disobedience. And this definition should do, as there are sometimes strong reasons for not infringing on the law or policy held to be unjust. Instead, one may disobey traffic ordinances or laws of trespass as a way of presenting one’s case. Thus, if the government enacts a vague and harsh statue against treason, it would not be appropriate to commit treason as a way of objecting to it, and in any event, the penalty might be far more than one should reasonably be ready to accept. In other cases there is no way to violate the government’s policy directly, as when it concerns foreign affairs, or affects another part of the country. A second gloss is that the civilly disobedient act is indeed thought to be contrary to law, at least in the sense that those engaged in it are not simply presenting a test case for a constitutional decision; they are prepared to oppose the statue if it should be upheld. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
To be sure in a constitutional regime, the courts may finally side with the dissenters and declare the law or policy objected to unconditional. It often happens, then, that there is some uncertainty as to whether the dissenters’ action will be held illegal or not. However, this is merely a complicating element. Those who use civil disobedience to protest unjust laws are not prepared to desist should the courts eventually disagree with them, however pleased they might have been with the opposite decision. It should also be noted that civil disobedience is a political act noted that civil disobedience is a political act not only in the sense that it is addressed to the majority that holds political power, but also because it is an act guided and justified by political principles, that is, by the principles of justice which regulate the constitution and social institutions generally. In justifying civil disobedience one does not appeal to principles of personal morality or to religious doctrines, though these may coincide with and support one’s claims; and it goes without saying that civil disobedience cannot be ground solely on group or self-interest. Instead one invokes the commonly shared conception of justice that underlies the political order. It is assumed that in a reasonably just democratic regime there is a public conception of justice by reference to which citizens regulate their political affairs and interpret the constitution. The persistent and deliberate violation of the basic principles of this conception over any extended period of time, especially the infringement of the fundamental equal liberties, invites either submission or resistance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
By engaging in civil disobedience a minority forces the majority to consider whether it wishes to have its actions construed in this ways, or whether, in view of the common sense of justice, it wishes to acknowledge the legitimate claims of the minority. A further point is that civil disobedience is a public act. Not only is it addressed to public principles, it is done in public. It is engaged in openly with fair notice; it is not covert or secretive. One may compare it to public speech, and being a form of address, an expression of profound and conscientious political conviction, it takes place in the public forum. For this reason, among others, civil disobedience is nonviolent. It tries to avoid the use of violence, especially against persons, not from the abhorrence of the use of force in principle, but because it is a final expression of one’s case. To engage in violent acts likely to injure and to hurt is incompatible with civil disobedience as a mode of address. Indeed, any interference with the civil liberties of others tends to obscure the civilly disobedient quality of one’s act. Sometimes if the appeal fails in its purpose, forceful resistance may later be entertained. Yet civil disobedience is giving voice to conscientious and deeply held convictions; while it may warn and admonish, it is not itself a threat. Civil disobedience is nonviolent for another reason. It expresses disobedience to law within the limits of fidelity to law, although it is at the outer edge of theory. The law is broken, but fidelity to law is expressed by the public and nonviolent nature of the act, by the willingness to accept the legal consequences of one’s conduct. One should be willing to undergo the legal consequences for the sake of fidelity to law. The charge may be contested in court, should this prove appropriate. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
This fidelity to law helps to establish to the majority that the act is indeed politically conscientious and sincere, and that it is intended to address the public’s sense of justice. To be completely open and nonviolent is to give bond of one’s sincerity, for it is not easy to convince another that one’s acts are conscientious, or even to be sure of this before oneself. No doubt it is possible to imagine a legal system in which conscientious belief that the law is unjust is accepted as a defense for noncompliance. Humans of great honesty with full confidence in one another might make such a system work. However, as things are, such a scheme would presumably be unstable even in a state of near justice. We must pay a certain prince to convince others that our actions have, in our carefully considered view, a sufficient moral basis in the political convictions of the community. Civil disobedience has been defined so that it falls between legal protest and the raising of test cases on the one side, and conscientious refusal and the various forms of resistance on the other. In this range of possibilities it stands for that form of dissent at the boundary of fidelity to law. Civil disobedience, so understood, is clearly distinct from militant actions and obstruction; it is far removed from organized forcible resistance. The militant, for example, is much more deeply opposed to the existing political system. One does not accept it as one which is nearly just or reasonable so; one believes either that it departs widely from its professed principles or that it pursues a mistake conception altogether. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
While one’s action is conscientious in its own terms, one does not appeal to the sense of justice of the majority (or those having effective political power), since one thinks that their sense of justice is erroneous, or else without effect. Instead, one seeks by well-framed militant acts of disruption and resistance, and the like, to attack the prevalent view of justice or to force a movement in the desired direction. Thus the militant may try to evade the penalty, since one is not prepare to accept the legal consequences of one’s violation of the law; this would not only be to play into the hands of forces that one believes cannot be trusted, but also to express a recognition of the legitimacy of the constitution to which one is opposed. In this sense militant action is not within the bounds of fidelity to law, but represents a more profound opposition to the legal order. The basic structure is thought to be so unjust or else to depart so widely from its own professed ideals that one must try to prepare the way for radical or even revolution change. And this is to be done by trying to arouse the public to an awareness of the fundamental reforms that need to be made. Now in certain circumstances militant action and other kinds of resistance are surely justified. The year 2100 A.D. is closer to us in time than the great depression, yet the World’s economists, traumatized by it, 9/11, the recession of 2008, and the COVID-19 crisis, remain frozen in their attitudes of the past. Economist, even those who talk the language of revolution, are peculiarly conservative creatures. If it were possible to pry from their brains their collective image of the economy of, say, the year 2125, it would look very much like that of 2010—only more so. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Conditioned to think in straight lines, economists have great difficulty imagining alternatives to communism and capitalism. They see in the growth of large-scale organizations nothing more than a linear expansion of old-fashion bureaucracy. They see technological advance as a simple, non-revolutionary extension of the known. Born of scarcity, trained to think in terms of limited resources, they can hardly conceive of a society in which human’s basic material wants have been satisfied. One reason for their lack of imagination is that when they think about technological advance, they concentrate solely on the means of economic activity. Yet the super-age of information revolution challenges the ends as well. It threatens to alter not merely the “how” of production but they “why.” It will, in short, transform the very purposes of economic activity. Before such an upheaval, even the most sophisticated tools of today’s economists are helpless. Input-output tables, econometric models—the whole paraphernalia of analysis that economists employ simply do not come to grips with the external forces—political, social and ethical—that will transform economic life in the decades before us. What does “productivity” or “efficiency” mean in a society that places a high value on psychic fulfillment? What happens to an economy, when, as is likely, the entire concept of property is reduced to meaninglessness? #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
How economies likely to be affected by the rise of supra-national planning, taxing, and regulatory agencies or by a kind of dialectical return to “cottage industry” based on the most advanced cybernetic technologies? Most important, what happens when “no growth” replaces “growth” as an economic objective, When Gross National Product (GNP) ceases to be the holy grail? Only by stepping outside the framework of orthodox economic thought and examining these possibilities can we begin to prepare for tomorrow. And among these, none is more central than the shift in values that is likely to accompany the super-industrial revolution. Under conditions of scarcity, humans struggle to meet their immediate material needs. Today under more affluent conditions, we are reorganizing the economy to deal with a new level of human needs. From a system designed to provide material satisfaction, we are rapidly creating an economy geared to the provision of psychic gratification. This process of “psychologization,” one of the central themes of the super-age of information revolution, has been all but overlooked by the economists. Yet it will result in a novel, surprise-filled economy unlike any human has ever experienced. The issues raised by it will reduce the great conflict of the twenty-first century, the conflict between capitalism and communism, to comparative insignificance. For these issues sweep far beyond economic or political dogma. They involve, as we shall see, nothing less than sanity, the human organism’s ability to distinguish illusion from reality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Much excitement has accompanied the discovery that once a techno-society reaches a certain stage of informational development, it begins to shift energies into automation and autonomy. Many experts see in the services the wave of the future. They suggest the many retail, jobs, food service jobs and manual labor jobs, even news broadcasting, teaching, many aspects of medical care, and law enforcement will be handled by androids and other machines—a prophecy already on its way toward fulfillment. Actors and musicians are expected to be replaced by holograms. What the economists, however, have not done, is ask the obvious question. Where does the economy go next? After the services, what? The high technology nations must, in coming years, direct vast resources to rehabilitating their physical environment and improving what has come to be called “the quality of life.” The fight against air and noise pollution, aesthetic blight, crowding, noise and dirt will clearly absorb tremendous energies. However, in addition to the provision of these public goods, we can also anticipate a subtle change in the character of production for private use. They very excitement aroused by the mushrooming growth of the service sector has diverted professional attention from another shift that will deeply affect both goods and services in the future. It is this shift that will lead to the net forward movement of the economy, the growth of a strange new sector based on what can only be called the “experience industries.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
For the key to post-service economies lies in the psychologization of all production, beginning with manufacture. One of the curious facts about the production in all the techno-societies today, and especially the United States of America, is that goods are increasingly designed to yield psychological “extras” for the consumer. Technology becomes a Veblen good. As the demand of technology increases, which is a luxury good and also a necessity with new products, the price also increases. The future will be packed with positional good, which are goods valued only by how they are distributed among the population, not by how many of them there are available in total (as would be the case with other consumer goods). The source of greater worth of positional goods is their desirability as a status symbol, which usually results in them greatly exceeding the value of comparable good. Various goods have been described as positional in a given capitalist society, such as gold, real estate, diamonds, and luxury goods. More formally in economics, positional goods are a subset of economic goods whose consumption (and subsequent utility), also conditioned by Veblen-like pricing, depends negatively on consumption of those same goods by others. In particular, for these goods the value is at least in part (if not exclusively) a function of its ranking in desirability by others, in comparison to substitutes. Therefore, new is not always better. It depends on the status and ranking of an item you possess. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The term-Veblen good is sometimes extended to include services and non-material possession that may alter one’s social status and that are deemed highly desirable when enjoyed by a relatively few in a community, such as college degrees, Cresleigh Homes, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, big trucks, college degrees, achievements, awards, memberships to exclusive clubs, et cetera. The manufacturer adds a “psychic load” to one’s basic product, and the consumer gladly pays for this intangible benefit. A classic example is the case of the appliance or auto manufacturer who adds buttons, knobs, touch screens, dials to the control panel or dashboard, to replace basic tools that are slightly out of fashion. Or home builders who add luxury features to their new homes like butler’s panties, California rooms, coded entry doors, surveillance systems and other luxury features like stained glass, floor to ceiling windows, and so forth. The manufacturer has learned that increasing the number of gadgets and features, up to a point, gives the operator of the machine or home the sense of controlling a more complex device, and hence a feeling of increased mastery. This psychological payoff is designed into the product. Conversely, pains are taken not to deprive the consumer of an existing psychological benefit. Thus a large American food company proudly launched a labour-saving, add-water-only cake mix. The company was amazed when women rejected the product in favour of mixes that require extra labour—the addition of an egg along with the water. By inserting powered egg in the factory, the company had oversimplified the task of the housewife, depriving her of the sense of creatively participating in the cake-baking process. The powered egg was hastily eliminated, and women went happily back to cracking their own eggs. Once again a product was modified to provide a psychic benefit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Examples like these can be multiplied endlessly in almost any major industry, from soap and clothing stores to dishwashers and diet colas. According to Dr. Emanuel Demby, president of Motivational Programmers, Incorporated, a research firm employed in the United States of America and Europe by such blue-chip corporations as General Electric, Caltex, and IBM, “The engineering of psychological factors into manufactured goods will be a hallmark of production in the future—not only in consumer goods, but in industrial hardware. “Even the big cranes and derricks built today embody this principle. Their cabs are streamlined, slick like something out of the twenty-first century. Cater-pillar, International Harvester, Ferguson—all of them. Why? These mechanical monsters do not dig better or hoist better because the cab is aesthetically improved. However, the contractor who buys them likes it better. The men who work on them like it better. The contractor’s customers like it better. So even the manufacturers of earthmoving equipment begin to pay attention to non-utilitarian—id est, psychological—factors.” Beyond this, Dr. Demby asserts, manufacturers are devoting more attention to reducing tensions that accompany the use of certain products. Manufacturers of sanitary napkins, for example, know that women have a fear of stopping up the toilet when disposing of them. “A new product ha been developed,” he says, “that instantly dissolves on contact with water. It does not perform its basic function any better. However, it relieves some of the anxiety that went with it. This is psychological engineering if ever there was any!” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Affluent consumers are willing and able to pay for such niceties. As disposable income rises, they become progressively less concerned with price, progressively more insistent on what they call “quality.” For many products quality can still be measured in the traditional terms of workmanship, durability and materials. However, for a fast-growing class of products, such differences are virtually undetectable. Blindfolded, the consumer cannot distinguish Brand A from Brand B. Nevertheless, she often argues fiercely that one is superior to another. This paradox vanishes once the psychic component of production is taken int account. For even when they are otherwise identical, there are likely to be marked psychological differences between one product and another. Advertisers strive to stamp each product with its own distinct image. These images are functional: they fill a need on the part of the consumer. The need is psychological, however, rather than utilitarian in ordinary sense. Thus we find that the term “quality” increasingly refers to the ambience, the status associations—in effect, the psychological connotations of the product. As more and more of the basic material needs of the consumer are met, it is strongly predictable that even more economic energy will be directed at meeting the consumer’s subtle, varied and quite personal needs for beauty, prestige, individuation, and sensory delight. The manufacturing sector will channel ever greater resources into the conscious design of psychological distinctions and gratifications. They psychic component of goods production will assume increasing importance. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
A merciful human aims at one’s neighbour’s good and so does “God’s will,” consciously co-operating with “the simple good.” A cruel human oppresses one’s neighbour, and so does simple evil. However, in doing such evil, one is used by God, without one’s own knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good—so that the first human serves God as a son (or child), and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John. The whole system is, so to speak, calculated for the clash between good humans and bad humans, and the good fruits of fortitude, patience, pity and forgiveness for which the cruel human is permitted to be cruel, presuppose that the good human ordinarily continues to seek simple good. I say “ordinarily” because a human is sometimes entitled to hurt (or even, in my opinion, to kill) one’s fellow, but only where the necessity is urgent and the good to be attained obvious, and usually (though not always) when one who inflicts the pain has a definite authority to do so—a parent’s authority derived from nature, a magistrate’s or soldier’s derived from civil society, or a surgeon’s derived, most often, from the patient. To turn this into a general charter for afflicting humanity because the affliction is good for them is not indeed to break the Divine scheme but to volunteer for the post of Satan within that scheme. If you do his work, you must prepare for his wages. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The problem about avoiding our own pain admis a similar solution. Some ascetics have used self-torture. As a layman, I offer no opinion on the prudence of such a regimen; but I insist that, whatever its merits, self-torture is quite a different thing from tribulation sent by God. Everyone knows that fasting is a different experience from missing your dinner by accident or through poverty. Fasting asserts the will against the appetite—the reward being self-mastery and the danger pride: involuntary hunger subjects appetite and will together to the Divine will, furnishing an occasion for submission and exposing us to the danger or rebellion. However, the redemptive effect of suffering lies chiefly in its tendency to reduce the rebel will. Ascetic practices, which in themselves strengthen the will, are only useful in so far as they enable the will to put its own house (the passions) in order, as a preparation for offering the whole human to God. They are necessary as a means; as an end, they would be abominable, for in substituting will for appetite and there stopping, they would merely exchange the animal self for the diabolical self. It was, therefore, truly said that only God can mortify. Tribulation does its work in a World where human beings are ordinarily seeking, by lawful means, to avoid their own natural evil and to attain their natural god, and presuppose such a World. In order to submit the will to God, we must have a will and that will must have objects. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Christian renunciation does not mean stoic “Apathy,” but a readiness to prefer God to inferior ends which are in themselves lawful. Hence the Perfect Man brought to Gethsemane a will, and a strong will, to escape suffering and death is such escape were compatible with the Father’s will, combined with a perfect readiness for obedience if it were not. Some of the saints recommend a total renunciation at the very threshold of our discipleship; but I think this can mean only a total readiness for every particular renunciation that may be demanded, for it would not be possible to live from moment to moment willing nothing but submission to God as such. What would be the material for the submission? It would seem self-contradictory to say “What I will is to subject what I will to God’s will,” for the second what has no content. Doubtless we all spend too much care in the avoidance of our own pain: but a duly subordinated intention to avoid it, using lawful means, is in accordance with nature—that is, with the whole working system of creaturely life for which the redemptive work of tribulation is calculated. It would be quite false, therefore, to suppose that the Christian view of suffering is incompatible with the strongest emphasis on our duty to leave the World, even in a temporal sense, better than we found it. In the fullest parabolic picture which He gave to the Judgment, Our Lord seems to reduce all virtue to active beneficence: and though it would be misleading to take that one picture in isolation from the Gospel as a whole, it is sufficient to place beyond doubt the basic principles of the social ethics of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Before Abraham was God. God is a higher mentalism. “I am” points to the eternal One where no individual entity ever was, is, or shall be. Philosophy raises the questions of Reality and pursues it until an answer can be found. That answer assets there is something unique which alone can be the Real, which ever was, is, and shall be. Philosophy’s fundamental postulate is that there is but one ultimate Power, one sublime Reality, one transcendent Being. It is invisible to all, since it is the power that makes the World visible. It is without form, since it is the Substance out of which all forms are made. The Real is unique—the only undivided, unsplit being beyond which there is nothing else. There is nothing else either beyond it or besides it. It is the unique not only because of what IT is but also because two statements concerning IT can be quite contradictory, yet each can still be correct! Ne transcends all categories. Since the Real is unique, the One without a second and not the One which is related to the Many that spring out of it, it cannot correctly be set up in opposition to the Unreal, the Illusory, the Appearance. They are not on the same level. That which both Greek Plato and Indian Vedantin called “the One” did not refer to the beginning figure of a series, but to “One-without-a-Second.” It is unique. There is nothing to which it can be justly likened, or with which it can be compared. This must be so since it goes beyond and transcends all things without any exception. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Whatever is said of it will only succeed in describing an idea in the mind of the sayer, and this goes beyond and transcends all ideas, again without any exception. You can compare one being or one thing with another but not This, not This! There is a Mind which is self-existent, unique, unlike anything else, unbegotten. The Universal Mind is also unique in that, while comprehending all things, it is itself incomprehensible. It stands alone, unique, unseen and untouchable. Yet from it emerge all the gods of all the planets which they govern, all the ethical injunctions which humans need and must in the end. Please stand about me, your protective spirits, on all six sides, please establish your guards. From all dangers, no matter from what quarter, whether from above or below, please keep me safe. My Lord at my right hand, and my Lord at my left: please be with me throughout my life, watching over me by night and by day. Thy dwelling there forever. Mayest Thou be exalted and sanctified in Jerusalem, Thy city, throughout all generations and to all eternity. O please let our eyes behold the establishment of Thy kingdom, according to the word that was spoken in the inspired Psalms of David, Thy righteous anointed: The Lord shall reign forever. Thy God, O American, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah! Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Your arms are strong, Father; they can hug a child or restrain one from harm. Please Wrap them about me: I trust You to know which is needed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
CRESLEIGH RANCH: BRIGHTON STATION– Rancho Cordova, CA
3-5 Beds 3-3.5 Bath 2,054-3,634 Square Feet
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!
Eco-Technological Development is Firmly Convinced that Human Nature is Eternal and Stability Will Return!
The human task is to make of oneself a work of art. It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief. There are four chief ways in which guidance may be given. They are: intuitive feeling, giving in a general ways approbation or rejection of a proposed course of action; direct and precise inner message; the shaping of outer circumstances; and the teaching of inspired texts. If all four exist together, and if they all harmonize, then you may step forward in the fullest assurance. However, if there are contradictions between them, then great caution and some delay is certainly advisable. It is also needful to remember that the higher self can only be known by the higher part of the mind, that is, the intuition. The emotions are on a lesser and lower level, however noble or religious they may be. The immense satisfaction which the ecstatic raptures give is no indication that one is directly touching reality, but only that one is coming closer to it. They may seem purely spiritual, but they still belong to the ego’s feeling nature and if one believes otherwise one will fall into self-deception. Only through the pure intuition, freed from emotional egoism and transcending intellectual illusion, can one really make a contact with the Overself. And that will happen in a state of utter and perfect tranquillity; there will be none of the emotional excitement which marked the successful practice of the earlier stage of meditation exercises. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
When the deliverance of intuition cancels the deliverance of reason, one may trust oneself to the first, but only when one is sure it is what it purports to be. When one finds some of one’s own intuitions formulated and printed in someone else’s book, one feels their truth is confirmed and one’s own mind confronted. One has the right to judge an intuition rationally before submitting to it, but what if one’s judgment is itself wrong? Intuition may support reason but must supplant it only on the gravest occasions. The sudden revelation of correct understanding, whether in certain situations or about uncertain problems, may come unexpectedly or abruptly anytime during the day. It springs up of its own accord or it appears in a dream message. If the intuitive feeling leads one gently at some times, it also leads one firmly at other times. An intuition is directly self-revealing; it does not depend on what kind of thought and study were done before it appeared. It is also self-evident: the correctness of the receiving conscious is very calm, and when the lapse of time tends to strengthen its authority. The intuitive answer may come in one of several ways, but the commonest is either a self-evident that one cannot help thinking it. This is how intuition usually appears and is usually recognized for what it is. Develop them that another sign to recognize intuitions is the unexpectedness. #RandolphHrris 2 of 21
The mysterious appearance of an intuition may well make us ask where it comes from. At one moment it is no there; at the next it is lodged in the mind. Sometimes we are wiser than we know and utter involuntary answers which surprise us with their unexpected wisdom or unknown Truth in one way intuitions are born. Because it comes from within, it comes with its own authority. When it is “the real thing,” the seeker will not have to question examine or verify its authenticity, will not have to run to others for their appraisal of its worth or its rejection as a pseudo-intuition. One will know overwhelmingly what it is in the same way that one knows who one is. Education and experience alone do not make the mind; there is something higher that mixed itself in now and again with disconcerting incomprehensible spontaneity. One reason why an intuition is so often missed is that it flashes into the mind as disjointedly, as abruptly, and as inconsequentially as a person or s thing sometimes comes momentarily into the field of vision through the corner of an eye. Today the human with a pacemaker or a plastic aorta is still recognizably a human. The inanimate part of one’s body is still relatively unimportant in terms of one’s personality and consciousness. However, as the proportion of machine components rise, what happens to one’s awareness of self, one’s inner experience? If we assume that the brain is he seat of consciousness and intelligence, and that no other part of the body affects personality or self very much, then it is possible to conceive of a disembodied brain—a brain without arms, legs, spinal cord or other equipment—as a self, a personality, an embodiment of awareness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It may then become possible to combine the human brain with a whole set of artificial sensors, receptors, and effectors, and to call that tangle of wires and plastic a human being. All this may seem to resemble medieval speculation about the number of angels who can pirouette on a pinhead, yet the first small seps toward some form of human-machines symbiosis are already being taken. Moreover, they are being taken not by a lone mad scientist, but by thousands of highly trained engineers, mathematicians, biologists, surgeons, chemists, neurologists and communications specialists. Dr. W. G. Walter’s mechanical “tortoises” are machines that behave as though they had been psychologically conditioned. These tortoises were early specimens of a growing breed of robots ranging from the “Perceptron” which could learn (and even generalize) to the more recent “Wanderer,” a robot capable of exploring an area, building up in its memory an “image” of the terrain, and able even to indulge in certain operations comparable, at least in some respects, to “contemplative speculation” and “fantasy.” Experiments by Ross Ashby, H. D. Block, Frank Rosenblatt and others demonstrate that machines can learn from their mistakes, improve their performance, and, in certain limited kinds of learning, outstrip human students. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Reports Dr. Block, professors of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University: “I do not think that there is a task you can name that a machine cannot do—in principle. If you can define a task and a human can do it, then a machine can, at least in theory, also do it. The converse, however, is not true.” Intelligence and creativity, it would appear, are not a human monopoly. Robotology may be the new wave of the future. Technicians at Disneyland have created extremely life-life computer-controlled humanoids capable of moving their arms and legs, grimacing, smiling, glowering, simulating fear, joy and a wide range of other emotions. Built of clear plastic, that according to one reporter, “does everything but bleed,” the robots chase girls, play music, fire pistols, and so closely resemble human forms that visitors routinely shriek with fear, flinch and otherwise react as though they were dealing with real human beings. The purposes to which these robots are put may seem trivial, but the technology on which they are based is highly sophisticated. It depends heavily on knowledge acquired from the space program—and this knowledge is accumulating rapidly. There appears to be no reason, in principle, why we cannot go forward from these present primitive and trivial robots to build humanoid machines capable of extremely varied behaviour, capable of even “human” error and seemingly random choice—in short, to make them behaviourally indistinguishable from humans except by means of highly sophisticated or elaborate tests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
At that point we shall face the novel sensation of trying to determine whether the smiling, assured humanoid behind the airline reservation counter is a pretty young lady or a carefully wired robot. (This raises a number of half-amusing, half-serious problems about the relationships between humans and machines, including emotional and even relationships involving pleasure of the flesh. Professor Block at Cornell speculates that human-made relationships involving pleasures of the flesh may not be too far distant. Pointing out that people often develop emotional attachment to the machines they use, he suggests that we shall have to give attention to the “ethical” questions arising from our treatment of “these mechanical objects of our affection and passion.”) The likelihood the that flight attendant with be both human and robot is likely. The thrust toward some form of human-machine symbiosis is furthered by out increasing ingenuity in communicating with machines. A great deal of much-publicized work is being done to facilitate the interaction of humans and computers. However, quite apart from this, Russian and American scientists have both been experimenting with the placement or implantation of detectors that pick up signals from the nerve ends at the stub of an amputated limb. These signals are then amplified and used to activate an artificial limb, thereby making a machine directly and sensitively responsive to the nervous system of a human being. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The human need not “think out” one’s desires; even involuntary impulses are transmittable. The respon 89sive behaviour of the machine is as automatic as the behaviour of one’s own hand, eye or leg. In Flight to Arras, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, novelist, poet and pioneer aviator, described buckling himself into the seat of a fighter plane during World War II. “All this complication of oxygen tubes, heating equipment; these speaking tubes that form the ‘intercom’ running between the members of the crew. This mask through which I breathe. I am attached to the plane by a rubber tube as indispensable as an umbilical cord. Organs have been added to my being, and they seem to intervene between me and my heart.” We have come far since those distant days. Space biology is marching irresistibly toward the day when the astronaut will not merely be buckled into one’s capsule, but become a part of it in the full symbiotic sense of the phrase. One aim is to make the craft itself a wholly self-sufficient Universe, in which algae is grown for food, water is recovered from body waste, air is recycled to purge it of the ammonia entering the atmosphere from urine, et cetera. In this totally enclosed fully regenerative World, the human being becomes an integral part of an on-going micro-ecological process whirling through the vastness of space. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Thus Theodore Gordon, author of The Future and himself a leading space engineer, writes: “Perhaps it would be simpler to provide life support in the form of machines that plug into the astronaut. One could be fed intravenously using a liquid food compactly stored in a remote pressurized tank. Perhaps direct processing of body liquid wastes, and conversion to water, could be accomplished by a new type of artificial kidney built in as part of the spaceship. Perhaps sleep could be induced electronically…to lower one’s metabolism.” Und so weiter. One after another, the body functions of human become interwoven with, dependent on, and part of, the machine functions of the capsule. The ultimate extension of such work, however, is not necessarily to be found in the outer reaches of space; it may well become a common part of everyday life here on the mother planet. This is the direct link-up of the human brain—stripped of its supporting physical structures—with the computer. Indeed, it may be that the biological component of the supercomputers of the future may be massed human brains. The possibility of enhancing human (and machine) intelligence by linking them together organically opens enormous and exciting probabilities, so exciting that Dr. R. M. Page, director of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, has publicly discussed the feasibility of a system in which human thoughts are fed automatically into the storage unit of a computer to form the basis for machine decision-making. Furthermore, research from countless sources contributes toward the eventual symbiosis. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
In one of the most fascinating, frightening and intellectually provocative experiments ever recorded, Professor Robert White, director of neurosurgery at the Metropolitan General Hospital in Cleveland, has given evidence that the brain can be isolated from its body and kept alive after the “death” of the rest of the organism. The experiment, described in a brilliant article by Oriana Fallaci, saw a team of neurosurgeons cut the brain out of a rhesus monkey, discard the body, then hook the brain’s carotid arteries up to another money, whose blood then continued to bathe the disembodied organ, keeping it alive. Said one of the members of the medical team, Dr. Leo Massopust, a neurophysiologist: “The brain activity is largely better than when the brain had a body…No doubt about it. I even suspect that without his senses, he can think more quickly. What kind of thinking, I do not know. I guess he is primarily a memory, repository for information stored when he had his flesh; he cannot develop further because he no longer has the nourishment of experience. Yet this, too, is a new experience.” The brain survived for five hours. It could have lasted much longer, had it served the purposes of research. Professor White has successfully kept other brains alive for days, using machinery, rather than a living monkey, to keep the brain washed with blood. “I do not think we have reached the stage,” he told Miss Fallaci, “where you can turn humans into robots, obedient sheep. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
“Yet…it could happen, it is not impossible. If you consider that we can transfer the head of a man onto the trunk of another man, if you consider that we can isolate the brain of a human and make it work without its body…To me, there is no longer any gap between science fiction and science…We could keep Dr. Einstein’s brain alive and make it function normally.” Not only, Professor White implies, can we transfer the head of one person to the shoulders of another, not only can we keep a head or a brain “alive” and functioning, but it can all be done, with “existing techniques.” Indeed, he declares, “The Japanese will be the first to [keep an isolated human head alive]. I will not, because I have not resolved as yet this dilemma: Is it right or not?” A devout Catholic, Dr. White is deeply troubled by the philosophical and moral implications of his work. As of the year 2018, a team of scientists recently revealed they had successfully conducted experiments on hundreds of pigs that involved keeping their brains alive for up to 36 hours after the animals had been decapitated. Researcher Dr. Nenad Sestan, who lead the team of Yale University scientists, disclosed the nature of the research in a meeting at the National Institutes of Health to discuss the ethical concerns surrounding edge research with the human brain. In essence they were able to successfully remove the pigs’ heads and resuscitate their brains while no longer connected to a body. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Through a delicate, complex process they were able to keep the brains alive by connecting them to a closed-loop system called “BrainEX” that pumps oxygen-rich artificial blood through the necessary areas of the brain to sustain life. The researchers intent, reportedly, is to create a complete atlas of the connections between human brain cells, a monumental undertaking that has never been done. By keeping the pig brains alive, they are able to study them in ways that will contribute to further breakthroughs. This could lead to a radical enhancement of our understanding of the human brain. The research itself is remarkable and, it could change everything. We may have to evolve the way we think about death, consciousness, souls, and what it means to be human. As the brin surgeons and he neurologist probe further, as the bio-engineers and the neurologists probe further, as the bio-engineers and the mathematicians, the communications experts and robot-builders become more sophisticated, as the space humans and their capsules grow closer and closer to one another, as machines begin to embody biological components and humans come bristling with sensors and mechanical organs, the ultimate symbiosis approaches. The work converges. Yet the greatest marvel of all is not organ transplantation or symbiosis or underwater engineering. It is not technology, nor science itself. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The greatest and most dangerous marvel of all is the complacent past-orientation of the race, its unwillingness to confront the reality of acceleration. Thus humans move swiftly into an explored Universe, into a totally new stage of eco-technological development, firmly convinced that “human nature is eternal” or that “stability will return.” He stumbles into the most violent revolution in human history muttering, in the words of one famous, though myopic sociologist, that “the processes of modernization…have been more or less ‘completed.’” He simply refuses to imagine the future. In 1865 a newspaper editor told his readers that “Well informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.” Barely a decade later, the telephone erupted from Mr. Bell’s laboratory and changed the World. One the very day that the Wright brothers took wing, newspapers refused to report the event because their sober, solid, feet-on-the-ground editors simply could not bring themselves to believe it had happened. After all, a famous American astronomer, Dr. Simon Newcomb, had not long before assured the World that “No possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which humans shall fly long distances.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Not long after this, another expert announced publicly that it was “nothing less than feeblemindedness to expect anything to come of the horseless carriage movement.” Six years later the one-millionth Ford automobile rolled off an assembly line. And then there was the great Dr. Rutherford, himself, the discoverer of the atom, who said in 1933 that the energy in the atom’s nucleus would never be released. Nine years later: the first chain reaction. Again and again the human brain—including the first class scientific brain—has blinded itself to the novel possibilities of the future, has narrowed its field of concern to gain momentary reassurance, only to be rudely shaken by the accelerative thrust. This is not to imply that all the scientific or technological advances so far discussed will necessarily materialize. Still less does it imply that they will all occur between now and the turn of the century. Some will, no doubt, die a-borning. Some may represent blind alleys. Others will succeed in the lab, but turn out to be impractical for one reason or another. Yet all this is unimportant. For even if none of these developments occur, others, perhaps even more unsettling, will. We have scarcely touched on the computer revolution and the far-ramifying changes that must follow in its churning wake. We have barely mentioned the implications of the thrust into outer space, an adventure that could, before the new millennium arrives, change all our lives and attitudes in radical and as yet unpredicted ways. (What would happen if an astronaut or space vehicle returned to Earth contaminated with some fast-multiplying, death-dealing microorganism or space ghost?) #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
We have said nothing about the laser, the holograph, the powerful new instruments of personal and mass communication, the new technologies of crime and espionage, new forms of transport and construction, the developing horror of chemical and bacteriological warfare techniques, the radiant promise of solar energy, the discovery that life can be conceived in a test tube, the startling new tools and techniques for education, and an endless list of other fields in which high-impact changes lie just ahead or are already here. In the coming years, advances in all these fields will fire off like a series of rockets carrying us out of the past, plunging us deeper into the new society. Now will this new society quickly settle into a steady state. It, too, will quiver and crack and roar as it suffers jolt after jolt of high-energy change. For the individual who wishes to live in one’s time, to be a part of the future, the super-industrial revolution offers no surcease from change. It offers no return to the familiar past. It offers only the highly combustible mixture of transience and novelty. This massive injection of speed and novelty into the fabric of society will force us not merely to cope more rapidly with familiar situations, events and moral dilemmas, but to cope at a progressively faster rate with situations that are, for us, decidedly unfamiliar, “first-time” situations, strange, irregular, unpredictable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
This will significantly alter the balance that prevails in any society between the familiar and unfamiliar elements in the daily life of its people, between the routine and non-routine, the predictable and unpredictable. The relationship between these two kinds of daily-life elements can be called the “novelty ratio” of the society, and as the level of newness or novelty rises, less and less of life appears subject to our routine forms of coping behaviour. More and more, there is a growing weariness and wariness, a pall of pessimism, a decline in our sense of mastery. More and more, the environment comes to seem chaotic, beyond human control. Thus two great social forces converge: the relentless movement toward transience is reinforced and made more potentially dangerous by a rise in the novelty ratio. Nor, as we shall next see, is this novelty to be found solely in the technological arrangements of the society-to-be. In its social arrangements, too, we can anticipate the unprecedented, the unfamiliar, the bizarre. All things which are as they ought to be are conformed unto this second law eternal; and even those things which to this eternal law are not conformable are notwithstanding in some sort ordered by the first eternal law. There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by “judgment” (id est, social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Blessed are we when persecuted, but we may avoid persecution by flying from city to city, and may pray to be spared it, as Our Lord prayed in Gethsemane. However, if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, one’s submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads. If wholeness or integration consists in the union of opposites, symbolized by the emergence of quaternities and mandalas, it follows that the most obvious pair of opposites, good and evil, are to be found in the self. Yet the self, as we have seen, is a God-image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one. The conventional Christian view of God is dualistic, in that God is entirely good (the doctrine of the Summum Bonum), while evil is contained in Satan. However, earlier Christian belief was monotheistic. Clement of Rome taught that God rules the World with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan. All of our lives, many of us has wrestled with the problem of the origin of evil. Just as we have to remember the gods of antiquity in order to appreciate the psychological value of the anima/animus archetype, so Christ is our nearest analogy of the self and its meaning. It is naturally not a question of a collective value artificially manufactured or arbitrarily awarded, but of one that is effective and present per se, and that makes its effectiveness felt whether the subject is conscious of it or not. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Yet, though the attributes of Christ (consubstantiality with the Father, co-eternity, filiation, parthenogenesis, crucifixion, Lamb scarified between opposites, One divided into Many, et cetera) undoubtedly mark Him out as an embodiment of the self, looked at from the psychological angle He corresponds to only one half of the archetype. The other half appears in the Antichrist. The latter is just as much a manifestation of the self, except that one consists of its dark aspect. Both are Christian symbols, and they have the same meaning as the image of the Saviour crucified between two thieves. This great symbol tells us that the progressive development and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever more menacing awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites. However, it is fitting that one of these two extremes, and the best, should be called the Son of God because of His excellence, and the other, diametrically opposed to him, the son of the evil demon, of Satan and the devil. The opposites even condition one another. Where there is evil…there must needs be good contrary to the evil. The one follows from the other; hence we must either do away with both, and deny that good and evil exist, or if we admit the one, and particularly evil, we must also admit good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Evil spirits and impure demons do not have the contrary virtue substantially, and they were not created evil but chose the condition of wickedness (malitiae gradus) of their own free will. For it is certain that to be evil means to be deprived of good. To turn aside from good is nothing other than to be perfected in evil. However, who can accurately judge what is good and evil because in some cases it is subjective. Take for instance, The Queen of the Damned, the movie by Warner Brothers, which is based on an Anne Rice novel Queen of the Damned. The vampire Queen, Akasha is 6,000 years old and trying to preserve her race and the planet by feeding on humans. Some might see this as an evil act, where others might she it as a benevolent act. After all, how much different is it from humans trying to preserve their race from feeding on animals and plant life? Food is food, right? This shows clearly that an increase in either good or evil means a diminution of the other, so that good and evil represent equivalent halves of an opposition. Naturally there can be no question on a total extinction of the ego, for then the focus of consciousness would be destroyed, and the result would be complete unconsciousness. The relative abolition of the ego affects only those supreme and ultimate decision which confront us in situations where there are insoluble conflicts of duty. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
This means, in other words, that in such cases the ego is a suffering bystander who decides nothing but must submit to decision and surrender unconditionally. The “genius” of humans, the higher and more spacious part of one whose extent no one knows, has the final word. It is therefore well to examine carefully the psychological aspects of the individuation process in the light of Christian tradition, which can describe it for us with an exactness and impressiveness far surpassing our feeble attempts, even through the Christian image of the self—Christ—lacks the shadow that properly belongs to it. In the fallen and partially redeemed Universe we may distinguish the simple good descending from God, the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and the exploitation of the evil by God for His redemptive purposes, which produced the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute. Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse—though by mercy it may save—those who do the simple evil. And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those why whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Love is a feeling of deep devotion, concern, and affection. The greatest example of God’s love for His children is found in the infinite Atonement of Jesus Christ. Love for God and fellow humans is a characteristic of disciples of Jesus Christ. Have you recognized the love of God in your life? We manifest our love for Heavenly Father by keeping His commandments and serving His children. Our expressions of love for others may include being kind to them, listening to them, mouring with them, comforting them, serving them, praying for them, sharing the gospel with them, and being their friend. When we remember that we are all children of God—that we are spirit brothers and sisters–our love for those around us increases. The love that results from this realization has the power to transcend all boundaries of nation, creed, and colour. Dear Lord in Heaven, please remind me on my drive that my anger harms me more than that which angers me. Lord of Peace, in ultimate calm sitting, please pass on to me some of your beatific pose. Please remind us that we have the power to overcome anger, as our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave his life for us and love us and is not angry that our sins before he was born, while he was born, and after his death is the toll he paid for us to cross over into this mortal realm and he still love us. May even my commute be done in beauty. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Land folk, I am here, newly arrived to this place. I have come from my previous home, where I lived under the protecting gaze of the Land Spirits there. In this new place, then, I wish to establish peace again between my people and the people of the land, as it as been done since the unremembered time. I bring gifts to you, I bring offerings, as a suppliant should when entering a chieftain’s hall. Please accept the from me and, with them, my friendship. Please establish between us peace. Please encompass me about with your protection, Holy Ones of ancient times. Please stand about me on all sides, warding away from me all dangers, keeping away from me all harm. Who may be compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest Thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to life everlasting. Holy art Thou and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Holy God. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy Prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angels in stirring and mighty chorus rise toward the seraphim and with resounding acclaim declare: Blessed by the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. From Thy Heavenly abode, please reveal Thyself, O our King, and reign over us, for we wait for Thee. O when wilt Thou reign in America? Speedily, even in our days, do Thou establish Thy dwelling here forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
You made it past Wednesday! Time to kick back and relax in your #Riverside Residence 1 home. Grab some loungewear from your spacious Primary Bedroom closet and head downstairs to the kitchen to make plans for the weekend. 😄
Or you could learn more about this residence on our website! And with approximately 2,300 square feet, all on one level, you will likely find all the space you need. Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
My God Sits in the Back of the Limousine, My God Has the House on the Cover of the Magazine!
When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I have never tried before. The justification for majority rule rests squarely on the political ends that the constitution is designed to achieve, and therefore on the two principles of justice. As a reminder, the first principle of justice states that each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all. The second principle of justice states that social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). The first principle of equal basic liberties is to be embodied in the political constitution, while the second principle applies primarily to economic institutions. Fulfillment of the first principle takes priority over fulfillment of the second principle, and within the second principle fair equality of opportunity takes priority over the difference principle. The first principle affirms that all citizens should have the familiar basic rights and liberties: liberty of conscience and freedom of association, freedom of speech and liberty of the person, the rights to vote, to hold public office, to be treated in accordance with the rule of law, and so on. The first principle accords these rights and liberties to all citizens equally. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Unequal rights would not benefit those who would get a lesser share of the rights, so justice requires equal rights for all, in all normal circumstances. The second distinctive feature of the first principle is that it requires fair value of the political liberties. The political liberties, concerned with the right to hold public office, the right to affect the outcome of national elections and so on. For these liberties, citizens who are similarly endowed and motivated should have similar opportunities to hold office, to influence elections, and so on regardless of how rich or poor they are. This fair value proviso has major implications for how elections should be funded and run. The second principle of justice has two parts. The first part, fair equality of opportunity, requires that citizens with the same talents and willingness to use them have the same educational and economic opportunities regardless of whether they were born rich or poor. In all parts of society there are to be roughly the same prospects of culture and achievement for those similarly motivated and endowed. So, for example, if we assume that natural endowments and the willingness to use them are evenly distributed across children born into different social classes, then within any type of occupation (generally specified) we should find that roughly one quarter of people in that occupation were born into the top 25 percent of the income distribution, one quarter were born into the second-highest 25 percent of the income distribution, one quarter were born into the lowest 25 percent. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Since class of origin is a morally arbitrary fact about citizens, justice does not allow class origin to turn into unequal opportunities for education or meaningful work. The second part of the second principle is the difference principle, which regulates the distribution of wealth and income. Allowing inequalities of wealth and income can lead to a larger social product: higher wages can cover the costs of training and education, for example, and can provide incentives to fill jobs that are more in demand. The difference principle allows inequalities of wealth and income, so long as these will be to everyone’s advantage, and specifically to advantage of those who will be worst off. The difference principle requires, that is, that any economic inequalities be to the greatest advantage of those who are advantaged least. The difference principle is partly based on the negative thesis that the distribution of natural assets is undeserved. A citizen does not merit more of the social product simply because one was lucky enough to be born with the potential to develop skills that are currently in high demand. Yet this does not mean that everyone must get the same shares. The fact that citizens have different talents and abilities can be used to make everyone better office. In a society governed by the difference principle, citizens regard the distribution of natural endowments as a common asset that can benefit all. Those better endowed are welcome to use their gifts to make themselves better off, so long as their doing so also contributes to the good of those less well endowed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The difference principle this expresses a positive ideal, an ideal of deep social unity. In a society that satisfies the difference principle, citizens know that their economy works to everyone’s benefit, and that those who were lucky enough to be born with greater natural potentials are not getting richer at the expense of those who were less fortunate. In justice as fairness, humans agree to share one another’s fate. I have assumed that some form of majority rule is justified as the best available way of insuring just and effective legislation. It is compatible with equal liberty and possesses a certain naturalness; for if minority rule is allowed, there is no obvious criterion to select which one is decide and equality is violated. A fundamental part of the majority principle is that the procedure should satisfy the conditions of background justice. In this case these conditions are those of political liberty—freedom of speech and assembly, freedom to take part in public affairs and to influence by constitutional means the course of legislation—and the guarantee of the fair value of these freedoms. When this background is absent, the first principle of justice is not satisfied; yet even when it is present, there is no assurance that legislation with be enacted. One problem with this procedure of majority rule is that it may allow cyclical majorities. However, the primary defect from the point of view of justice is that it permits the violation of liberty. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
There is nothing to the view, then, that what the majority wills is right. In fact, none of the traditional conceptions of justice have held this doctrine, maintaining always that the outcome of the voting is subject to political principles. Although in given circumstances it is justified that the majority (suitably defined and circumscribed) has the constitutional right to make law, this does not imply that the laws enacted are just. The dispute of substances about majority rule concerns how it is best defined and whether constitutional constraints are effective and reasonable devices for strengthening the overall balance of justice. These limitations may often be used by entrenched minorities to preserve their illicit advantages. This question is one of political judgment and does not belong to the theory of justice. It suffices to note that while citizens normally submit their conduct to democratic authority, that is, recognized the outcome of a vote as establishing a binding rule, other things equal, they do not submit their judgment to it. A justice constitution is defined as a constitution that would be agreed upon by rational delegates in a constitutional convention who are guided by the two principles of justice. When we justify a constitution, we present considerations to show that it would be adopted under these conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Similarly, just laws and policies are those that would be enacted by rational legislators at the legislative stage who are constrained by a justice constitution and who are conscientiously trying to follow the principles of justice as their standard. When we criticize laws and policies, we try to show that they would not be chosen under this ideal procedure. Now since even rational legislators would often reach different conclusions, there is a necessity for a vote under ideal conditions. The restrictions on information will not guarantee agreement, since the tendencies of the general social facts will often be ambiguous and difficult to assess. The Lord has said that “there is a law, irrevocably decreed in Heaven before the foundations of this World, upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 130.20-21. It would seem from this declaration that there is no permanent progress made in any field or in any place except it be through obedience to the governing law. We know this is true in the Heavens, because the Lord said: “That which is governed by law is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same. That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin [sin, being the breaking of the law], and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
“For judgement goeth before the face of one who sitteth upon the throne and governeth and executeth all things. And one hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons; and their courses are fixed, even the courses of the Heavens and the Earth, which comprehend the Earth and all the planets,” Doctrine and Covenants 88.34-35, 40, 42-43. This scripture tells us that all things in God’s economy, even those which to us seem inanimate, obey the laws by which they are governed. “The Earth [for example] abideh the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its creation, and transgresseth not the law,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.25. Therefore, it shall be crowned with glory, even with the presence of God the Father; that bodies who are of the celestial kingdom may possess it forever and ever; and they who are not sanctified through the law which I have given unto you, even the law of Christ [which is His gospel—the perfect law of liberty] must inherit another kingdom, for one who is not able to abide the law of the celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. And one who cannot abide the law of a terrestrial kingdom cannot abide a terrestrial glory. And one who cannot abide the law of a telestial kingdom cannot abide a telestial glory,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.19-24. How blessed are Latter-day Saint to be assured by the revealed word of God that there will be no capriciousness in the World to come. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
We are so blessed that every soul will be rewarded according to the law that one has obeyed; all divine law is as immutable as the law of gravity; it is the same yesterday, today, and forever; judgment will be mercifully administered, but it will be administered pursuant to law, and it will not rob justice. Not only are we blessed by having this knowledge concerning the rule of law; we are twice blessed by having both a knowledge and an understanding of the laws by which we are to be judged. If we were to fail to obey the law, in our light of our knowledge of the perfect law of liberty, how shortsighted, how foolish, how tragic that would be. Latter-day Saints should strictly obey the laws of the government in which they live. By our own declaration of faith we are committed to do so, for we declare to the World that “we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honouring, and sustaining the law,” reports Articles of Faith 1.12. This we do in harmony with the Lord’s command: “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. Wherefore, be subject to the powers that be, until one reigns whose right it is to reign, and subdues all enemies under one’s feet,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 58.21-22. Civil authority is of divine origin. It may be more or less adapted to the needs of humans; more or less just and benevolent, but, even at its worst, it is better than anarchy. Revolutionary movements that aim at the abolition of government itself are contrary to the law of God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
When the rule of law breaks down in a family, a community, a state, or a nation, chaos reigns. The kingdoms of Heaven are to be free from chaos, because no one will be in any one of them who does not by one’s own free will obey the laws thereof. Here on Earth, some people steadfastly refuse to face such facts. We avoid them by stubbornly refusing to recognize the speed of change. It makes us feel better to defer the future. Even those closet to the cutting edge of technology and scientific research can scarcely believe the reality. Even they routinely underestimate the speed at which the future is breaking on our shores. Thus Dr. Richard J. Cleveland, speaking before a conference of organ transplant specialists, announced in January, 1967, that the first human heart transplant operation will occur “within five years.” Yet before the same year was our Dr. Christiaan Barnard had operated on a fifty-five-year-old grocer named Louis Washkansky, and a staccato sequence of heart transplant operation exploded like a string of firecrackers into the World’s awareness. In the meantime, success rates are rising steadily in kidney transplants to 97 percent. Successful liver, pancreas, and ovary transplants are also reported. Scientists and doctors are getting so good that they even have the ability to do face transplants now. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Such accelerating medical advances must compel profound changes in our ways of thinking, as well as our way of caring for the sick. Startling new legal, ethical and philosophical issues arise. What, for instance, is death? Does death occur when the heart stops beating, as we have traditionally believed? Or does it occur when the brain stops functioning? Hospitals are becoming more and more familiar with cases of patients kept alive through advanced medical techniques, but doomed to exist as unconscious vegetables. What are the ethics of condemning such a person to death to obtain a healthy organ needed for transplant to save the life of a person with a better prognosis? Lacking guidelines or precedents, we flounder over the moral and legal questions. Ghoulish rumors race through the medical community. There has been speculation about the possibility of future murder rings supplying healthy organs for unofficial surgeons whose patients are unwilling to wait until natural sources have supplied the heart or liver or pancreas they need. In Trenton, New Jersey USA—an Israeli citizen living in Brooklyn, New York USA, admitted to brokering three illegal kidney transplants for payments of $120,000.00 UDS or more before he was caught conspiring to organize another illegal sale. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum also known as Isaac Rosenbaum, age 60 at the time he brought to trial in 2011 (now age 70), plead guilty to an information charging him with three counts of acquiring, receiving, and otherwise transferring human organs for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation; and one count of conspiracy to do the same. Mr. Rosenbaum was originally charged with the conspiracy by Complain in July 2009. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The defendant entered his guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson in Trenton federal court. Mr. Rosenbaum’s convictions were the first under the federal statue involving illegal market sales of kidneys from paid donors. “Mr. Rosenbaum admitted he was not new to the human kidney business when he was caught brokering what he thought was an organ trafficking,” U.S. Attorney Fishman said. “Trafficking in human organs is not only a grave threat to public health, it reserves lifesaving treatment for those who can best afford it at the expense of those who cannot. We will not tolerate such an affront to human dignity.” According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court: Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that from January 2006 through February 2009, he conspired with other to provide a service, in exchange for large payments, to individuals seeking kidney transplants by obtaining kidneys from paid donors. Specifically, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted to arranging three transplants on behalf of New Jersey residents that took place in December 2006, September 2008, and February 2009. Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he was paid approximately $120, 000.00 USA, $150,000.00 USA, and $140,000.00 USD, respectively on behalf of these three recipients. Mr. Rosenbaum’s kidney business was exposed through the use of cooperating criminal defendant Solomon Dwek and an undercover FBI agent (the “UC”) who was posing as an employee of Dwek and who represented to Mr. Rosenbaum that her uncle was in need of a kidney transplant. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Dwek and the UC first met with Mr. Rosenbaum in mid-February 2008 at which time Mr. Rosenbaum informed them that “it’s illegal to buy and sell organs,” but assured them that “I’m doing this a long time.” Mr. Rosenbaum explained to Dwek and the UC that he would help the recipient and the donor concoct a fictitious story to make it appear that the transplant was the product of a genuine donation and that he would be in charge of babysitting the donor upon the donor’s arrival from overseas. In Washington, the National Academy of Science, backed by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, has been studying social policy issues springing from advances in the life sciences. At Stanford, a symposium, also funded by Russell Sage, examines methods for setting up transplant organ banks, the economics of an organ market, and evidence of the economics of an organ market, and evidences of class or racial discrimination in organ availability. The possibility of cannibalizing bodies or corpses for usable transplant organs, grisly as it is, will serve to accelerate further the pace of change by lending urgency to research in the field of artificial organs—plastic or electronic substitutes for the heart or liver or spleen. (Eventually, even these may be made unnecessary when we learn how to regenerate damaged organs or severed limbs, growing new ones as the lizard now grows a tail.) #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
And it is totally possible that the human body could be advanced to regrow limbs, organs, and other healthy tissues as it already replaces blood, hair, teeth, nail, skin and you see how can manifest and growth tumors and cancer. So if scientists are able to unlock the secrets of the human body, stopping death and loss of organs and life is totally possible. The drive to develop spare parts for failing human bodies will be stepped up as demand intensified. The development of an economical artificial heart, Professor Lederberg says, “is only a few transient failures away.” Professors R. M. Kenedi of the bio-engineering group at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow believes that “artificial replacements for tissues and organs may well have become commonplace.” For some organs, this is in fact, a reality. Already more than 3 million cardiac patients Worldwide—including a former Supreme Court justice—are alive because they carry, stitched into their chest cavity, a tiny pacemaker—a device that sends pulses of electricity to activate the hearts. Each year 600,000 pacemakers are implanted. Approximal 90,000 heart valve substitutes are now implanted in the United States of America and 280,000 Worldwide each year; it is estimated that nearly half are mechanical valves and half are bioprosthetic valves. Implanting hearing aids, artificial kidneys, arteries, hip joints, lungs, eye sockets and other parts are all in various stages of early development. We shall, before many decades are past, implant tiny, aspirin-sized sensors in the body to monitor blood pressures, pulse, respiration and other functions, and tiny transmitters to emit a signal when something goes wrong. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Such signals will feed into giant diagnostic computer centers upon which the medicine of the future will be based. Some of us will carry a tiny platinum plate and a dime-sized “stimulator” attached to the spine. By turning a midget “radio” on and off we will be able to activate the stimulator and kill the pain. Initial work on these pain-control mechanisms is already under way at the Case Institute of Technology. Push button pain killers are already being used by certain cardiac patients. Such developments will lead to vast new bio-engineering industries, chains of medical-electronic repair stations, new technical professions and a reorganization of the entire health system. They will change life expectancy, shatter insurance company life tables, and bring about important shifts in the human outlook. Surgery will be less frightening to the average individual; implantation routine. The human body will come to be seen as modular. Through application of the modular principle—preservation of the whole through systematic replacement of transient components—we may add two or three decades to the average life span of the entire population. Imagine that, people living to be an average of 100 to 120 and strong and healthy. Unless, however, we develop far more advanced understanding of the brain than we now have, this could lead to one of the greatest ironies in history. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Sir George Pickering Regius professor of medicine at Oxford, has waned that unless we watch out, “those with senile brains will form an ever increasing fraction of the inhabitants of the Earth. I find this,” he added unnecessarily, “a terrifying prospect. With President Joe Biden being the 46th President of the United States and the oldest President so far, being 78 years of age, many feel this is why Speaker on the United States House, Nancy Pelosi fought to remind the people about the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 25th Amendment deals with Presidential Disability and Succession, which says that is a President becomes unable to do his or her job, the Vice President shall become President. This amendment was passed by Congress 6 July 1965, and ratified 10 February 1967. Such terrifying prospects will drive us toward more accelerated research into the brain—which, in turn, will generate still further radical changes in the society. Today we strive to make heart valves or artificial plumbing that imitate the original they are designed to place. We have even been able to use valves from the hearts of pigs into human beings. We strive for functional equivalence. Once we have mastered the basic problems, however, we shall not merely install plastic aortas in people because their original aorta is about to fail. We shall install specially-designed parts that are better than the original, and then we shall move on to install parts that provide the user with capabilities that were absent in the first place. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Just as genetic engineering holds out the promise of producing “super-people,” so, too, does organ technology suggest the possibility of track stars with extra-capacity lungs or hearts; sculptors with a neural device that intensifies sensitivity to texture; students with super computer brains. We will no longer implant merely to save a life, but to enhance it—to make possible the achievement of moods, states, conditions or ecstasies that are presently beyond us. Under these circumstances, what happens to our ago-old definitions of “human-ness?” How will it feel to be part protoplasm and part transistor? Exactly what possibilities will it open? What limitations will it place on work, play, socialism, intellectual or aesthetic responses? What happens to the mind when they body is changed? Questions like these cannot be long deferred, for advanced fusions of human and machine—called “Cyborgs”—are closer than more people suspect. We are constantly faced by the hoariest of all problems, which is “Why did the Universe arise out of the depth and darkness of the Absolute Spirit?” The Seer can offer us a picture of the way in which this Spirit has involved itself into matter and is evolving itself back to self-knowledge. That is only the How and not the Why of the World. The truth is not only that nobody has ever known, that nobody knows, and that nobody will ever know the final and fundamental purpose of creation, but that God Himself does not even know—for God too has arisen out of the Absolute no less than the Universe, has found Himself emanated from the primeval darkness and utter silence. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Even God must be content to watch the flow and not wonder why, for both God and humans must merge and be absorbed when they face the Absolute for the last time. (In the symbolic language of the Bible, “For humans cannot meet God face to face and live.”) That which IS can be none other than Final Being itself, not dependent on anything or anyone, mysteriously self-sufficient without a shape, yet all shaped things and creature have emerged from elements which trace back to it. Forever alone, there was none to witness the Beginning. As Mind the Real is static, as World-Mind it is dynamic. As Godhead It alone is in the stillness of being; but as God it is the source, substance, and power of the Universe. As Mind there is no second thing, no second intelligence to ask the question why it stirred and breathed forth World-Mind, hence why the whole World-process exists. Only humans ask this question and it returns unanswered. For all of us, for the witless and for the wise, there are unanswerable questions in life and we must learn to live with them. None of us is a full and finalized encyclopedia, for however, far we may penetrate into the meaning of things we are always confronted in the end by the Unknowable Mystery. We do not know why the whole process of involution and evolution ever started at all: because we find that there is in the deepest metaphysical sense no becoming and process at all, there is only the Real. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
At the ultimate level there is neither purpose nor plan because there is no creation. Mind, which forever is, can undergo n change in itself and no multiplication of itself. If it could, it would not be what it is—the Ultimate, the Unconditioned, and the Unique. Nor, being perfect, complete, could it have desire, purpose, aim, or motive for itself. Therefore it could not have projected the Universe on account of any benefit sought or gain needed. There is no answer to the question why the Universe was sent forth. It is to impose human limitation upon the transcendental Godhead to say that It has any eternal purpose to fulfill for Itself in the cosmos, whether that purpose be the establishment of a perfect society on Earth or the training of individuals to enter into fellowship with It and participate in Its creative work. Purpose implies a movement in times whereas the Godhead is also the Timeless. Neither this Earth nor the societies upon it can be necessary to God’s serenely self-sufficient being. Yet these fallacies are still taught by the theology of theistic orthodox. We know as much, and as little, about the Primal Mind as we know why there was a beginning of the Universe—that is, precisely nothing. If being asked how to prevent oneself from being deceived by these pseudo-intuitions, it can be said that a useful rule is to check them against other sources on the same subject and see if they all harmonize. If, for example, fifty inspired humans who have written on the subject teach what contradictions the alleged intuition, then there is something wrong on one side or the other and careful investigation is called for. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It is always safer to ascertain what the great scriptural texts or the classic mystical testaments have to tell on the matter and not depend solely on what one’s intuition tells. We need more. And most of us—deep down—cannot deny it. There is a core of truth buried in every heart, a truth that we cannot escape. All-Father God, protector of travelers, please guards us, please guide us, please bring us through in safety and ease on our journey today. As I enter your realm, spirits of the air, as I mount to the clouds in this airplane, I place myself in your hands. There, among the vagaries of the winds, I will not be afraid, because I know you are my allies. As I fly today, please be at my side. Please protect me until I land again safely. Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? At the shore of the Red Sea, the redeemed offered praise unto Thy name. Singing a new song, they proclaimed Thy sovereignty: “The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.” O Rock of America, arise to help Thy scattered folk; deliver all who are crushed beneath oppression’s heel. Thou art our Saviour: the Lord of Hosts is Thy name; blessed art Thou, O Lord, Redeemer of America. O Lord, please open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Expand your faith so you can access everything God has in store. Allow God to be present in your life and have faith in Him, and you will see God make miracles and blessings that you can only imagine in your best dreams! #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Cresleigh Homes
The largest home at #MillsStation is Residence 4 with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and all that natural light. Family nights are even better with an open floor plan between the Kitchen and Great Room! 😍🙌
You can check out an interactive floor plan of this residence on our website. Link in bio. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/
Residence Four at Mills Station boasts 2,692 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.
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Simple as All Truly Great Swindles—Pearls Before Swine!
A biographer is like a contractor who builds roads: It is terribly messy, mud everywhere, and when you get done, people travel over the road at a fast clip. We must not think of ourselves as having boundaries as definite as a shall round an egg. It is like believing that objects are separated from each other by black pencil lines, the way they are drawings. Physically we are all separate. My eyes are mine, not yours. Your digestion is yours, not mine His measles are his, not ours. Psychologically this simply is not so. “My” mother is more than “my” teacher is; “my” apple is even more under my control but it is less reciprocal. I am my mother’s son, my teacher’s pupil, but hardly my apple’s eater. Then again, my mother is also my sister’s mother; and interestingly, “my mother” may be more mine than “our mother’ is—or less, it depends on the facts of the situation. However, what is not in dispute is that, when I say “my mother and I,” the boundaries between and around us are different from what I say “our mother and I.” Again, I can think of “I” in a very narrow sense as in “I am going to Australia”—the boundaries round my person and my plans sound clear. However, what is I say, “We are thinking of going to Australia”? Does this represent a picture of me thinking, and of my two friends, each also thinking? Or does it represent the result of our discussion in which each of us has contributed? #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
How are to think of “us” and “we”? We go wrong, I think, when we cling too tenaciously to metaphors which makes our psychological boundaries correspond to our bodily ones. Our digestive processes happen in a place—the stomach—which has a distinct skin round it, but we do not have skins round our minds. Our boundaries are where we are in touch with other people and things. To keep fresh, we need from time to time to re-examine the language in terms of which we try to understand our relationships to others. We are trying to get away from too strong a reliance on the distinction between inner and outer Worlds. This has in my view created some unnecessary problems, not least because of the emphasis it places on the separateness of you from me. To some extent, the distinction between inner and outer Worlds derives from our experience of our bodily self. The senses develop in a sequence which, if all goes well, brings the infant only very gradually into encounters with other people and things. The two most important senses that provide the perceptions which form the basis for the discover of “objects” are sight and touch. Both of them are undeveloped in the first postnatal months, as they need a considerable degree of muscular co-ordination to work properly; as is well known, binocular vision does not exist in the first weeks of life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Moreover both sight and touch, together with hearing, are projective sense; they feel, place or construct the object outside the body, either at a distance (sight and hearing) or at it surface (touch). The situation is utterly different with the two-lower sense, which are well, perhaps even fully, operative at birth. In their function there is hardly any projection; we feel small and tase inside our body—in our mouth or in our nose; moreover, the sensations themselves, more often than not, have nothing to do with objects, only with substances. Here we get some idea of how and why the mixup between ourselves and the World around us has come about. Looking at it as an external detached observer, we recognize that it is based on an interaction between the individual and the external World; one may say that the World has intruded or penetrated into the individual’s mouth or nose, and equally correctly that the individual has taken in parts of the external World—penetrated into it. The same kind of mixup occurs with the sense of temperature, though to a lesser degree. In fact, it forms a transition between the lower and the higher senses, id est, those based on mixup and those using projection. Cold and warmth are felt partly as coming from outside, partly as a state of our own body or even of ourselves: we feel warm or it is warm. Also, the organization of our sense is the cause of the way we think about “in here” and “out there.” By virtue of having two eyes and two ears we can locate stimuli whose source is “out there,” as it were stereoscopically. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
From the energy configurations that excite some of our receptors, we are able to construct a “World-Out-There.” The excitations of sight and hearing we especially tend to interpret as distant from the receptors excited. We sense we are touching, tasting, or smelling something apart from our own receptor reactions. When our perceptions are patterned in conditions of bilateral symmetry, the sum of such perceptions constitutes our World-Out-There. When these conditions are not present, we do not perceive objects and occurrences; instead we construct a World-within on the basis of our subjective feelings. In contrast to perceptions, subjective feelings are those phenomena, those ghosts which we immediately attribute to what is within the boundary, that bag we call the skin, which demarcates “Us” from the “Other.” It is not surprising that some thoughtful minds which were once prone to believe sincerely in the existence of such a faculty as intuition and willing to accept its revelations, as made by others, found their confidence in it gravely shaken. We ventured to point out that egoistic emotions and unconscious complexes frequently masquerade as mystical intuitions, that criticism should be directed solely against such pseudo-institutions and should not be casting doubts upon the existence of genuine intuition itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
It is admittedly hard to distinguish intuition from its counterfeits, but one way to do so is that it often opposes personal emotions. Thus we may feel strongly and naturally prejudiced against a certain course of action yet a gentler feeling may be in its favour. If it is authentic intuition, one will feel increasingly convinced by it as days and weeks pass until in the end its truth will seem unarguable to one. When one’s self-training and checked experience have gone far enough, the doubts and uncertainties regarding these intuitive feelings will vanish. By that time, they will appear in one’s consciousness as peculiar and unmistakable. What intuition reveals the deepest thought confirms. Of every individual who has reached the stage of being a unit (with a limiting membrane and an outside and an inside), it can be said that there is an inner reality to that individual, an inner World which can be rich or poor and can be at peace or in a stage of war. This way of thinking is very common—in the West at least—and it usually works well enough as a metaphor, providing we do not go constructing the World in this way and then believing that that is the way the World is. There is also a third area, neither inner nor outer, a potential space, a culture space. Christian theologians and probably mystics of many persuasions have had conceptual problems of exactly the same nature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
While the devout are said to live in Christ, Christ is also said to live in them. The process of differentiation of the object derives particular significance from the fact that infantile dependence is characterized not only by identification, but also b an oral attitude of incorporation. In virtue of this fact, that object with which the individual is identified becomes equivalent to an incorporated object, or, to put the matter in a more arresting fashion, the object in which the individual is incorporated is incorporated in the individual. This strange psychological anomaly may well prove the key to many metaphysical puzzles. Be that as it may, however, it is common to find in dreams a remarkable equivalence between being inside an object and having the object inside. Thinking about ourselves in terms of an inside and an outside can lead us into some tenacious traps. This kind of allocation creates a spatial phantasy of our psychic World: an inner World with an outer World around it, like the pre-Galilean system of the Earth with the sun, stars, and the planets circling round it. This spatial way of thinking has proved so powerful that people have drawn conclusions from it which might perhaps be warranted if there really were such spaces, but which can also cause confusion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Admittedly, in the history of thought it has proved a useful discipline to regard some facts as subjective and others as objective: facts which several people agree on have normally been regarded as more objective than those which are held only by a single person. Facts held by only one person are usually not called facts, but views, opinions, or less politely, delusions or hallucinations, and they are regarded as subjective, not objective. The more people agree on a fact or on the scientific propriety with which something has been established as a fact, the more objective that fact is considered to be. It is, therefore, not surprising that objective facts have come to be thought of as belonging to a realm called “the outer World”: the World of shared reality. Similarly, the subjective experiences of individuals have been allocated to a realm called the “the inner World.” But is this the best way to think of my experience of you? The notion that God’s voice is necessarily accompanied by occult phenomena or heard clairaudiently inside oneself is a very limited one. It may be totally unaccompanied by anything strange or, as if it were conscience, felt rather than heard. Or it may speak to one indirectly through any other person or any circumstantial event that touches one’s path. The passing of time will either disprove one’s judgements or prove them correct. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
One ought to note carefully this eventual result and compare it with the feelings which possessed one at the tie of making one’s original decisions. In this way one can learn to see for oneself the difference between the marks of a true intuition and those of a false one. An intuition comes into the mind suddenly. However, so does an impulse. Therefore it is not enough to take this mark alone to identify it. It is strong; so is an impulse. It is clear; so is an impulse. To separate the deceptive appearance from the genuine reality of an intuition, look for the trail of assurance, relief, ad peace to follow in its wake. It is never present without certain qualities being present with it, too. There is first an utter serenity, then a steady joy, next an absolute conviction of its truth and reality, finally the paradoxical feelings of a rock-firm security despite any appearance of adverse outer circumstances. The process is partly an unconscious one, they know, because something is being done to them by this higher power. They cannot exactly define why they must accept its truth, but its mental effect is almost hypnotic. It is an intuition which is self-supporting, which must be accepted upon its own mysterious authority. Nor do they accept it because of its inherent strength alone. They accept it also because of its inherent beauty. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Intuitive feelings hover in one, half-guessed at, half-doubted: one does not know what to accept, what to reject, because one does not feel certain whether they are mere ordinary thoughts or authentic messages from Heaven. Raising and training animals may be expensive, but what happens when we go down the evolutionary scale to the level of bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms? Here we can harness life in its primitive forms just as we once harnessed the horse. Today emerging and it promises to chance the very nature of industry as we know. Our ancestors domesticated various plant and animal species in the prehistoric past. However, microorganisms were not domesticated until very recently, primarily because humans did not know of their existence. Today they do, and they are already used in the large-scale production of vitamins, enzymes, antibiotics, citric acid and other useful compounds. Edible microbial biomass derived from bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi or microalgae has become a promising alternative to conventional forces of food and feed. Microorganisms are a good source of protein, vitamins and, in some cases, also contain beneficial lipids. The ability of microorganisms to use simple organic substrates for growth permits industrial-scale cultivation of edible microbial biomass in geographical locations that will not compete with agricultural production. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Only a handful of microbial products are currently available for human consumption. However, it was predicted in 1960s, that if the pressure for food continues to intensify, biologist will be growing microorganism for use as animal feed and human food by the year 2000. The use of microbial biomass for animal feed is limited by access to low-cost growth substrates and competition from conventional feed sources such as soy and fishmeal. At a time when the global food production system is threatened by human activity, the production of edible microorganisms has the potential to circumvent many of the current environmental boundaries of food production as well as reducing its environmental impact. Photosynthetic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria and microalgae can be cultivated for food and feed independently of arable land. In addition, recent technological developments in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, extraction and catalytic conversion into simple organic compounds can be used for cultivation of edible microbial biomass for food and feed in a manner that is wholly independent of photosynthesis. The future possibilities, challenges and risks of scaled-up production of edible microbial biomass in relation to the global food system something we really need to consider. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Population growth, changing consumption patters and changing climates are collectively putting a strain on the global food production system. The human population is estimated to reach 9.6 – 12.3 billion people by the year 2100. Retaining the current food production model to satisfy future global food demand therefore has the potential to trap humanity in a vicious spiral of gradually decreasing agricultural output. Because of operating costs and global trends, agricultural yields for the major crops suggest that yield increasing alone will be insufficient for adequately feeing the human population by 2050. The majority of land area currently dedicated to food production is used for feeing animals—either as pasture or cultivation. The current global trends is we see with improving living standards that they are causing an increase in the per capita consumption of animal proteins such as meat, eggs, and dairy products. We need to increase food production by 70 percent. Microorganisms can be used as alternatives to conventional means of food production by facilitating the creation of lab-grown meat and vertical farming crops. Vertical farming or “plant factories”—terms which describe vertically-stacked, fully controlled environments used to produce food—have the potentials to help societies meet this elevated demand, without the need for additional farmland. Vertical farming will also decrease the need to import fresh fruits and vegetables. Lab-grown meat or culture meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal has been approved in some countries like Singapore. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
No-kill, lab-grown meat called “chicken bites,” produced by the United States of America company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock. Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef, and pork. The cells for Eat Just’s product are grown in a 1,200-litre bioreactor and then combined with plant-based ingredients. The cells used to start the process came from a cell bank and did not require the slaughter of a chicken because cells can be taken from biopsies of live animals. The nutrients supplied to the growing cells were all from plants. The growth medium for the Singapore production lines includes foetal bovine serum, which is extracted from foetal blood, but this is largely removed before consumption. And a plant-based serum is expected to be used in the next production line. The product was significantly more expensive than conventional chicken until production was scaled up, but Eat Just said it would ultimately be more cost efficient. New technology is always very expensive, until it becomes widely used. A series of scientific studies have shown that people in rich nations eat more meat than their ancestors, and that with lab-grown meat, it should wean committed meat-eaters off traditional sources, which will reduce the strain on the environment and animal population. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Vegan diets are viewed as unappealing by some, and plant-based meat replacements are not always regarded as replicating the texture and flavour of conventional meant. Meat cultivated in bioreactors will meet or exceed standards and avoids the issues of bacterial contamination from animal waste and the overuse of antibiotics and hormones in animals. Once scaled up, the small scale of current cultured meat produced is expected to produce much lower emissions and use far less water and land than conventional meat. “I think the approval is one of the most significant milestones in the food industry in the last handful of decades. It is an open door and it is up to us and other companies to take that opportunity. My hope is this leads to a World in the next handful of years where the majority of meat does not require killing a single animal or tearing down a single tree,” reports Josh Tetrick, of Eat Just. The cultured chicken is nutritionally the same as conventional meat. Some challenged are, however, getting regulatory approval in other nations. Another company, Supermeat.co in Israel, has just begun free public tastings involving a “crispy cultured chicken.” Industry experts said other companies including Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat, and Aleph Farms, might do well in future as they were working on textured products such as steaks and were able to produce significant amounts of lab-grown meat from the starts. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A new space face for the future of food is underway. Tyson and Cargill, two of the World’s biggest conventional meat companies, now have a stake in Memphis Meats. It is predicted that by 2040 most meat will not come from conventional sources. Cultured meat production is expected to take the World by storm, and experts are convinced that cultured meat will address the health and environmental impact issues that traditional meat has when produced in a highly industrialized way. Cultured meat is expected to be a household favourite and replace traditional meat. At Uppsala University in Sweden, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Arne Tiselius, the Nobel prizewinning biochemist who was once president of the Nobel Foundation itself. “Is it conceivable,” I asked, “that one day we shall create, in effect, biological machines—systems that can be used for productive purposes and will be composed not of plastic or metal parts, but of living organisms?” His answer was roundabout, but unequivocal: We are already there. The great future industry will come from biology. In fact, one of the most striking things about the tremendous technological development of Japan since the war has been not only its shipbuilding, but its microbiology. Japan is now the greatest power in the World in industry based on microbiology. Much of their food and food industry is based on processes in which bacteria are used. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Now Japan will produce all sorts of useful things—amino acids, for example. In Sweden everybody now talks about the need to strengthen our position in microbiology. You see, one need not think in terms of bacteria and viruses alone. The industrial processes, in general, are based on humanmade processes. You make steel by a reduction of iron ore with coal. Think of the plastic industries, artificial products made originally from petroleum. Yet it is remarkable that even today, with the tremendous development of chemistry and chemical technology, there is no single food-stuff produced industrially which can compete with what the farmers grow. In this field, and in a great many fields, nature is far superior to humans, even to the most advanced chemical engineers and researchers. Now what is the consequences of that? When we gradually get to know how nature makes these things, and when we can imitate nature, we will have processes of an entirely new kind. These will form the basis for industries of a new kind—a sort of bio-technical factory, a biological technology. The green plants make starch with the assistance of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the sun. This is an extremely efficient machine. The green leaf is a marvelous machine. We know a great deal more about it today than sixty or seventy years ago. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
We admire plants and their use of solar energy. They have an unparalleled mastery of photochemical synthesis—the way they use light to synthesize energy from the most fundamental of substances—and how they reverse the ordinary process of combustion is amazing. In photosynthesis, law an entirely renewable process of energy creation. When sunlight reached the surface of a green leaf, it sets off a reaction inside the leaf. Chloroplasts, energize by the light, trigger the production of chemical products—essentially sugars—which store the energy such that the plant can later access it for its biological needs. It is an entirely renewable process; the plant harvests the immense and constant supply of solar energy, absorbs carbon dioxide and water, and releases oxygen. There is no waste. If scientists could learn to imitate photosynthesis by providing concentrated carbon dioxide and suitable catalyzers, they could create fuels from solar energy. With well-adapted systems of cultivation and timely intervention, we may succeed in causing plants to produce, in quantities much larger than the normal ones, the substances which are useful to our modern life. Dr. Peidong Yang, a chemist at UC Berkeley, successfully created the first photosynthetic biohybrid system (PBS) 22 April 2015. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The first-generation PBS uses semiconductors and live bacteria to do the photosynthetic work that real leaves do—absorb solar energy and create a chemical product using water and carbon dioxide, while releasing oxygen—but it creates liquid fuels. The process is called artificial photosynthesis, and if the technology continues to improve, it may become the future of energy. How does this system work? Dr. Yang’s PBS can be thought of as a synthetic lead. It is a one-square-inch tray that contains silicon semiconductors and living bacteria; what Dr’ Yang calls a semiconductor-bacteria interface. In order to initiate the process of artificial photosynthesis, Dr. Yang dips the tray of materials into water, pumps carbon dioxide into the water, and shines a solar light on it. As the semiconductors harvest solar energy, they generate charges to carry out reactions within the solution. The bacteria take electrons from the semiconductors and sue them to transform, or reduce, carbon dioxide molecules and create liquid fuels. In the meantime, water is oxidized on the surface of another semiconductor to release oxygen. After several hours or several days of this process, the chemist can collect the product. With this first-generation system, Dr. Yang successfully produced butanol, acetate, polymers, and pharmaceutical precursors, imitating plants to create the fuels that we need. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The PBS achieved a solar-to-chemical conversion efficiency of 0.38 percent, which is comparable to the conversion efficiency in a natural, green leaf. “Our system has the potential to fundamentally change the chemical and oil industry in that we can produce chemicals and fuels in a totally renewable way, rather than extracting them from deep blow the ground,” reports Dr. Yang. If Dr. Yang’s system can be successfully scaled up, businesses could build artificial forests that produce the fuel for our Ultimate Driving Machines, planes, and power plants by following the same laws and processes that natural forests allow. Ince artificial photosynthesis would absorb and reduce carbon dioxide in order to create fuels, we could continue to use liquid in order to create fuels, we could continue to use liquid fuel without destroying the environment or warming the planet. In August of 2015, Dr. Yang and his tea tested his system with a different type of bacteria. The method is the same, expect instead of electrons, the bacteria used molecular hydrogen from water molecules to reduce carbon dioxide and create methane, the primary component of natural gas. This process is projected to have an impressive conversion efficiency of 10 percent, which is much higher than the conversion efficiency in natural leaves. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
There are many such machines in nature. Such processes will be put to work. Rather than trying to synthesize products chemically, we will, in effect grow them to specification. One might even conceive of biological components in machines—in computers, for example. It is quite obvious that computers so far are just imitations of our brains. Once we learn more about how the brain acts, I would be surprised if we could not construct a sort of biological components in the real brain. And at some distant point in the future it is conceivable that biological elements themselves might be part of the machine. BMW already has this technology. Since the electric drive system of the BMW iX requires only a small amount of cooling air, the kidney grille is completely blanked off. Its role has duly turned digital and it now functions as an “intelligence panel.” Camera technology, radar functions and other sensors are integrated seamlessly into the grille behind a transparent surface. The heating elements and cleaning system for the sensors are also embedded in the grille front. The self-healing effect of its surface can repair minor scratches, for example—within 24 hours at room temperature or through a five-minute supply of warm air. BMW called the grille an example of “shy tech,” such features incorporated into the vehicle subtly enough that they go unnoticed until you use them. Humans are on the path toward integrating living tissues in the processes of physical mechanism. We shall have in the near future machines constituted at one and the same time of metal and of living substance. In the light of this, the human body itself takes on new meaning. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I pray today to the King of Fire, great God, triple God. There is someone here who needs you, someone who is sick. I ask you to being your healing flame, the warmth of life, into one, burning away all that is making one sick, that I might always have a cause to praise you. Please guide us to the right path, protector of the way. Please steer us toward the proper goal, guardian of the path. Please open the road that should be traveled to us, Lord of going. May you walk with me, as I go on my way, walking yourself in front, clearing the way. The Lord spoke unto Moses, saying: Speak unto the children of America, and bid them make fringes in the corners of their garments throughout their generations, putting upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue. And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye go not about after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go astray: That ye may remember to do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Town to be your God; I am the Lord your God. True and firm, right and faithful, beloved and precious, good and beautiful is this Thy teaching unto us forever and ever. It is true that the God of the Universe is our King, and the Rock of Jacob is our protecting shield and Jesus Christ is our Saviour. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
#Bluffs is one of three communities at #PlumasRanch. These single-story cul-de-sac homes are comfy, cozy, and ready for you to move in once Phase 2 is completed! Read more on our blog. Link in bio.
Cresleigh Bluffs is a quaint neighborhood featuring multiple cul-de-sac home sites. The open floor plan and optional covered patio make this home a dream for the neighborhood host and it’s two additional bedrooms offer the space and privacy needed for any family. Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes.
The open concept design includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two car garage. Through the charming front porch enter into the foyer, where two secondary bedrooms. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light. The Owner’s suite is nestled in the rear of the home separate from the secondary bedrooms, providing maximum privacy. Enjoy a spa like experience in the Owner’s bathroom with a large walk in shower and large soaking tub. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-bluffs-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Business Underlies Everything—Do Business in Great Waters!
Diet is a way of eating for the kind of life you want. Accelerated changes in the human condition require an array of symbolic images of humans which will match up to the requirements of constant change, fleeting impression and a high rate of obsolescence. We need a replaceable, expendable series of ikons. Speed has become something undreamt-of, and constant movement every human’s intimate experience. We are different from what we were three moments ago, and in three minutes more, we will again be different. The image appears and disappears, but nothing is retained. Whether one regards this as fun or not depends on the individual, perhaps; but the overall direction of such movement is clear. We are racing toward impermanence. Human’s relationships with symbolic imagery are growing more and more temporary. Events speed past us, compelling us to reassess our assumptions—our previous formed images of reality. Research topples older conceptions of humans and nature. Ideas come and go at a frenetic rate. (A rate, that, in science at least, has been estimated to be twenty to one hundred times faster than a mere century ago.) Image-laden messages hammer at our senses. Meanwhile, language and art, the codes through which we transfer image-bearing messages to one another, are themselves turning over more rapidly. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
All this cannot—and does not—leave us unchanged. If one is to adapt successfully to the churning environment, it accelerates the rate at which the individual must process one’s imagery. Nobody really knows how we convert signals from outside into images within. Yet psychology and the information sciences cast some light on what happens once the image is born. They suggest, to begin with, that the mental model is organized into many highly complex image-structures, and that new images are, in effect, filed away in these structures according to several classificatory principles. A newly generated image is filed away with other images pertaining to the same subject matter. Smaller and more limited inferences are ranged under larger and more inclusive generalizations. The image is checked out for its consistency with those on file. (There is evidence of the existence of a specific neural mechanism that carries out this consistency-check procedure.) We make a decision, with respect to the image, as to whether it is closely relevant to our gals, or whether, instead, it is remote and hence, for us, unimportant. Each image is also evaluated—is it “good” or “bad” for us? Finally, whatever else we do with the new image, we also judge its truth. We decide just how much faith to place in it. Is it an accurate reflection of reality? Can it be believed? Can we base action on it? #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Large numbers of images may have to be reclassified, shuffled, changed again until a suitable integration is found. The mental model must be seen not as a static library of images, but as a living entity, tightly charged with energy and activity. It is not a “given” that we passively receive from outside. Rather, it is something we actively construct and reconstruct from moment to moment. Restlessly scanning the outer World with our senses, probing for information relevant to our needs and desires, we engage in a constant process of rearrangement and updating. At any given instant, innumerable images are decaying, dropping into the black immensity of the forgotten. Others are entering the system, being images, “using them,” and returning them to file, perhaps in different place. We are constantly comparing images, associating them, cross-referencing them in new ways, and repositioning them. This is like muscular activity, it is a form of work. It requires high energy to keep the system operating. Change, roaring through society, widens the gap between what we believe and what really is, between the existing images and the reality they are supposed to reflect. When this gap is only moderate, we can cope more or less rationally with change, we can react sanely to new conditions, we have a grip on reality. When this gap grows too wide, however, we find ourselves increasingly unable to cope, we respond inappropriately, we become ineffectual, withdraw or simply panic. At the final extreme, when the gap grows too wide, we suffer psychosis—or even death. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
To maintain our adaptive balance, to keep the cap within manageable proportions, we struggle to refresh our imagery, to keep it up-to-date, to relearn reality. Thus the accelerative thrust outside us finds a corresponding speed-up in the adapting individual. Our image-processing mechanism, whatever they may be, are driven to operate at higher and higher speeds. This has consequences that have been as yet largely overlooked. For when we classify an image, any image, we may a definite, perhaps even measurable, energy-investment in a specific organizational pattern in the brain. Learning requires energy; and relearning requires even more. All the researches on learning seems to confirm the view that “energies” are bound in support of past learning, and that new energies are essential to unbind the old. At the neurological level, any established system appears to include exceedingly intricate arrangements of cell material, electrical changes and chemical elements. At any cross section in time the somatic structure represents a tremendous investment of fixed forms and potentials. What this means is very simple: there are cost involved in relearning—or, in our terminology, reclassifying imagery. There is an assumption that human’s potential for re-education are unlimited. This is, at best, an assumption, not a fact, and it is an assumption that needs close and scientific scrutiny. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The process of image formation and classification is, in the end, a physical process, dependent upon finite characteristics of nerve cells and body chemicals. In the neural system as now constituted there are, in all likelihood, inherent limits to the amount and speed of image processing that the individual can accomplish. How fast and how continuously can the individual revise one’s inner images before one smashes up against these limits? Nobody knows. It may well be that the limits stretch so far beyond present needs, that such gloomy speculations are unjustified. Yet one salient fact command attention: by speeding up change in the outer World, we compel the individual to relearn one’s environment at every moment. This, in itself, places a new demand on the nervous system. The people of the past, adapting to comparatively stable environments, maintained longer-lasting ties with their own inner conceptions of “the-way-things-are.” We, moving into high-transience society, are forced to truncate these relationships. Just as we must make and break our relationships with things, places, people, and organizations at an ever more rapid pace, so, too, must we turn over our conceptions of reality, our mental images of the World at shorter and shorter intervals. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Transience, then, the forcible abbreviation of human’s relationships, is not merely a condition of the external World. It has its shadow within us as well. New discoveries, new technologies, new social arrangements in the external World erupt into our lives in the form of increased turnover rates—shorter and shorter relational durations. They force a faster and faster pace of daily life. They demand a new level of adaptability. And they set the stage for that potentially devastating social illness—future shock. When you have not discovered them for yourself, being told what your impulses are can lead to compliance and to role-playing the personality you have been told you have; it can lead to a false idea of yourself, to a False Self. I am concerned with the search for the self and the restatement of the fact that certain conditions are necessary if success is to be achieved in this search. These conditions are associated with what is usually called creativity. It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. Self means the whole personality, conscious and unconscious, integrated and non-integrated, the whole map as well as the current working model. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The self is something that can be experience and apprehended: it cannot be accurately described in words. A child that is playing happily is exploring what happens in various manageable circumstances—what people and things feel like when one handles then, what one feels like wen handling them, what they can do, and what they can be made to do. In play we have freedom to overcome timidity by trial and error, uninhibited by the fear of mistakes. Interest can build up gradually, at our own pace, and we can stop when we want to. There is no impingement, however helpfully it is meant, from the World of others. Others are not wanted just then, however loved they may be at other times. Babies are persons. You may be sure that if one is just an ordinary baby, one will notice the attractive object and one will reach for it. As a matter of fact, probably as soon as one has reached for it, one will suddenly be overcome with reserve. It is as if one thought, “I had better think this thing out; I wonder what feelings mother will have on this subject. I had better hold back until I know.” So, as if nothing were further from one’s thoughts, one will turn away from the spoon. In a few moments, however, one will return one’s interest in it, and one will very tentatively put a finger on the spoon. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The baby may perhaps grasp the spoon, and look at mother to see what one can get from her eyes. At this point I will probably have to tell mother what to do, because otherwise she will help too much, or hinder, as the case may be; so I ask her to take as little part in what happens as possible. The baby gradually finds from one’s mother’s eyes that this new thing one is doing is not disapproved of and so one catches hold of the spoon more firmly and begins to make it one’s own. One is still very tense, however, because one is not certain what will happen if one does with this thing what one wants to do so badly. One does not even know for sure what it is that one wants to do. We guess that in the course of a little while one will discover what one wants to do with it because one’s mouth begins to get excited. The baby is still very quiet and thoughtful but saliva begins to flow from one’s mouth. One’s tongue looks sloppy. One’s mouth beings to want the spoon. One’s gums begin to want to enjoy biting on it. It is not very long before one has put it in one’s mouth. We can now say that the baby has taken this thing and made it one’s own. One has lost all the stillness that belongs to concentration and wondering, and doubt. Instead one is confident and very much enriched by the new acquisition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The True Self starts with a sense of being-at-one both with an interesting, helpful, friendly World and with whatever impulses, needs, and wishes may arise. What are the conditions in which the True Self can survive and maintain itself? Being securely held by a facilitating environment is apparently essential. The mother is the matrix or a framework of ego-relatedness. She facilitates conditions which provide security and the freedom to explore, to find, to create, to play. When parents provide such sure and unobtrusive protection that the child feels totally secure, the child does not need its watchful and defensive ego-functions, and they do not develop prematurely: this gives a longer time for the True Self to establish itself and ramify. To relax into non-purposive activity, to be undefended and not on the watch, that is a very rare state for most of us. It is sometimes achieved in psychotherapy, and by some children in infancy and childhood. When a silence falls between people who feel secure with each other, we have something like it. It is the stuff out of which friendship is made, and may turn out to be the matrix of transference. If we have had no experience of this state, it is hard to imagine it—or to allow it to happen. This is called ego-relatedness, for the e-merging self is not conscious of relating to anyone, but does not feel alone either, and is in fact not unrelated (not without an attachment figure), since someone is there, though without impinging on the child’s awareness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
This is a vulnerable state for there is another person to look after you, but you do not experience this other, except through knowing that it is safe for you to forget about yourself and about any dangers which might threaten. Because of this other, however, nothing can go wrong. Being safely held makes ego-relatedness possible. Ego-relatedness makes play possible. A moment of reflection will show that a person’s capacity to be alone is very convincing evidence that that person is capable of being separate, individuated, an individual. However, it is not about whether you can be on your own, but whether you can be in other people’s company, and yet be yourself, and feel comfortable and unthreatened. The capacity to be alone is based on the experience of being “alone” in the presence of someone else. This is the experience of ego-relatedness. In this state the ego-immaturity of the infant is naturally balanced by ego-support from the mother. Without sufficient experience of ego-relatedness, the capacity to be alone cannot develop. When we examine the phrase “I am alone,” the concept “I” implies that there has already been considerable emotional development: it implies the differentiation of “I” from “other,” an internal Word and an external one. The phrase “I am” shows that the individual has not only shape but also life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In the beginnings of “I am,” the individual is raw, undefended, vulnerable. The individual can achieve the “I am” stage only because a protective environment exists, created by the mother and other caring adults, though the baby is probably not aware of this. Next comes the phrase “I am alone,” a development from “I am” which depends on the infant’s awareness of the continued existence of a reliable mother whose reliability makes it possible for the infant to be alone and to enjoy being alone, for a limited period. Ego-relatedness as a state of mind comes, I imagine, after selfobject states of mind have started to develop: ego-relatedness seems to require a little more consciousness that there is something or someone besides yourself. The next development, in which transitional objects are created, probably cannot begin until after the state of mind in which selfobjcts predominant has declined. While the infant is still totally dependent on the (m)other, various phantasies float through its mind. In this state of mind the infant has in one sense complete control over the other, but the infant uses some of that control to give a phantasied independence to that other. They are more noticed now because we have not learnt to notice these things, all of which give the child some reassurance that its environment is a benevolent one and can provide what it needs. The child ensures that it never feels alone, powerless, or abandoned. Transitional experiences help the child develop. They allow one to experiment and come to terms, by easy stages, with some unpleasant facts when it is developmentally ready to accept them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The child knows that it is not in total control of the World but does have some control; that a relationship has two ends to it—self and other; that both ends of the relationship can be practiced in play so as to get a better grasp of their nature; and that self-assertion is not too dangerous. To begin with, a thumb or a blanket or a teddy bear was enough to satisfy the child with phantasies of comfort. One only wanted lulling. However, when the self begins to be strong enough to tolerate moments of frustration, the child may create a grown-up based on the nearest human being who will stand still for it. And then: “Oh, brave new World, that has such people in it.” Transitional processes are active and reach out to create the needed World, given half a chance. Intuition will not mislead you but your conscious mentality, which is its receiving agent, may do so. For your consciousness may partially deviate from its message, or even wholly pervert it, in giving deliverance to exaggerations or extravagances impossibilities or delusions, thus filling you with useless hopes or groundless fears. Consequently, at the very time when you suppose that you are being infallibly guided by intuition you may in fact be strongly guided by pseudo-intuition—which is something quite different. You may believe that you are honouring higher guidance when in actuality you are dishonouring it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The situation is therefore much less simple and much more complex than most people know. To get intuitive direction when, for example, two or more conflicting courses of action confront you is not so easy as it seems and less easy still during a time of trouble. For during such a time you will naturally catch at anything already unknowingly or knowingly pre-determined by some complex to be the best way out of it. The very desire for a particular thing, event, or action may put a pseudo-intuition into your mind. If you want to be wary of this you should seek corroboration from other sources and especially from right reason. Again, the first thought which enters your consciousness after you have decided to seek such direction and have committed your affair to the deeper mind, is not necessarily an authentic intuition. Nor is the second thought such a one, nor the third, and so on. If the impression is to be rightly received, it must be patiently received, and that quite often means that you must sleep on it, and sleep on it perhaps for several days, sometimes weeks. The trustworthy intuition is really there during all this time but the obstacles to knowing it are also there in yourself. Do not, therefore, lose the inner direction through haste nor set up a stone image to be worshipped by mistake in its place. Nor is it enough to say that intuitive truths are self-evident ones. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What appeared to be self-evident to you twenty years ago may now appear self-delusive. All humans at some time or other receive intuitive suggestions from within, whilst a few humans receive them constantly. It is not therefore that intuition is such a rare and extraordinary manifestation. What is rare and extraordinary is its pure reception, its correct comprehension. For on the one hand we receive along with an intuition the suggestions of environment, education, heredity, and self-interest no less than the distortions of desire, fear, and hope, while on the other hand we receive the doubts and questionings of reason. Even if we correct the suggestions and adjust the distortions of the first group, we remain uncertain and unclear because reason naturally wants to know why? It wants to understand why an intuitive prompting should be accepted. And by the very nature of an intuition it is often something which neither past experience nor present logic can justify. This is not only because all the facts of the case are not at our command but, because of their endless ramifications or superphysical character, cannot possibly be at our command. These are some of the difficulties which confront humans at one’s present stage of evolution and which render so many so-called intuitions unreliable or undependable even though their original birth was genuinely what it claimed to be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
What is the remedy? Only careful, ruthless, and impartial analysis of each and every intuition, constant vigilance over and checking of the results which ensue when they are accepted, and long self-training through several years can finally bring us to the clear recognition of what is or is not authentic intuitive guidance, suggestion, or information. One would not be so bad a judge of vale as to prefer reason over intuition, whenever one had the absolute certainty that it was intuition. However, past experience has shown how difficult it is to arrive at such certitude, how deceptive are the masks which impulse, desire, rashness, and selfishness can assume. Until, therefore, one’s development has reached a point where a genuine intuition is at once recognized as such and a pseudo-intuition quickly detected for what it is, one must not abandon the use of reason but rather regard it as a most valuable ally. If inner guidance is truly intuitive or merely pseudo-intuitive, how can one tell? One of the ways is to consider whether it tends to the benefit of all concerned in a situation, the others as well as oneself. The word “benefit” here must be understood in a large way, must include the spiritual result along with the material one. If the guidance does not yield this result, it may be ego-prompted and will then hold the possibility of error. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
An intuitive feeling is one untainted by the ego’s wishes, uncoloured by its aversions. Wrong personal intention may be negated by right intuitive guidance, but it is not easy to recognize the later as such. The difference between a mere impulse and a real intuition may often be detected in two ways: first by waiting a few days, as the subconscious mind has then a chance to offer help in deciding the matter; second, by noting the kind of emotion which accompanies the message. If the emotion is of the lower kind, such as anger, indignation, greed, or lust, it is most likely an impulse. If of the higher kind, such as unselfishness or forgiveness, it is most likely an intuition. When having to make a decision by the fact that it proceeds out of deep inner calm, out of utter tranquility, one may recognize the voice the voice of wisdom, whereas impulse is frequently born in exaggerated enthusiasm or undue excitement. The possibility of pain is inherent in the very existence of a World where souls can meet. When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this, perhaps, accounts for four-fifths of the suffering in humans. It is human, not God, who by human avarice or human unenlighteness produced destruction, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
However, there remains, nonetheless, much suffering which cannot be thus traced to ourselves. Even if all suffering were human-made, we should like to know the reason for the enormous permission to torture their fellows which God gives to the worst of humans. Now the proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator—to enact intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of its being a creature. When it does so, it is good and happy. Lest we should think this a hardship, this kind of good begins on a level far above the creatures, for God Himself, as Son, from all eternity renders back to God as Father by filial obedience the being which the Father by paternal love eternally generates in the Son. This is the pattern which humans were made to imitate—which Paradisal humans did imitate—and wherever the will conferred by Creator is thus perfectly offered back in delighted and delighting obedience by the creature, there, most undoubtedly, is Heaven, and there the Holy Ghost proceeds. In the World as we now know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender. We are not merely imperfect creature who must be improved: we are rebels who must lay down our arms. The first answer, then, to the questions why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, whenever and however it is done, a grievous pain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Even in Paradise I have supposed a minimal self-adherence to be overcome, though the overcoming, and the yielding, would there by rapturous. However, to surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death. We all remember this self-will as it was in childhood: the bitter, prolonged rage at every thwarting, the burst of passionate tears, the morbid fear of obedience. Hence the older type of nurse or parent was right to train children to respect their elders and obey God’s rules. And now that we are grown up, we do not howl and stamp quite so much, that is partly because our elders began the process of raising us to be obedient in the nursery, and partly because the same passions now take more subtle forms and have grown clever at avoid deviant behaviour. However, the human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every human knows that something is wrong when one is being hurt. Pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our unenlighteness; and anyone who has watched gluttons shovelling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
However, pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscious, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf World. A bad human, happy, is a human without the least inkling that one’s actions do not “answer,” that they are not in accord with the laws of the Universe. A compelling inner conviction or intuition need not necessarily collide with cold reason. However, as an assumed intuition which may be merely a bit of wishful thinking or emotional bias, it is always needful to check or confirm or discipline it by reasoning. The two can work together, even whilst recognizing and accepting each other’s peculiar characteristics and different methods or approach. Hence all intuitively formed projects and plans should be examined under this duplex light. The contribution of fact by reason should be candidly and calmly brought up against the contribution of inward rightness made by “intuition.” If they prove unworkable or unreasonable, we must not hesitate to scrap intuitively formed plans. The promptings that come from this inner being are so faintly heard at first, however, strong on their own plane, that we tend to disregard them as trivial. This is the tragedy of humans. The voices that so often mislead one into pain-brining courses—one’s passion, one’s ego, and blind intellect—are loud and clamant. The whisper that guides one aright and to God is timid and soft. So subtle is the oncoming and so mysterious is the working of the true intuition, so open and blatant is the fantasy that is false intuition, that the first test of authenticity is indicated here. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The corrective separation of true from false intuitions, and of impersonal from personal impressions, follows a careful disciplining of the consciousness and a cautious vigilance over the feelings. One can learn with time, and from the visible results it always brings, a better estimate of the truth or falsity of these impressions and intuitions. When the results injure one, one may know that the acceptance of that which led to them was an error; a careful study of which errors will point the way to their avoidance in the future. The intuitive consciousness eludes common sense at some times but aligns with it at others. The day will come when constant effort and long practice will permit one to recognize true from pseudo-intuition with the speed and certainty with which a musically trained ear recognizes notes and times (tunes) in a played piece. When a strong intuitive feeling contradicts—much more if it nearly swallows up—a conventional sense-impression, it is wise to become alert and reconsider the report. In this case I bring before the court, may it be your side that I argue, God. Please bring me to the truth, and please show me the way to proclaim it. May it not be the side of the more skillful that prevails, but that of the more deserving justice. Great Judge, please sit in judgment on this case! The One mind is experiencing itself in us, less in the ego-shadow and fully in God, hardly aware in that shadow and self-realized in the light that casts it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
With abounding love has Thou loved us, O Lord our God, with exceeding compassion has Thou revealed Thy mercy unto us. O our Father, our King, for the sake of our fathers who trusted in Thee and whom Thou did teach the laws of life, be also gracious unto us and please teach us. O our Father, compassionate Father, please have mercy upon us and imbue us with the will to understand, to discern, to hearken and to learn, to teach and to obey, to practice and to fulfill in love all the teachings of Thy Bible. Please deepen our insights in your Bible, and please make our hearts cleave to Thy commandments. Please grant us singleness of purpose to love and revere Thy name so that we may never suffer humiliation. Because we have faith in Thy holy, great and revered name, may we rejoice in Thy saving power. O gather us in peace from the four corners of the Earth, and please restore us triumphantly to our homeland, for Thou art the God who works salvation. Thou has chosen us from among all peoples and tongues by brining us near unto Thee in faithlessness that we might lovingly give thanks unto Thee and proclaim Thy unity. Blessed are Thou, O Lord, who in love has chosen Thy people America. Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Blessed by His glorious kingdom for ever and ever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Exaggerate Nothing for All Good Lies in Right Measure!
Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable. Even the best-intentioned people have been horrified by probabilism, but, when brought face to face with the realities of life, many of them have fund their horror evaporating or their laughter dying on their lips. The doctor too must weigh and ponder, not whether a thing is for or against the Church but whether it is for or against life and health. On paper the moral code looks clear and neat enough; but the same document written on the “living tables of the heart” is often a sorry tatter, particularly in the mouths of those who talk the loudest. We are told on every side that evil is evil and that there can be no hesitation in condemning it, but that does not prevent evil from being the most problematical thing in the individual’s life and the one which demands the deepest reflection. What above all deserves our keenest attention is the question “Exactly who is the doer?” For the answer to this question ultimately decides the value of the deed. It is true that society attaches greater importance at first to what is done, because it is immediately obvious; but in the long run the right deed in the hands of the wrong human will also have a disastrous effect. No one who is far-sighted will allow oneself to be hoodwinked by the right deed of the wrong human, any more than by the wrong deed of the right human. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Hence the psychotherapist must fix one’s eye on not what is done but on how it is done, because therein is decided the whole character of the doer. Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good. The encounter with the dark half of the personality, or “shadow,” comes about of its own accord in any moderately thorough treatment. This problem is as important that of sin in the Church. The open conflict is unavoidable and painful. I have often been asked, “And what do you do about it?” I do nothing; there is nothing I can do expect wait, with a certain trust in God, until, out of a conflict borne with patience and fortitude, there emerges the solution destined—although I cannot foresee it—for that particular person. Not that I am passive or inactive meanwhile: I help the patient to understand all the things that the unconscious produces during the conflict. The reader may believe me that these are no ordinary products. On the contrary, they are among the most significant things that have ever engaged my attention. Nor is the patient inactive; one must do the right thing, and do it with all one’s might, in order to prevent the pressure of evil from becoming too powerful in one. “The Lord will judge his people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” reports Hebrews 10.30-31. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
One needs justification by faith, for justification by fait alone has remained an empty sound for one as for so many others. “By faith we understand that the Universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible,” reports Hebrews 11.3. Faith can sometimes be a substitute for a lack of experience. In these cases what is needed is real work. Christ espoused the sinner and did not condemn one. The true follower of Christ will do the same, and, since one should do unto others as one would do unto oneself, one will always take the part of the sinner who is oneself. And as little as we would accuse Christ of fraternizing with evil, so little should we reproach ourselves that to love the sinner who is oneself is to make a pact with the devil. Love makes a human better, hate makes one worse—even when that human is oneself. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ However, I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons (and daughters) of you Father in Heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers (or sisters), what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” reports Matthew 5.43-48. The danger in this point f view is the same as in the imitation of Christ; but the Pharisee in us will never allow oneself to be caught talking to publicans and harlots. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
I must emphasize of course that psychology invented neither. Christianity nor the imitation of Christ. I wish everybody could be free from the burden of their sins by the Church. However, one to whom she cannot render this service must bend very low in the imitation of Christ in order to take the burden of one’s cross upon one. The ancients could get along with the Greek wisdom of the ages: Exaggerate nothing, all good lies in right measure. However, what an abyss still separates us from reason! Apar from the moral difficulty there is another danger which is not inconsiderable and may lead to complications, particularly with individuals who are pathologically inclined. This is the fact that the contents of the persona unconscious (id est, the shadow) are indistinguishably merged with the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious and drag the latter with them when the shadow is brought into consciousness. This may exert an uncanny influence on the conscious mind; for activated archetypes have a disagreeable effect even—or I should perhaps say, particularly—on the most cold-blooded rationalist. One is afraid that the lowest form of conviction, namely superstition, is, as one thinks, forcing itself on one. However, superstition in the truest sense only appears in such people if they are pathological, not if they can keep their balance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
It then takes the form of the fear of “going mad”—for everything that the modern mind cannot define it regards as insane. It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears. The psychological elucidation of these images, which cannot be passed over in silence of blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-horse of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind’s eye with some kind of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material. There is a lot of connection between individual dream symbolism and medieval alchemy. That is not, as one might suppose, a prerogative of the case in questions, but a general fact which only struck me some ten years ago when first I began to come to grips with the ideas and symbolism of alchemy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
More often than not it is precisely the more intelligent and cultured patients who, finding a retuning to the Church impossible, and come up against archetypal material and thus set the doctor problems which can no longer be mastered by a narrowly personalistic psychology. Nor is a mere knowledge of the psychic structure of a neurosis by any means sufficient; for once the process has reached the sphere of the collective unconscious we are dealing with healthy material, id est, wit the universal basis of the individually varied psyche. Our understanding of these deeper layers of the psyche is helped not only by a knowledge of primitive psychology and mythology, but to an even greater extent by some familiarity with the history of our modern consciousness and the stages immediately preceding it. One the one hand it is a child of the Church; on the other, of science, in whose beginnings very much lies hid that the Church was unable to accept—that is to say, remnants of the classical spirit and the classical feeling for nature which could not be exterminated and eventually found refuge in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. As the “spiritus metallorum” and the astrological components of destiny the old gods of the planets lasted out many a Christian century. Whereas in the Church the increasing differentiation of ritual and dogma alienated consciousness from its natural roots in the unconscious, alchemy and astrology were ceaselessly engaged in preserving the bridge to nature, id est, to the unconscious psyche, from decay. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Astrology led the conscious mind back again and again to the knowledge of Heimarmene, that is, the dependence of character and destiny on certain moments in time; and alchemy afforded numerous “hooks” for the projection of those archetypes which could not be fitted smoothly into the Christian process. It is true that alchemy always stood on the verge of heresy and that certain decrees leave no doubt as to the Church’s attitude towards it, but on the other hand it was effectively protected by the obscurity of its symbolism, which could always be explained as harmless allegory. For many alchemists the allegorical aspect undoubtedly occupied the foreground to such an extent that they were firmly convinced that their sole concern was with chemical substances. However, there were always a few for whom laboratory work was primarily a matter of symbols and their psychic effect. As the texts shows, they were quite conscious of this, to the point of condemning the naïve goldmakers as liars, frauds, and dupes. Their own standpoint they proclaimed with propositions like “Aurum nostrum non est aurun vulgi.” Although their labours over the retort were a serious effort to elicit the secrets of chemical transformation, it was at the same time—and often in overwhelming degree—the reflection of a parallel psychic process which could be projected all the more easily into the unknown chemistry of matter since that process is an unconscious phenomenon of nature, just like the mysterious alteration of substances. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
What the symbolism of alchemy expresses is the whole problem of the evolution of personality described above, the so-called individuation process. Whereas the Church’s great buttress is the imitation of Christ, the alchemist, without wanting it, easily fell victim, in the loneliness and obscure problems of one’s work, to the promptings and unconscious assumptions of one’s own mind, since, unlike the Christians, one had no clear and unmistakable models on which to reply. The authors one studied provided one with symbols whose meaning one thought one understood in one’s own way; but in reality they touched and stimulated one’s unconscious. Ironical towards themselves, the alchemists coined the phrase “obscurum per obscurius.” However, with this method of explaining the obscure by more obscure they only sank themselves deeper in the very process from which the Church was struggling to redeem them. While the dogmas of the Church offered analogies to the alchemical process, these analogies, in strict contrast to alchemy, had become detached from the World of nature through their connection with the historical figure of the Redeemer. The alchemical four in one, the philosophical gold, the lapis angularis, the aqua divina, became, in the Church, the four-armed cross on which the Only-Begotten had sacrificed himself once in history and at the same time for all eternity. The alchemists ran counter to the Church in preferring to seek through knowledge rather than to find through faith, though as medieval people they never thought of themselves as anything but good Christians. Paracelsus is a classic example in this respect. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, in reality they were in much the same position as modern humans, who prefer immediate personal experience to belief in traditional ideas, or rather has it forced upon one. Dogma is not arbitrarily invented nor is it a unique miracle, although it is often described as miraculous with the obvious intent of lifting it out of its natural context. The central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy, which, in accordance with psychological laws, simply had to grow up at a time when the classical religions had become obsolete. It was founded on the perception of symbols thrown up by the unconscious individuation process which always sets in when the collective dominants of human life fall into decay. At such a time there is bound to be a considerable number of individuals who are possessed by archetypes of a numinous nature that force their way to the surface in order to form new dominants. This state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identity themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious, and, because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
In so far as the archetypal content of the Christian drama was about to give satisfying expression to the uneasy and clamorous unconscious of the many, the consensus omnium raised this drama to a universally binding truth—not of course by an act of judgment, but by the irrational fact of possession, which is far more effective. Thus Jesus became the tutelary image or amulet against the archetypal powers that threatened to possess everyone. The glad tidings announced: “It has happened, but it will not happen to you inasmuch as you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God!” Yet it could and it can and it will happen to everyone in whom the Christian dominant has decayed. For this reason there have always been people who, not satisfied with the dominants of conscious life, set forth—under cover and by devious paths, to their destruction or salvation—to seek direct experience of the eternal roots, and following the lure of the restless unconscious psyche, find themselves in the wilderness where, like Jesus, they come up against the son of darkness. Thus an old alchemist—and he a cleric!—prays: “Horridas nostrae mentis purge tenebras, accende lumen sensibus!” (Purge the horrible darkness of our mind, light a light for our senses!) The author of this sentence must have been undergoing the experience of the nigredo, the first stage of the work, which was felt as “melancholia” in alchemy and corresponds to the encounter with the shadow in psychology. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
When, therefore, modern psychotherapy once more meets with the activated archetypes of the collective unconscious, it is merely the repetition of a phenomenon that has often been observed in moments of great religious crisis, although it can also occur in individuals for whom the ruling ideas have lost their meaning. An example of this is the descensus ad inferos depicted in Prince Lestat, which, consciously or unconsciously, is an opus alchymicum. The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a great—indeed, the decisive—role in alchemy, since it leads in the ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites in the archetypal form of the hierosgamos or “chymical wedding.” Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinses yang and yin), are melted into a unity purified of all oppositions and therefore incorruptible. The prerequisite for this, of course, is that the Artifex should not identify oneself with the figures in the work but should leave them in their objective, impersonal state. So long as the alchemist was working in one’s laboratory one was in a favourable position, psychologically speaking, for one had no opportunity to identify oneself with the archetypes as they appeared, since they were all projected immediately into the chemical substances. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
The disadvantage of this situation was that the alchemist was forced to represent the incorruptible substance as a chemical product—an impossible undertaking which led to the downfall of alchemy, its place in the laboratory being taken by chemistry. However, the psychic part of the work did not disappear. It captured new interpreters, as we can see from the example of Prince Lestat, and also from the signal connection between our modern psychology of the unconscious alchemical symbolism. From our own childhood we remember that before our elders thought us capable of “understanding” anything, we already had spiritual experience as pure and as momentous as any we have undergone since, though not, of course, as rich in factual context. From Christianity itself we learn that there is a level—in the long run the only level of importance—on which the learned and the adult have no advantage at all over the simple and the child. I do not doubt that if the Paradisal man could now appear among us, we should regard him as an utter savage, a creature to be exploited or, at best, patronized. Only one or two, and those the holiest among us, would glance a second time at the naked, saggy-bearded, slow-spoken creature: but they, after a few minutes, would fall at his feet. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. However, sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods—that they could cease directing their lives to their Creator and taking all their delights as uncovenanted mercies, as “accidents” (in the logical sense) which arose in the course of a life directed not to those delights but to the adoration of God. As a young man wants a regular allowance from his father which he can count on as his own, within which he makes his own plans (and rightly, for his father is after all a fellow creature), so they desired to be on their own, to take care for their own future, to plan for pleasure and for security, to have a medium from which, no doubt, they would pay some reasonable tribute to God in the way of time, attention, and love, but which, nevertheless, was theirs not His. They wanted, as we say, to “call their souls their own.” However, that means to live a life, for our souls are not, in fact, our own. They wanted some corner in the Universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” However, there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea in what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence. This act of self-will on the part of the creature, which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall. For the difficulty about the first sin is that it must be very heinous, or its consequences would no be so terrible, and yet it must be something which a being free from the temptations of fallen humans could conceivably have committed. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
The turning from God to self fulfills both conditions. It is a sin possible even to Paradisal man, because the mere existence of a self—the mere fact that we call it “me”—includes, from the first, the danger of self-idolatry. Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to myself. This is, if you like, the “weak spot” in the very nature of creation, the risk which God apparently thinks work taking. However, the sin was very heinous, because the self which Paradisal man had to surrender contained no natural recalcitrancy to being surrendered. His data, so to speak, were a psychophysical organism wholly subject to the will and a will wholly disposed, though not compelled, to turn to God. The self-surrender which he practiced before the Fall meant no struggle but only the delicious overcoming of an infinitesimal self-adherence which delighted to be overcome—of which we see a dim analogy in the rapturous mutual self-surrenders of lovers even now. He had, therefore, no temptation (in our sense) to choose the self—no passion or inclination obstinately inclining that way—nothing but the bare fact that the self was himself. Up to that moment the human spirit had been in full control of the human organism. When it has ceased to obey God, it doubtless expected that it would retain this control. However, its authority over the organism was a delegated authority which it lost when it ceased to be God’s delegate. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Having cut itself off, as far as it could, from the source of its being, it had cut itself off from the source of power. For when we say of created things that A rules B this must mean that God rules B through A. I doubt whether it would have been intrinsically possible for God to continue to rule the organism through the human spirit when the human spirit was in revolt against Him. At any rate He did not. He began to rule the organism in a more external way, not by the laws of spirit, but by those of nature. To disobey your proper law (id est, the law God makes for being such as you) means to find yourself obeying one of God’s lower laws: exempli gratia, if, when walking on a slippery pavement, you neglect the law of Prudence, you suddenly find yourself obeying the law of gravitation. Thus the organs, no longer governed by man’s will, fell under the control of ordinary biochemical laws and stuffed whatever the inter-workings of those laws might bring about in the way of pain, senility, and death. And desires began to come up into the mind of humans, and as one’s reason chose, but just as the biochemical and environmental facts happened to cause them. And the mind itself fell under the psychological laws of association and the like which God had made to rule the psychology of the higher anthropoids. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
And the will, caught in the tidal wave of mere nature, had no resource but to force back some of the new thoughts and desires by main strength, and these uneasy rebels became the subconscious as we now know it. The process was not, I conceive, comparable to mere deterioration as it may now occur in a human individual; it was a loss of status as a species. What man lost by the Fall was his original specific nature. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The total organism which had been taken up into his spiritual life was allowed to fall back int the merely natural condition from which, at one’s making, it had been raised—just as far earlier in the story of creation, God had raised vegetable life to become the vehicle of animality, and chemical process to be the vehicle of vegetation, and physical process to be the vehicle of chemical. Thus human spirit from being the master of human nature became a mere lodger in its own house, or even a prisoner; rational consciousness became what it now is—a fitful spotlight resting on a small part of the cerebral motions. However, this limitation of the spirit’s powers was a lesser evil than the corruption of the spirit itself. It has turned from God and become its own idol, so that though it could still turn back to God, it could do so only by painful effort, and its inclination was self-ward. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Hence pride and ambition, the desire to be lovely in its own eyes and to depress and humiliate all rivals, envy, and restless search for more, and still more, security, were now the attitudes that came easiest to it. It was not only a weak king over its own nature, but a bad one: it sent down into the psychophysical organism desires far worse than the organism sent up into it. This condition was transmitted by heredity to all later generations, for it was not simply what biologists call an acquired variation; it was the emergence of a new kind of man—a new species, never made by God, had sinned itself into existence. The change which man had underdone was not parallel to the development of a new habit; it was a radical alteration of one’s constitution, a disturbance of the relation between one’s component parts, and an internal perversion of one of them. God might have arrested this process by miracle: but this—to speak in somewhat irreverent metaphor—would have been to decline the problem which God has set Himself when He created the World, the problem of expressing His goodness through the total drama of a World containing free agents, in spite of, and by means of, their rebellion against Him. If we talk too much of God planning and creating the World process for good and of that good being frustrated by the free will of the creatures, the symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance, is here useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall took God by surprise and upset His plan, or else—more ridiculously still—that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebula. The World is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God’s own assumptions of the suffering nature which evil produces. The doctrine of the free Fall asserts that the evil which thus makes the fuel or raw material for the second and more complex kind of good is not God’s contribution but man’s. This does not mean that if man had remained innocent God could not than have contrived an equally splendid symphonic whole—supposing that we insist on asking such questions. However, it must always be remembered that when we talk of what might have happened, of contingencies outside the whole actuality, we do not really know what we are talking about. There are no times or paces outside the existing Universe in which all this “could happen” or “could have happened.” I think the most significant way of stating the real freedom of man is to say that if there are other rational species than man, existing in some other part of the actual Universe, then it is not necessary to suppose that they also have fallen. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Our present condition, then, is explained by the fact that we are members of a spoiled species. I do not mean that our sufferings are a punishment for being what we cannot now help being nor that we are morally responsible for the rebellion of a remote ancestor. If, none the less, I call our present condition one of original Sin, and not merely one of original misfortune, that is because our actual religious experience does not allow us to regard it in any other way. Theoretically, I suppose, we might say “Yes: we behave like vermin, but then that is because we are vermin. And that, at any rate, is not our fault.” However, the fact that we are vermin, so far from being felt as an excuse, is a greater shame and grief to us than any of the particular acts which it leads us to commit. The situation is not nearly so hard to understand as some people make it out. It arises among human beings whenever a very badly brought up boy is introduced into a decent family. They rightly remind themselves that it is “not his own fault” that he is a bully, a coward, a tale-bearer and a lair. But none the less, however it came there, his present character is detestable. They not only hate it, but ought to hate it. They cannot love him for what he is, they can only try to turn him into what he is not. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
In the meantime, though the body is most unfortunate in having been so brought up, you cannot quite call his character a “misfortune” as if he were one thing and his character another. It is he—he himself—who bullies and sneaks and like doing it. And if he begins to mend he will inevitably feel shame and guilt at what he is just beginning to cease to be. The fact that we can die “in” Adam and live “in” Christ seems to imply that humans, as they really are, differs a good deal from humans as our categories of thought and our three-dimensional imaginations represent them; that the separateness—modified only by casual relations—which we discern between individuals, is balanced, in absolute reality, by some kind of “inter-inanimation” of which we have no conception at all. It may be that the acts and sufferings of great archetypal individuals such as Adam and Christ are ours, not by legal fiction, metaphor, or causality, but in some much deeper fashion. There is no question, of course, of individuals melting down into a kind of spiritual continuum such as Pantheistic systems believe in; that is excluded by the whole of our faith. However, there may be a tension between individuality and some other principle. We believe that the Holy Spirit can be really present and operative in the human spirit, but we do not, like Pantheists, take no mean that we are “parts” or “modifications” or “appearances” of God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
We may have to suppose, in the long run, that something of the same kind is true, in its appropriate degree, even of created spirits, that each, though distinct, is really present in all, or in some, others—just as we may have to admit “action at a distance” into our conception of matter. Everyone will have noticed how the Old Testament seems at times to ignore our conception of the individual. When God promises Jacob that “He will go down with him into Egypt and will also surely bring him up again,” this is fulfilled either by the burial of Jacob’s body in Palestine or by the exodus of Jacob’s descendants from Egypt. It is quite right to connect this notion with the social structure of early communities in which the individual is constantly overlooked in favour of the tribe or family: but we ought to express this connection by two propositions of equal importance—firstly that their social experience blinded the ancients to some truths which we perceive, and secondly that it made them sensible of some truths to which we are blind. If they had always been felt to be so artificial as we now feel them to be, legal fiction, adoption, and transference or imputation of merit and guilt, could never have played the part they did play in theology. I have thought it right to allow this one glance at what is for me an impenetrable curtain. Clearly it would be futile to attempt to solve the problem of pain by producing another problem. Humans, as a species, spoiled themselves, and good, to us in our present state, must mean primarily remedial or corrective good. What part pain actually plays in such remedy or correction must be considered. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The Real stands alone. It is without any kind of support, and needs none. It is without any kind of dependence or dependent relationship. The emptiness of space is a symbol. The Universe spread out in that space is also a symbol. Both speak of the Real that is in them, but each in a different way. Yes, within every localized point, every timed instant, That which Is proclaims Itself as the unique Fact outside relationship and beyond change. All one needs to take one through intricate problems of metaphysics is this single masterly conception: Mind alone is. In the last summation, there is only a single infinite thing, but it expresses itself brokenly through infinitely varied forms. Philosophy defines God as pure Mind from the human standpoint and perfect Reality from the cosmic one. The time has indeed come for us to rise to meditate upon the supreme Mind. It is the source of all appearances, the explanation of all existences. It is the only reality, the only thing which is, was, and shall be unalterably the same. Mind itself is ineffable and indestructible. We never see it as it is in itself but only the things which are its passing phases. The ultimate reality is one and the same, no matter what it is called; to the Chinese mystic it is TAO, that is, the Significance; to the Christian mystic it is GOD; to the Chinese philosopher it is T’AI CHI, that is, The Great Extreme; to the Hindu philosopher it is TAT, that is Absolute existence. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
The pure Mind has its own independent, everlasting, invisible, and infinite existence, while all Worldly things and creatures are but fragmentary and fleeting expressions of IT on a lower sphere altogether. It lies deeply concealed as their innermost substance, and persists through their changes of form. Before the personal ego came into being, Being was. “Before Abraha was I am,” announced Jesus. Before thoughts, Thought! In its timelessness, Mind is the One without a Second; “it its timed manifestation it is all things.” The REAL is always where: we live in it. Mind is primary being. It is mysteriously as still as it is self-active. Absolute mind is the actuality of human life and the plentitude of universal existence. Apart from Mind they could not even come into existence, and separated from it they could not continue to exist. Their truth and being are in It. However, it would be utterly wrong to imagine the Absolute as the sum total of all finite beings and individual beings. The absolute is not the integral of all its visible aspects. It is the unlimited, the boundless void within which millions of Universes may appear and disappear ceaselessly and unendingly but yet leave It unaffected. The latter do not exhaust even one millionth of its being. The Great Mind—invisible and untouchable; the host of little minds visible and pseudoconscious; the words incessantly poured out until the Silence descends. The Great Mind again! Yet it was always there but humans looked elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
With every thought we break the divine stillness. Yet behind all thoughts is Mind. Behind all things that give rise to thoughts is Mind. The One Infinite Life-Power is the ultimate of all things and all consciousness. There is no thing and no mind beyond it. Within and without the Universe there is only a single absolute power, a single uncreate essence, a single primary reality. The ultimate metaphysical principle of Mind behind all this ordered activity is the same as the ultimate religious principle worshipped as God. This is the mysterious element which hides as the unknown quantity—the algebraic x—of the Universe. That which is at the heart of all existence—the World’s and yours—must be real, if anything can be. The World may be an illusion, your ego a fiction, but the ultimate essence cannot be either. Reality must be here or nowhere. Mind is the essence in humans and the power in the Universe. It is always there, the only reality in a mind-made World. It is in here, and out there, the fundament upon which all Universes are structured, the substance of which they are composed, yet it is nowhere to be seen microscopically or measures geometrically. When all else is extinct it remains, indestructible and unique. There is a principle of life which is conscious in its own unique way, which is the essential being of all entities and the essential reality behind all substances. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
The Infinite Being is there and will be there whether Universes exist or not. The essence of all these finite forms is an infinite one. No one can see the Real yet everyone may see the things which come from it. Although it is itself untouchable, whatever we touch enshrines its presence. There is but One God, One Life, One infinite Power, one all-knowing Mind. Each human individualizes it but does not multiply it. One brings it to a point, God, but does not alter its unity or change its character. Lord of travelers, please unite this land. We share one road, with many branches: guide us along it to find each other’s homes. And when we find them, please clear our sight so that we might see that we all live in the same neighbourhood, that none of us lives apart. To the blessed God they offer sweet melody, to the Sovereign, the living and ever enduring God, they utter hymns and make their praises heard; for He alone works mighty deeds and makes all that is new. He is triumphant in battle, sowing righteousness and bringing forth victory. He creates healing, for He is the Lord of wonders and is revered in praises. In His goodness He renews continually each day the work of creatin, as it is said in the Psalm: “Gibe thanks to Him who makes great lights, for His loving kindness endures forever.’ O cause a new light to shine upon Zion, and may we all be worthy to delight in its splendor. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Creator of the Heavenly lights. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 