We live in a World where many look on the marketplace as a ruthless arena where the buyer must beware, where no one is obligated to do more than the law requires, and where fraud is not fraud unless you can prove it in court. However, as American citizens, we must have a higher standard. Some seize wealth by trafficking in illegal drugs, or by carjacking. Carjacking is defined as the theft of an automobile by threat or force. Despite its growing reputation, little is known about the thoughts and behaviors of persons who turn to this hybrid form of violent crimes. To this end, we draw upon interviews with twenty-eight active offenders to illustrate how they engage in the planning, enactment, and aftermath of carjacking events. Offenders are described as opportunists who rely on carjacking as a source of reputation enhancement and income. The data show that stolen cars are sometimes used for short-term transportation but eventually get converted to cash through the use of a third party (id est, chop shops) or by personally selling off in-demand accessories (id est, rims, stereo components) on the street. A variety of internal and external pressures are shown to shape carjacking motivations. Offenders may choose to engage in the crime in response to peer pressure, boredom, or a perceived need for money, drugs, or transportation. The term “alert opportunism” refers to those theft in which the offenders do not actively seek to steal a car but take advantage of a soft target. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

Conversely, the term “motivated opportunism” is used to describe a predatory state in which the offender actively seeks out potential targets. These findings demonstrate a loose rationality behind carjacking, one that is fueled by an ongoing need for cash and status, and leads to a number of patterned behaviors. With the exception of homicide, probably no offense is more symbolic of contemporary urban violence than carjacking. Carjacking, the taking of a motor vehicle by threat of force, has attained almost mythical status in the annuals of urban violence and has played an undeniable role in fueling the fear of crime that keeps urban residents off of their own streets. What is more, carjacking has increased dramatically in recent years. There is an aggregate annual average of 35,500 carjackings per year. Offenders used a weapon in 77 percent of all attempted and completed carjackings. Carjackings are most likely to occur in the evening and at night away from the victims home. Twenty-nine percent of carjackings took place in a parking lot or garage, and 45 percent occurred in an open area, such as on the street. Eighteen percent occurred at or near the victims home. Although carjacking has been practiced for decades, the offense first made national headlines in 1992 when a badly botched carjacking in suburban Washington, D.C., ended in a homicide. Pamela Basu was dropping her 22-month-old daughter at pre-school when two men commandeered her BMW at a stop sign. In full view of neighborhood residents, municipal workers, and a school bus driver, the two men tossed her daughter off with Mrs. Basu’s arm tangled in the car seat belt. She was dragged over a mile to her death. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

This incident focused a nationwide spotlight on carjacking and legislative action soon followed with the passing of the Anti-Car Theft Act of 1992. Carjacking was made a federal crime punishable by up to a 25-year term in prison or—if the victim is killed—by death. Like other forms of robbery, carjacking bridges property and violent crimes. Although a manifestly violent activity, it appears often to retain elements of planning and calculation typically associated with instrumental property crimes such as burglary. Unlike most robberies, however, carjacking apparently is directed at an object rather than a subject. Mot of the research on carjackings is based on official police reports or large pre-existing data sets such as the National Crime Victimization Survey. From this research, we know that carjackings are highly concentrated in space and time, occurring in limited areas and at particular hours. These studies also indicate that carjackers tend to target individuals comparable to themselves across demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and age. We know that weapons are used in 66-78 percent of carjackings, and tht weapon usage increases the chance that an offense will be successful. Finally, these studies suggest that carjacking is often a violent offense; approximately 24-38 percent of victims are injured during carjackings. Despite these studies, much about carjacking remains poorly understood. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

By their very large-scale nature, such studies are incapable of providing insight into the interaction between motivational and situational characteristics that govern carjacking at the individual level. What is more, they overrepresent incidents in which the offenders and victims are strangers. Recent literature on the nature of acquaintance robbery and drug robbery suggests that this limitation may represent a crucial gap in our understanding of the social and perceptual dynamics associated with carjacking. If, for example, offenders target victims who they know or “know of,” the chance of serious injury or death may increase because within-offense resistance and post-offense retaliation both are more likely. We conducted a field-based study of active carjackers, focusing on the situational and interaction factors (opportunities, risks, rewards) that carjackers take int account when contemplating and carrying out their cries. Drawing on a tried and tested research strategy, we recruited 28 active offenders (with three asked back to participate in follow-ups) from the street of St. Louis, Missouri, and interviewed them at length about their day-to-day activities, focusing on the motivations, planning, execution, and aftermath of carjackings. This methodological strategy allowed us to examine the perceptual links between offenders’ lifestyles and the immediate situational context in which decision to offend emerge, illuminating the contextual uses that mediate the carjacking decision. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

Interviews focused on two broad issues: motivation to carjack ad vehicle/victim target selection, and aftermath of carjacking offenses (including vehicle disposal, formal and informal sanction risk management, use of cash, et cetera. The issue of how carjacking occurs (id est, offense enactment) is covered across the discussion of these two broader themes, because enactment represents a behavioral bridge that unites them. Thus, the procedural characteristics of carjacking naturally emanated from discourse regarding motivation, target selection, and aftermath. In area of motivation, our interviews focused on the situational and interactional factors that underlie the decision to commit a carjacking, and the transition from unmotivated states to those in which offenses are being contemplated. On its face carjacking seems risky. Why risk a personal confrontation with the vehicle owner when one could steal a parked car off the street? Respondents felt that car theft was more dangerous because they never knew if the vehicle’s owner or law enforcement might surprise them. Low-Down: “I done did that a couple of times too, but that ain’t nothing I really want to do ‘cause I might get in a car [parked on] the street and the motherfu*ker [the owner of the vehicle] might be sitting there and then it [might not] be running [any] ways. I done got caught like that before, got locked up, so I don’t do that no more. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

“I can’t risk no motherfu*king life just to get into a car and then the car don’t start. That’s a waste of time. I would rather catch somebody at a light [or] a restaurant drive-thru of something like that.” Throughout the interviews, two global factors emerged as governing motivation, planning, and target selection: the nature of a given carjacking opportunity (that is, its potential risk and rewards) and the level of situational inducements (such as peer pressure, need for cash or drugs, or revenge). When these factors, in some combination, reached a critical minimal level, the decision to carjack became certain. Scheming promoters with glib tongues and ingratiating manners deceive their neighbors. Unlike carjacking, difficulties of proof make fraud a hard crime to enforce. However, the inadequacies of the laws of man provide no license for transgression under the laws of God. Though their method of thievery may be immune from correction in this life, sophisticated thieves in white shirts and ties will ultimately be seen and punished for what they are. Most of us can be relatively comfortable when a message on the Golden rule in the workplace uses examples like illegal drugs and theft by deception. What follows is more challenging. And it should be. If we measure our conduct against the Savior’s command, “I would that ye should be perfect even as I” (3 Ne. 12.48), we cannot be comfortable. To following the footsteps of the only perfect person who ever lived, we must expect to stretch our souls. Followers of Christ have the moral responsibility of earning their livings and conducting their financial transactions in ways that are consistent with the principles of the gospel and the teachings of the Savior. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Yes, evil spirits are at work today. The control of spirits over the bodies of those they possess is seen in several Gospel cases. The man with the legion was not master over his own body or mind. The spirits would “seize him,” “drive him” Luke 8.29, compel him to cut himself with stones (Mark 5.5), strengthen him to burst every fetter and chain (v. 4), “cry out” aloud (v. 5), and fiercely attack others (Matt. 8.28). They boy with the dumb spirit would be dashed to the ground (Luke 9.42), and convulsed; the spirit forced him to cry out, and tore him, so that his body became bruised and sore (v. 39). Teeth, tongue, vocal organs, ears, eyes, nerves and muscles are seen to be affected and interfered with by evil spirits in possession. Weakness and strength are both produced by their working, and men (Mark 1.23), women (Luke 8.2), boys (Mark 9.17), and girls (Mark 7.25) are equally open to their power. That the Jews were familiar with the fact of evil-spirit possession is clear from their words when they saw the Lord Christ cast out the blind and dumb spirit from a man (Matt. 12.24). It is evident also that there were men among them who knew some method of dealing with such cases (v. 27). “By whom do your sons cast them out?” asked the Lord. That such dealing with evil spirits was not truly effective may be gathered from the several instances given, where it appears that alleviation of the sufferings from evil-spirit possession was the most that could be done: exempli gratia, the case of King Soul, who was soothed by the harp playing of David; the sons of Sceva, who were professional exorcists, yet who recognized power in the name of Jesus which their exorcism did not possess. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

In both these cases, the danger connected with the attempted alleviation or exorcism, because of the power of evil spirits to resist, is strikingly shown in contrast to the complete results achieved by Christ and His apostles. David playing to Saul is suddenly aware of the javelin flung by the hand of the man he was seeking to soothe. And the sons of Sceva found the possessed man leaping upon them, and overpowering them, when they used the name of Jesus without the divine co-working given to all who exercise personal faith in Him. Among the heathen also—who know the venom of similar wicked spirits—the best that can be accomplished is ere propitiation and the soothing of the spirits; hatred, by obedience to them. The language of theology consists of symbols and ontological terms. In a very strict sense, myth and symbol are not the language of theology, but of religion, id est, of man’s encounter with the holy. The task of theology is to interpret the Christian symbols of this encounter in relation to the existential situation and in ontological terms. In brief, theology speaks ontologically about Christian symbols. Symbols, therefore, necessarily enter into the theologian’s vocabulary and method. A sign—for example, the red light on the street corner—is an arbitrary convention that does not participate in the reality signified, while a symbol—for instance, the king of a country—does participate in the power and meaning of the reality symbolized. Symbols open up levels of reality that cannot be attained in any other way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

 And corresponding to levels of reality, levels of the soul are also opened up by symbols. A watercolor, a poem, or a symphony mediates something for which another mode of expression or even another painting or sonnet is utterly inadequate. Thus symbols are irreplaceable; new ones cannot be invented. They are born out of the “collective unconscious” which produces or at least accepts them. They die when they no longer respond to the “inner situation of the human group.” When it comes to religious symbols, the level of reality they open up is the depth dimension, the ground of all reality, being-itself or the ultimate power of being. In the soul they excite the experience of this ultimate reality, of the holy.  But caution must be hastened. Although symbols participate in the holy, they are not identified with it. The constant danger of symbolism is demonization. There are two levels within all religious symbols. The transcendent level goes beyond the empirically encountered reality and includes the idea of God, his attributes, and his acts. The immanent level is encountered within empirical reality and includes incarnation and sacraments. Now, we must consider the truth of religious symbols. Their truth is their adequacy to the religious situation in which they exist. They cannot be proven wrong or “killed” by historical and scientific criticism, but they die when they no longer mediate the religious experience of a community. Such was the case of the symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary which died among Protestants because of their loss of the ascetic ideal of virginity and because of their rejection of any mediator between God and man. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

However, the external criterion of all religious symbols which guard them from being demonized is the cross of Christ, for he who embodies the divine presence sacrificed himself so as not to become an idol. The theologian has in his hands the rich treasure of Christian symbols. How is one to interpret them? The method of correlation directs one to begin with an existential analysis of the religious situation. This analysis reveals that the questions asked are ontological ones, questions of being and non-being, of ontological anxiety, and of the ambiguities of life. Consequently, if the Christian symbols are to be relevant to the situation, the answers must also be in ontological terms. However, there now arise the serious objection that ontology is alien to the biblical message and that to use it is to betray the very source of theology. Biblical religion is characterized by its personalism, for, in the Bible, God appears as a person in the I-Thou revelator encounter. Ontology, on the other hand, asks the question of being-itself, describes the structure of being, and searches for ultimate reality. The extremes of these definitions serve to highlight the conflict: a concrete person versus abstract being-itself. One finds the same opposition in other concepts, for instance, faith. Biblical faith is passionate, confident, and committed, while ontology is detached, questioning, doubting. Each of the biblical symbols drives inescapably to an ontological question and answers are given by theology necessarily contained in the ontological elements. There is a hidden but close correlation between biblical imagery and ontological concepts once one probes beneath the surface. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

China’s economic and military transformation has the potential to rival that of America. China is starting to pursue differentiation of their products: both low-tech and high-tech. One of their most popular tools to achieve this goal is buying the brands of internationally famous Western companies, along with acquiring their product departments, initiating tie-up arrangements, or, more and more often, acquiring them altogether. The trend gained strength in the 2000s. Lenovo became famous for its acquisition for the PC department of IBM in 2004. It made its own name recognizable all around the World and effectively contributed to the establishment of the Lenovo brand associated with an attractive cost-quality mix, dynamism, entrepreneurial spirit, newcomer’s aggressiveness (in the positive meaning of the word), quick learning, desire to innovate, openness, and readiness to integrate different business culture. Having invested more than $500 million, the country’s second largest TV maker TCL established a joint venture with the French electronic giant Thomson and became its majority partner. Thompson also owns the World-famous American brand RCA. The tie-up opened the way for producing under both Thompson and RCA brands and was also used to promote products under the brand of TCL itself, though mostly in the developing nations. Then, through its subsidiary, TCL also acquired the cellular phone business of Alcatel. Pearl River Piano, controlling 60 percent of China’s piano market, acquired a small British maker exporting pianos under the German brand Ritmuller. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

However, buying the brand is not at all an easy and not necessarily a successful game. Its costs are very high—especially as Chinese firms usually target famous but ailing companies or poorly performing product divisions their Western counterparts are eager to sell. Thus, as a rule, Chinese acquirers have to bear a heavy financial burden without any guarantee that the company or the division they have purchased will be put back on track. TCL’s venture has been in the red from the very start. Lenovo’s profit margins are extremely low, and it is pressed back by Dell, HP, and Acer. In 2006, due to it poor performance, the Hong Kong Exchange removed it from the list of companies included in the key Hang Seng Index. In another development, step-by-step, slowly but surely, a cohort of domestic companies is gradually establishing international brands of their own, without embarking on costly acquisitions. For instance, sports apparel maker Li Ning is challenging Nike and Adidas in terms of design and product selection. In January 2010, it opened its first retail store in Portland, Oregon. Furthermore, it started design operations near Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, hiring American personnel. Tsingtao Brewery has become a popular name in many countries of the World as one of the symbols of the Chinese taste. Other examples of increasingly recognizable Chinese brands include air-conditioner producer Midea, telecom equipment maker ZTE, car marker Chery and Geely, clean technology company LDK Solar, and so on. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

In the West it is often argued that, with a few exceptions, Chinese companies are lacking brand-building capabilities. Sometimes it is even considered proof that China is not an economic superpower. This argument is not convincing. True, China’s progress in this area is much slower than in others. However, besides the evidence of progress already achieved, we have to take into account the fact that most Chinese companies that are seriously working on differentiating their products are establishing brands in their own way, going through several stages. They start not from America, Europe, or Japan, but from China itself: the most rapidly expanding and the most familiar market in the World. Then they move or will move on to other developing countries, taking advantage of the markets’ dynamism and comparatively weak competition from other brand-builders. In the Third World they can also capitalize on their still relatively low production and sales costs. And only after that, having acquired brand-building skills and experience, some of them will go to America, Europe, Japan, and other developed states. The interviews conducted by the China Market Research Group with several hundred senior executives of Chinese consumer goods-making companies, showed that over 50 percent of the respondents expected to enter the United States of American in five years, but only after they target their home market and regions like Africa and the Middle East. If they realize their plans, in the second half of this decade Chinese and Western brands will start genuinely competing in the U.S.A. territory. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

For instance, MINISO USA, a Guangdong-based seller of toys and household products, opened a flagship store in New York City’s SoHo in February of 2022. MINISO USA’s estimated annual revenue is currently $49.2M per year. MINISO USA has 156 Employee, and grew their employee count by 5 percent last year. When considering diversity, one of the characteristics of the Dark Age village was extreme xenophobia—hatred for the newcomer, or sometimes recent immigrants have hatred for established cultures (recent immigrants can be naïve for a city, for instance, but a high influx of them may migrate to a region where their culture is not dominant and create culture shock for the established culture). With the coming of the smokestack era, individual and mass loyalties were gradually transferred from village to nation. However, xenophobia, chauvinism, hatred of the outside, the stranger, the greenhorn, continued to be a tool of state power. Today’s shift to a knowledge-based economy requires more cross-national interdependence than the smokestack economy it replaces. Inevitably, this restricts the range of independent action by nations. This, in turn, leads to a xenophobic backlash in everything from commerce to culture. Today, governments throughout Europe are bracing themselves for an onslaught of imported culture, primarily television and movies, because of the integration of the European market. They are especially jitter about the packaging of news by newcomers. Le Monde charges that the EC’s plan for Television Without Frontiers “risks accelerating the implantation of Anglo-Saxon producers and distributors who have taken a decisive lead in the creation of all-European networks.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

Europeans were nervous about plans for a Moroccan network to begin satellite broadcasts in Arabic to Europe’s 44 million or more mainly Islamic immigrants. And they are projected to compose 8 percent or 58 million by 2030. Concerned has deepened as Muslin fundamentalists scored voting success in secular Algeria. This, however, is only a portent of things to come. Satellite technology and other new media tools are cracking open national cultures. In the opinion of satellite expert Dan Goldin of TRW, the day may well come when home satellite receivers can sold for a fraction of their already low price, and millions around the World will be able to pick up transmission from abroad—a Brazilian variety show, a Nigerian newscast, a South Korean drama, a Libyan propaganda program. This cross-communication, however, threatens the “national identity” that governments seek to preserve and propagate for their own self-serving purpose. When fears of culture deracination are intensified by large-scale immigration, identity becomes and explosive issue. The promoters of a European single-market, urging open borders for capital, culture, and people, seek to displace traditional nationalist sentiment with “supra-nationalism” instead. However, precisely because the new economy is becoming more globally integrated, exporting joblessness, pollution, and culture along with products and services, we see a mounting backlash and the revival of nationalism in the high-tech World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

The Le Penist movement in France, with its viciously anti-Arab propaganda, led by a former legionnaire who terms the Nazi gas chambers “a minor point,” appeals to the knee-jerk xenophobic emotions. His party holds tend seats in the European Parliament. The Republikaner Party in West Germany, formed by an ex-Waffen-SS non-com, Franz Schoenhuber, attacks not merely Turkish migrant workers but even ethnic Germans immigrating from Poland and the Soviet Union who are allegedly taking jobs, housing, and pensions away from “real Germans.” With links to the Le Penists in France and extremist parties elsewhere in Europe, the Republikaner won eleven seats in the West Berlin legislature in 1989, and six in the European Parliament. Under banners proclaiming “Germany first,” Schoenhuber, like Mr. Hitler after the Versailles Treaty, portrayed Germany—now one of the World’s richest countries—as a “victim” nation. Schoenhuber, according to the respected German analyst Josef Joffe, writing in The Wall Street Journal, has issued a “call to arms against the rest of the World, which seeks to oppress Germany by shacking it to the past”—meaning that the World will not let Germany forget Mr. Hitler’s ravages. (Schoenhuber has since quit they part, terming it too extremist.) Any country continually cudgeled for the sins of a much earlier generation can, of course, expect an eventual backlash, a reassertion of national pride. However, pride about what? Instead of urging Germany to become a World leader in developing a more advanced, 21^st-century democracy, the neo-nationalists appeal to many of the anti-democratic pathologies of the German past, thus providing neighboring countries good cause for not wanting Germany to forget its alleged crimes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

With the Berlin Wall down and the de facto reunification of Germany well advanced, what happens in Bonn and Berlin has ramifications throughout Europe, and many all over the continent are watching the Republikaners carefully. However, similar nationalist movements are found all over Western Europe, from Belgium to Italy and Spain, wherever free-flowing culture and communication and border-crossing migrants threaten the old national self-conceptions. The resurgence of flag-waving xenophobia, however, is not limited to Europe. In the United States of America, too, there is a growing nationalist backlash. Fed by a fear that America is in economic and military decline, weary of being told they are too imperialist, materialist, violent, uncultured, et cetera, et cetera, even normally apolitical Americans are responding to nationalist demagogy. Anti-immigration sentiments runs hot, encouraged by eco-extremists who claim the influx of Mexican immigration is damaging to the U.S.A. environment. This born-again nativism, however, is only one manifestation of a new flag-waving nationalism. The 1990 ruling of the Supreme Court that burning the flag is a form of free political expression, protected by the U.S.A. Bill of Rights, led to an outpouring of high-octane emotion. Radio call-in shows were besieged by outraged callers. The White House instantly proposed changing the Constitution to ban the practice, which is something many Americans would still like to do to this very day. Another indication of the new mood is Japan-bashing, a popular sport these days among protectionist and ordinary Americans worried about the trade imbalance and the Japanese buy-up of U.S.A. companies and real estate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

In Japan, meanwhile, a parallel ultra-nationalism is spreading. Resurgent nationalists call for changes in the constitution to permit a more aggressive military buildup. Japan, they say, did “nothing to be ashamed of” during World War II—a view that upsets China and other nearby countries invaded by the Japanese. For suggesting that Emperor Hirohito may have shared responsibility for World War II, the then mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, became the victim of an attempted assassination. A leading daily Asahi Shimbun, one of those whose reporters had previously been murdered, presumably by nationalists, warns that such violence “will lead to fascism.” The ultras claim, moreover, that Japan has a national “soul” and language different from and superior to that of any other nation. The cult of “Yamatoism,” which promotes this concept of unique superiority, is called upon to offset a loss of national identity resulting from postwar Westernization. Having been treated patronizingly by the United States of America since the way, and sick of being criticized by others for economic policies that have brought it tremendous success, some Japanese are willing to listen to the nationalist pitch. This patriotic hubris comes hand in hand with extraordinary financial clout on the World scene and a fast-growing military capability, and is associated with the most anti-democratic forces in Japanese society. Finally, what makes the widespread resurgence of nationalism truly extraordinary is its reemergence as a powerful political force in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

In fact, rather than democratic uprisings, the upheavals in Eastern Europe could equally well be described as nationalist uprisings among nations bent for nearly half a century to Soviet will. Reframing the concept of “nation” is one of the most emotional and important tasks to face the World in the decisive decades before us, and maintaining national control over certain functions, rather than allowing them to be either localized or globalized, is essential. However, blind tribalism and nationalism are both dangerous and regressive. And when linked to the notion of racial or God-conferred superiority, they gave birth to violence or repression Significantly, in the U.S.S.R., where ethnic passions rocked the state itself, they are often linked to both environmentalism and religious fundamentalism. Ecological themes are exploited to arouse ethnic sentiment against Moscow. In Tashkent a movement called Birlik, which started up to block the building of an electronics plant, has taken on an Islamic fundamentalist coloration. Even more significant than the mounting demands of ethic minorities in the Baltic regions, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and other parts of the U.S.SR. for autonomy or independence is the upsurge of ethnicism in the dominant Great Russian population. Writing about Tolstoi, the historian Paul Johnson described Russian nationalism in words that could apply today. It was, Mr. Johnson says, a “chauvinist spirit, the conviction that the Russians were a special race, with unique moral qualities (personified in the peasant) and a God-ordained role to perform in the World.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

This attitude is expressed in extreme form in today’s anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner Pamyat organization, which claims thirty branches around the Soviet Union, 20,000 members in Moscow alone, and has strong links to both the military and KGB, as well as best-selling authors and cultural figures are members. Pamyat, now facing criminal prosecution for spreading hate, resembles the Black Hundreds moment, which organized pogroms under the Tsar at the turn of the century. Pamyat and similar groups themselves as merely interested in preserving ancient monuments, or repairing the environment, but has as their goal the re-creation of the same village-based society that the Green fundamentalist exalt. Some call for a restoration of the Tsarist monarchy, linked to religious orthodoxy. Like Mr. Schoenhuber in Germany, who disclaims anti-Semitism but mouths Hitler-era propaganda about Jews, Pamyat claims innocence but issues virulent diatribes against “International Zionism and Freemasonary,” and its members threaten pogroms. A pamyat manifesto lashes out at all who have “reduced our churches, temples, monasteries, and graves of national heroes of our Motherland” and who have “reduced the ecology of the country to a catastrophic state.” It urges a massive return to the land—“Down with the giant cities!”—and a revival of the “centuries-old institution of the ploughman.” Here, then, we find xenophobic ethnicism explicitly linked to religious fundamentalism and eco-medievalism—all three in a single Dark Age package. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

It is a combustible convergence of forces that could blow up in the face of democracies wherever they now exist. In its worst case, it conjures up the image of a racist or tribal, eco-fascist, theological state—a maximal recipe for the suppression of human rights, freedom of religion, and private property as well. Such a state seems hard to imagine—except, perhaps, as a result of some immense crisis and tragedy, an eco-spasm combining ecological upheaval with vast economic crisis, terror, or war. However, one need not imagine the worst-case scenario to feel a chill in the bones. It is not necessary for such movements, or a convergence of them, to seize control of a state in order for them to savagely restrict or destroy a form of democracy that, even in the high-tech nations, is already fragile because it is increasingly out of sync with the emerging economy and society. Governments controlled or heavily influenced by extremists who put their particular brand of religion, ecology, or nationalism ahead of democratic values do not stay democratic long. The system of advanced wealth creation now spreading around the Earth opens expanded opportunities for democracy. For the first time, as we say, it makes freedom of expression not just a political good but an economic necessity. However, as the old industrial society enters it terminal tailspin, counterforces are created that could destroy both democracy and the option of economic advance. To save both development and democracy, political systems need to leap to a new stage, as the economy itself is doing. Whether that enormous challenge can be met will decide whether the ultimate powershift tht approaches will protect or enslave the individual. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

In the Powershift Era ahead, the primary ideological struggle will no longer be between capitalist democracy and communist totalitarianism, but between 21^st-century democracy and 11^th-century darkness. The three-way duel—three antagonists, Larry, Mo, and Curly, are engaged in a three-way duel. There are two rounds. In the first round, each player is given one shot: first Larry, then Mo, and the Curly. After the first round, any survivors are given a second shot, again beginning with Larry, then Mo, and then Curly. For each duelist, the best outcome is to be the sole survivor. Next best is to be one of two survivors. In third place is the outcome in which no one gets killed. Dead last is that you get killed. Larry is a poor shot, with only a 30 percent chance of hitting a person at whom he aims. Mo is a much better shot, achieving 80 percent accuracy. Curly is a perfect shot—he never misses. What is Larry’s optimal strategy in the first found? Who has the greatest chance of survival in this problem? Although backward reasoning is the safe way to solve this problem, we can jump ahead a little by using some forward-looking arguments. We start by examining each of Larry’s options in turn. If Larry shoots at Mo, what happens? If Larry shoots at Curly, what happens? If Larry shoots at Mo and hits, then he signs his own death warrant. It becomes Curly’s turn to shoot, and he never misses. Curly will not pass at the chance to shoot Larry, as this leads to his best outcome. Larry shooting at Mo does not seem to be a very attractive option. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

If Larry shoots at Curly and hits, then it is Mo’s turn. Mo will shoot at Larry. [Think about how we know this to be true.] Hence, if Larry hits Curly, his chance of survival is les than 20 percent (the chance that Mo misses). So far, neither of these options looks to be very attractive. In fact, Larry’s best strategy is to fire up in the air! In this case, Mo will shoot at Curly, and if he misses, Curly will shoot and kill Mo. Then it becomes the second round and it is Larry’s turn to shoot again. Since only one other person remains, he has at least a 30 percent chance of survival, since that is the probability that he kills his one remaining opponent. The moral here is that small fish may do better by passing on their first chance to become stars. We see this every four years in presidential campaigns. When there is a large number of contenders, the leader of the pack often gets derailed by the cumulative attacks of all the medium-sized fish. It can be advantageous to wait, and step into the limelight only after others have knocked each other and themselves out of the running. Thus, your chances of survival depend on not only your own ability but also whom you threaten. If the stronger players kill each other off, a weak player who threatens no one may end up surviving. Curly, although he is the most accurate, has the lowest chance of survival—only 14 percent. So much for survival of the fittest! Mo has a 56 percent chance of winning. Larry’s best strategy turns his 30 percent accuracy into a 41.2 percent chance of winning. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Today’s duels are more likely to be fought between takeover specialist T. Boone Pickens and the target management over who will end up with control of the board of directors. However, if you do not think far enough ahead, things do not always come out as planned. Throughout my life I has associated with all classes of people. I have few prejudices and my greatest wealth lies in the fact that I have dear, true, faithful friends in all classes. Some of the wealthiest down to some of the poorest are my friends. I am proud to have these friends and proud of the fact that I can talk to them and speak out my heart to them, thus assisting them in some way. However, until now I could never help myself. I wanted to feel free but I never have. Every door I ever entered led to frustration sooner or later. I always got the feeling that I did not “belong.” When I made new friends and found new and interesting things to do I was happy for a while but soon I would become frustrated. I cannot control myself when it comes to spending money. I seem to always be in debt. I always seem tied down. I have always felt as though I were searching for a star that never existed. I have already been lonely! However, I have been given confidence in myself and confidence that I can help others. I consider every human being a sacred thing. Many do not. That is my greatest complaint against the World in general. What can I do to create a stream of sensitivity in the hearts of those around me so that they might consider others? #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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With few exceptions, the decision to commit a robbery arises in the face of what offenders perceive to be pressing need for fast cash. Eighty of 81 offenders who spoke directly to the issue of motivation said that they did robberies simply because they needed money. Many lurched from one financial crisis to the next, the frequency with which they committed robbery being governed largely by the amount of money—or lack of it—in their pockets: “[The idea of committing a robbery] comes into mind when your pockets are low; it speaks very loudly when you need thing and you are not able to get what you need. It’s not a want, it’s things that you need,…things that if you don’t have the money, you have the artillery to go and get it. That’s the first thing on my mind; concentrate on how I can get some more money. I don’t think there is any one factor that precipitates the commission of a crime,…I think it’s just the conditions. I think the primary factor is being without. Rent is coming up. A few months ago, the landlord was gonna put us out, rent due, you know. Can’t get no money no way else; ask family and friends, you might try a few other ways of getting the money and, as a last resort, I can go get some money [by committing a robbery]. This is why a lot of people are not judgmental of people who post content on sites like onlyfans. Some of them make more than doctors and the money is legal. Not that I am advertising for the site, nor encouraging people to use it, I am just saying it my decrease the crime rates for people who are desperate for money to pay rent. Of course, it is not an option for everyone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Nonetheless, many offenders appeared to give little thought to the offense of robbery until they found themselves unable to meet current expenses. “[I commit a robbery] about every few months. There’s no set pattern, but I guess it’s really based on the need. If there is a period of time where there is no need of money…, then it’s not necessary to go out and rob. It’s not like I do [robberies] for fun.” The above claims conjure up an image of reluctant criminals doing the best they can to survive in circumstances not of their own making. In one sense, this image is not so far off the mark. Of the 59 other offenders who specified a particular use for the proceeds of their crimes, 19 claimed that they needed the cash for basic necessities, such as food or shelter. For them, robbery allegedly was a matter of day-to-day survival. At the same time, the notion that these offenders were driven by conditions entirely beyond their control strains offenders were driven by conditions entirely beyond their control strains credulity. Reports of “opportunistic” robberies confirm this, that is, offense motivated by serendipity rather than basic human need: “If I had $5,000, I wouldn’t do [a robbery] like tomorrow. But [i]f I got $5,000 today and I seen you walkin’ down the street and you look like you got some money in your pocket, I’m gonna take a chance and see. It’s just natural…If you see an opportunity, you take that opportunity…It doesn’t matter if I have $5,000 in my pocket, if I see you walkin’ and no one else around and it look like you done went in the store and bought somethin’ and pulled some money out of your pocket and me or one of my partners has peeped this, we gonna approach you. That’s just the way it goes.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Need and opportunity, however, cannot be considered outside the opened ended quest for excitement and sensory stimulation that shaped much of the offenders’ daily activities. Perhaps the most central of pursuits in street culture, “life as party” revolves around the enjoyment of “good times” with minimal concern for obligations and commitments that are external to the…immediate social setting. While the offenders referred to such activities as partying, there is a danger in accepting their comments at face value. Many gambled, used drugs, and drank alcohol as if there were no tomorrow; they pursued these activities with an intensity and grim determination that suggested something far more serious was at stake. Illicit street action is no party, at least not in the conventional sense of the term. Offenders typically demonstrate little or no inclination to exercise personal restraint. Why should they? Instant gratification and hedonistic sensation seeking are quite functional for those seeking pleasure in what may objectively be viewed as a largely pleasureless World. The offenders are easily seduced by life as party, at least in part because they view their future prospects as bleak and see little point in long-range planning. At such, there is no milage to be gained by deferred gratification: “I really don’t dwell on [the future]. One day I might not wake up. I don’t even think about what’s important to me. What’s important to me is getting mine [now].” The offenders’ general lack of social stability an absence of conventional sources of support only fueled such a mindset. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The majority called the streets home for extended periods of time; a significant number of offenders claimed to seldom sleep at the same address for more than a few nights in a row. Moving from place to place as the mood struck them, these offenders essentially were urban nomads in a perpetual search for good times. The volatile streets and alleyways that crisscrossed St. Louis’s crime-ridden central city neighborhoods provided their conduit. The open-ended pursuit of sensory stimulation was but one way these offenders enacted the imperatives of street culture. No less important was the fetishized consumption of personal, nonessential, status-enhancing items. The unchecked pursuit of such items—like anomic participation in illicit street action—emerges directly from conduct norms of street culture. The code of the streets calls for the bold display of the latest status symbol clothing and accessories, a look that loudly proclaims the wearer to be someone who has overcome, if only temporarily, the financial difficulties faced by others on the street corner. To be seen as “with it,” one must flaunt the material trappings of success. The quest is both symbolic and real; such purchases serve as self-enclosed and highly efficient referent systems that asset one’s essential character in no uncertain terms. “You ever notice that some people want to be like other people…? They might want to dress like this person, like dope dealers and stuff like that. They go out there [on the street corner] in diamond jewelry and stuff. ‘Man, I wish I was like him!’ You got to make some kind of money [to look like that], so you want to make a quick hustle.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The functionality of offenders’ purchases was tangential, perhaps irrelevant. The overriding goal was to project an image of “cool transcendence,” that, in the minds of offenders, knighted them members of a mythic street aristocracy. Obviously, the relentless pursuit of high living quickly becomes expensive. Offenders seldom had enough cash in their pockets to sustain this lifestyle for long. Even when they did make the occasional “big score,” their disdain for long-range planning and desire to live for the moment encouraged spending with reckless abandon. That money earned illegally holds “less intrinsic value” than cash secured through legitimate work only fueled their spendthrift ways. They way money is obtained, after all, is a “powerful determinant of how it is defined, husbanded, and spent.” Some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that through carefree spending, persistent criminals seek to establish they very conditions that drive them back to crime. Whether offenders spend money in a deliberate attempt to create these conditions is open to question; the respondents in our sample gave no indication of doing so. No matter, offenders were under almost constant pressure to generate funds. To the extent that robbery alleviated this stress, it nurtured a tendency for them to view the offense as a reliable method for dealing with similar pressures in the future. A self-enclosed cycle of reinforcing behavior was thereby triggered. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

In manufacturing output, the shift of global power balance is drastic. In this sector the West has lost its dynamics, and all the growth energy has gone to China and other emerging economies. China’s manufacturing output for 2021 was $4,865.83B, a 26.04 percent increase from 2020. However, the U.S.A. manufacturing output from 2021 was nearly half as much at $2,497.13B, with only an 11.55 percent increase from 2020. Perhaps, to bring our jobs and factories back from China and become a manufacturing nation again, we need to decrease the value of the dollars below the Chinese yuan. I am sure this would hurt in the short term, but in the long term it would help us and it would be better than going bankrupt. If not dominant, China has emerged and consolidated its position as the World’s largest, producers of a wide variety of manufacturing goods, often leaving all other contenders far behind. In contrast, the range of major manufacturing items whose production is led by Western countries has significantly narrowed. If current differentials in the growth dynamics are preserved, already in the second half of this decade China’s production of manufactured goods will be greater than that of the United States of America and Japan combined. Besides, as in the case of GDP, comparisons based on the national currencies’ exchange rates have to be treated with caution: Their results may be biased in the West’s favor because one and the same product is usually less expensive in China than in the West. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

China is also exceeding predicted figures, they were only expected to account for 25 percent of the World’s total exporting, but are nearly at 30 percent. Since the early 1980s, China has at least doubled its share of the World’s merchandise exports every ten years, so this is something we should be very concerned about. As it stands, the United States of America has a 16.8 percent global manufacturing output. True, the best Western manufacturers are raising productivity and sharpening their competitive edge. However, the circle of these strong players is quite limited. They agony of weak manufacturers exacerbates the situation at the labor market: People losing their manufacturing jobs, even if they find a job in the service sector, often have to accept lower pay, worse working conditions, and less employment stability. Today, because the Law of Ubiquity has not yet completed it action, high-tech societies, and especially the United States of America suffers from a maldistribution of information—an “information divide” as deep as the Grand Canyon. A seemingly intractable problem in many of the high-tech nations is the existence of what has come to be called an “underclass.” The presence of this underclass is not only a moral affront to affluent societies but a menace to social peace, and ultimately a threat to democracy. It is simple-minded to assume that all those in the underclass are “victims” of society or unemployment. Many, perhaps, most are there for other reasons. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

What is increasingly clear, however, is that work requires higher and higher informational skills, so that even if jobs are available, most of the members of this group cannot match the knowledge requirements. Moreover, the knowledge needed goes beyond task-specific job skills. To be truly employable a worker must share certain implicit cultural understandings about things like time, dress, courtesy, money, causality, and language. Above all, the worker must be able to get and exchange information. These generalized cultural skills cannot come out of textbooks or training sessions alone. They presuppose a familiarity with how the World-beyond-one’s-own-street functions. That kind of knowledge comes increasingly from the media environment. It is from the media that people infer both social norms and “facts” about how things work. The nature of the media, the pictures they deliver, the groups they target, and the feedback they permit are directly related, therefore, both to employment and to the problems of the underclass. Furthermore, the cultural divide between the underclass and the mainstream society actually widens as the new media system spreads. National College Television (NCT) which uses satellites to distribute specialized programming to college students for forty-two hours a week, claims a student audience of 1,000,0000. Ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-four, these are citizens today and potential leaders tomorrow. If anything, they represent the polar opposite of the young people in the underclass. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The U.S.A. college population of today probably includes within in it two future Presidents, a hundred senators, and thousands of corporate CEOs. Today’s college student of age 20 is the most video-sophisticated audience in history…Forty years ago Sesame Street went on air, specifically designed to educate infants and pre-school children with sophisticated television techniques including short (90-second) segments, dazzling video effects, interactive involvement, new heroes, easy daily access, et cetera. This audience migrated [as it grew older, to other programs like] Electric Company, Zoom, to Nickelodeon, MTV—each a move representing an inexorable progression…The audience created by Sesame Street now reshaped all of television! The TV programs are either all shown on the public—id est, educational—network or on cable channels, rather than on the major Second Wave networks. One of my favorite cartoons was Beverly Hills Teens. The term screenie is used to describe this video-drenched generation, which has digested thousands of hours of television, imbibing its “video-logic.” To that must be added, for many of them, more hours of interactive video games and, even more important, of work on their own personal computers. They not only follow a different logic, but are accustomed to make the screen do things, thus making them good prospects for the interactive services on the market today. Above all, they are accustomed to choice. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The vast divide between the youth of the underclass and the screenie, which now characterizes the United States of America, will widen in Europe, Japan, and other high-tech nations, too, unless steps are taken to bridge the informational Grand Canyon. In a knowledge-based economy the most important domestic political issue is no longer the distribution (or redistribution) of wealth, but of the information and media that produce wealth. This is a change so revolutionary it cannot be mapped by conventional political cartography. The new wealth-creation system will compel politicians, activists, and political theorists—whether they still regard themselves as left-wing or right-wing, radical or conservative, feminists or traditionalist—to rethink all political ideas developed during the smokestack era. The very categories are now obsolete. Social justice and freedom both now increasingly depend on how each society deals with three issues: education; information technology (including the media); and freedom of expression. In case of education, the reconceptualization now required is so profound, reaching so far beyond questions of budgets, class size, teacher pay, and the traditional conflicts over curriculum, that it cannot be dealt with here. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Like Second Wave TV networks (or for that matter all the smokestack industries), our mass education systems are in need of some fine tuning. Exactly as in the case of the media, education, however, will require a proliferation of new channels and a vast expansion of program diversity. (However, with the Internet, there is no reason only 30 percent of students are reading at their grade level and only 32 percent are performing in math at their grade level because there are free online tutors and examples to help them.) That was one of my concerns, is America becoming overpopulated with people who have intellectual disabilities? While China has students excelling in all fields. If schools are to prepare for economically productive roles, a high-choice system will have to replace a low-choice system. And students are going to need more guidance to help them find the resources they need to excel in school. The links between education and the six principles of the new media system—interactivity, mobility, convertibility, connectivity, ubiquity, and globalization—have scarcely been explored. Yet to ignore the relationship between the educational system of the future and the media system of the future is to cheat the learners who will be formed by both. Significantly, education is no longer merely a priority for parents, teachers, and a handful of education reformers, but for the advanced sectors of business as well, since its leaders increasingly recognize the connection between education and global competitiveness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The second priority involves the speedy universalization of access to computers, information technology, and the advanced media. No nation can operate a 21^st century economy without a 21^st century electronic infrastructure, embracing computers, data communications, and other new media. This requires a population as familiar with this informational infrastructure as it is with cars, roads, highways, trains, and the transportation infrastructure of the smokestack period. Not everyone, of course, needs to be a telecom engineer or a computer expert, just as not everyone needs to be a auto science engineer. However, access to the media system, including computers, faxes, and advanced telecommunications, must be as free and easy as access is today to the transportation system. A key objective of those who want an advanced economy, therefore, should be to accelerate the workings of the Law of Ubiquity—that is, to make sure that all citizens, poor and rich alike, are guaranteed access to the widest possible range of media. Finally, if the essence of the new economy is knowledge, the democratic ideal of freedom of expression becomes a top political priority, rather than a peripheral matter. The state—any state—is in business to stay in power. Whatever the economic costs to the rest of us, it will seek ways to harness the latest communications revolution to its purposes, and it will set limits on the free flow of information. When the industrial revolution brought mass media into being, just as the state invented new forms of mind control, it will search for new tools and techniques to retain at least some control over the images, ideas, symbols, and ideologies reaching its people through the new electronic infrastructure. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Enthusiasm over the way the media were used to overthrow totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe should not blind citizens to the more sophisticated mind manipulations that governments and politicians will attempt in the future. No society can tolerate total freedom of information. Some secrecy is necessary to all social life. Total freedom of information would mean total lack of individual privacy. There are moments of extreme crisis, moments of “clear and present danger,” when absolute freedom invites bad behavior contagion to spread across peaceful lands. Absolute freedom of expression is, therefore, no more possible than absolute anything else. However, the more the society advances toward a super-symbolic economy, the more important it becomes to permit an extremely wide range of dissent and free expression. The more any government chokes off or chills this rich, free flow of data, information, and knowledge-including wild ideas, innovation, and even political dissent—the more it slows down the advance of the new economy. For the vast extension of the global neural system coincides with the most important change in the function of free expression since at east the French and American revolutions. In the agrarian past, new ideas were often a threat to survival. In communities living on the thin edge of subsistence, using methods honed over the centuries, any deviation was dangerous to an economy that lift little margin for risk. They very notion of freedom of thought was alien. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

With the rise of science and the industrial revolution, a radical new notion came into being: that minds free of state or religious shackles were necessary for “progress.” However, the population to whom this applied was a fraction of the total. With the revolutionary rise of the new wealth-creation system, it is not a fraction of the working population but a substantial and ever-expanding number whose productivity depends precisely on the freedom to create everything from new product designs to new computer logics, metaphors, scientific insights, and epistemologies. Super-symbolic economies grow from cultures constantly provoked by new, often dissenting ideas, including political ideas. The fight for free expression, once the province of intellectuals, thus becomes a matter of concern to all who favor economic advance. Like adequate education and access to the new media, freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness. This discovery lays the basis for an unusual political coalition of the future—one that brings together two groups who have, since the early days of the industrial revolution, been frequent adversaries: intellectuals, scientists, artists, and civil libertarians, on the one side, and advanced managers and even shareholders and capitalists on the other, all of whom will now find that their interests depend on revolutionizing the education system, widening the access of the entire population to computers and the other new media, expansion of free WiFi, and protecting—even extending—freedom of expression. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Such a coalition is the best guarantee of both intellectual and economic advance in the economies of the 21^st century. For Mr. Marx, freedom was the recognition of necessity. Those who wish to build 21^st century economies could find that necessity is the mother of freedom. Now, the principle behind the efficient contract is to get firms to take into account the costs they impose on others by their actions. When each firms pays the other’s cost, they are each motivated to announce the truth and make an efficient go-ahead decision. However, this leads to a problem with budget balancing. So instead of paying the actual costs of the other firm each can pay the expected or statistical average of the costs its actions will impose. When each firm declares a low cost, this increases the chance tht the project will proceed and correspondingly the chance that the other firm will have to bear some production costs. To make each firm take into account the average externality it will inflict on the other type of firm, it should receive the statistical average of the project’s operating profit minus the average of the costs of the other type of firm it will be dealing with when the project goes ahead. If the firm inflates its own costs, it risks canceling the project more frequently and getting smaller receipts, while if it deflates costs this leads to a higher “externality” payment for the expected costs imposed on the other firm. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The Lord did not spend time attempting to convince the Pharisees of His claims as the Messiah; nor did He take the opportunity of alluring the Jews people by yielding to their desires for an Earthly kind. Is tht not striking? His one mission in this World was manifestly to conquer the satanic prince of the World by death on the cross (Heb. 2.14) and thereby deliver the devil’s captives from his control. He had come to destroy the works of the devil and his invisible hosts (1 John 3.8). The commission He gave to the twelve, and to the seventy, was exactly in line with His own. He sent them forth and “gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all the manner of disease” (Matt. 10.1); to “first bind the strong man” (Mark 3.27), and then to take his goods; to deal with the invisible hosts of Satan first, and then to “preach the gospel.” From all this we learn that there is one Satan, one devil, one prince of the demons, directing all the opposition to Christ and His people; but myriads of wicked spirits called “demons”—lying spirits, deceiving spirits, foul spirits, unclean spirits—are subjectively at work in men. What is their form, and whence their origin, none can positively say. That they are spirit-beings who are evil is alone beyond all doubt; and all who are undeceived and dispossessed from satanic deception become firm witnesses, from personal experience, to their existence and power. They know that thing were done to them by spirits, and that those things were evil. Therefore they recognize that there are spirit beings who pervert, and know that the symptoms, effects and manifestations of demonical possession have active, personal agencies behind them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

From experience they know that they often have been hindered by these beings. Therefore, reasoning from personal facts, as well as the testimony of Scripture, they know that these malevolent spirits are tempters, liars, accusers, counterfeiters, cruel enemies, haters, murderers, and wicked beyond all the power of man to know. That is why sometimes people say, “How could a human do something like that?” perhaps the human was possessed by a demon. The names of these evil spirits describe their characters, for they are called “foul,” “lying,” “unclean,” “evil,” and “deceiving” spirits, as they are wholly given up to every manner of wickedness, and deception and lying works. Historical theology closely related blocks of source material: the Bible, church history, and the history of religion and culture. This threefold source may cause some Protestant and Catholic eyebrows to rise, but we must reject the assertion of neo-orthodox biblicism that the Bible is the only source. For the Bible can be understood only in the context of past religions and cultures, and it conveys a message to us only because the church experiences and participates in that message. Still, the Bible remains the basic theological source since it is the original document about the events of sacred history that led to the foundation of the Christian church. It is inspired in the sense that the inspiration of the biblical writers is their receptive and creative response to potentially revelatory facts. The Bible is a revelation according to which no revelation takes place unless someone receive it. This the act of reception is part of the revelatory event. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The theologian must also employ the history of religion and culture, because one’s spiritual life, one’s thought patterns, one’s education, and the very language one speaks is conditioned by religious and cultural antecedents. The link between the theologian and one’s sources is that experience is the medium through which the sources speak to us, through which we can receive them. For every theologian stands in an existential relation to truth in that one experiences, participates in, the religious power of one’s source before one analyzes them. Experience, as the theological medium, is receptive, not productive. No new revelation is produced, and the unique event of Jesus as the Christ remains at the center of Christian theology. Subjectivity is excluded in the sense that experience is not a source. However, subjectivity is active insofar as the theologian does not woodenly report one’s sources, but is seized by their power. Wise and philosophical ideas give us a better understanding of our soul. Loneliness has a quality of immediacy and depth, it is a significant experience—one of the few in modern life—in which man communes with himself. And in such communion man comes to grips with one’s own being. One discovers life, who one is, what one really wants, the meaning of one’s existence, the true nature of one’s relations with others. One sees and realizes for the first time truths which have been obscured for a long time. One’s distortions suddenly become naked and transparent. One perceives oneself and others with a clearer, more valid vision and understanding. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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