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Nothing but a Trick from A to Z
Love is a decision, it is not a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision. The falsity of a judgement is not for us an objection to the judgment; this is perhaps where our new language will sound most foreign. The question is, To what extent is it life advancing, life preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species propagating? We are fundamentally inclined to assert that the falsest judgments (among them the synthetic judgment a priori) are for us the most indispensable, that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the wholly invented World of the unconditional, self-identical, without a constant falsification of the World through number, man could not live—that to renounce false judgments would be to renounce life, to negate life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life: this surely means resisting customary value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that ventures such a thing, just by doing so, places itself beyond good and evil. On the question of peaceful methods in the fight for communism, the difference between the Russian and the Chinese is as strong as it is in the question of co-existence. The emancipation of the workers and peasant can come about only by the roar of revolution and certainly not by the roar of reformism. The Yugoslav leaders, for whom the ritualistic word “revisionists” is employed, are singled out as the arch enemy and the center of World revisionism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, the revisionists often serve only as a foil for the real opponent, Mr. Khrushchev who of course cannot open by called a revisionist. Yet Mr. Khrushchev’s position becomes quite clear in the declaration of the 81 Communist Parties with its emphasis on peaceful, economic competition between the two system, as against revolutionary activities. Actually, the conflict between the Russians and the Chinese lines is by no means restricted to the problems of the industrial countries (where it is largely theoretical and unreal). It is very acute with regard to the policy toward various underdeveloped countries. It is quite likely that the sudden cessation of the Communist offensive in Iraq in the summer of 1959 was due to Mr. Khrushchev’s pressure and against the intentions of the Chinese; the more clear-cut case is that of Algeria. In his report to the Supreme Soviet, in October 1959, Mr. Khrushchev, reversing his previous stand against Mr. de Gaulle’s plans, suddenly came out in favour of a North American cease-fire plan, while the Chinese have continued to label Mr. de Gaulle’s plan as “nothing but a trick from A to Z.” Eventually, the Chinese-Russian conflict centers on the leadership withing the Communist movement. The Chinese leaders claim that their communes are a decisive step forward in the direction of true communism, and that Mao Tse-tung is the leading theoretician of the Communist camp, while the Russians naturally deny this claim. This conflict is by no means just a matter of personal jealousy. It touches upon the very important question of whether the Soviet Union or Communist China will eventually be the leader of all underdeveloped countries and, specially, of the Communist Parties within these countries. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The difference between Russian and Chinese communism is a very real one. While Russia represents a conservative industrial managerialism, she has to support the colonial revolutions for the sake of her own World political position, always qualified by the concern for her own security and the possibility of an arrangement with the Western bloc. China, on the other hand, with ideas contrary to those of Mr. Marx’s socialism, has developed, thus far, an evangelical faith in an egalitarian type of mass society; this faith is based on a zealous expectation that the communes constitute a short-cut to the new form of society and a dee disbelief that capitalism can change its intention to destroy the Communist countries The Russian-Chinese antagonism is apparent not only in the conflicts regarding views on coexistence, on peaceful transition to socialism et cetera, but in many practical questions of foreign policy. In addition to the difference in attitude toward Mr. de Gaulle and, probably, to Iraq, it is well known that Mr. Khrushchev expressed his regrets at the aggressive attitude of the Chinese in the Chinese-Indian border conflict. There is also serious competition going on between Russian and China, not only in various Communist parties all over the World, but especially in such strategic places as the Congo, Algeria, and Cuba, where the Chinese are trying to win over the local leaders to their more aggressive policies while the Russians are in the position of having to exercise a moderate influence and at the same time talking sufficiently “tough” in order not to lose the battle for influence to the Chinese competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
More important, perhaps, is not the fact that the Russians did not want the Chinese to be equipped with atomic weapons, but there is a good deal evidence that the Chinese exerted a good deal of pressure on Russia to grant nuclear weapons to China, and there was a Russian reluctance to comply with this wish. There has been joint East German and Chinese pressure for atomic armament in cause the Western powers place thermonuclear weapons at the disposal of West Germany. Mr. Khrushchev, on the other hand, in an undated letter to the European Federation against Atomic Armament, made public by the Tass News Agency on March 18, 1959, stressed the “undesirability of expansion of the so-called atomic club,” and warned that action by the United States of America to supply nuclear weapons to her allies would set off “a kind of chain reaction n the dissemination of nuclear weapons all over the World.” Another fundamental importance for any consideration of the future of Chinese policy, is the problem of whether the aggressiveness of China’s political position at present indicates that China is bent on territorial expansion, and hence eventually on war. Considering her population pressures and the production of her agriculture not being at their peak, one might argue that for economic reasons China need to seek territorial expansion, and hence eventually war. Many people believe this is why China has been investing so heavily in the United States of America and why the Chinese-owned Fufeng Group, which describes itself as an “internationalized bio-fermentation products manufacturer, paid $2.3 million to purchase the 300 acres of land just 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force base, home to top secret drone technology, which poses a national security threat. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Considering her population pressure and the subprime productivity of her agriculture, one might argue that for economic reasons China needs to seek territorial expansion Such expansion could take place either in the direction of the thinly population Outer Mongolia and Siberia, or in the direction of the heavily populated Southeast Asia with its fabulous resources of rice, oil, rubber, et cetera. While an increasingly aggressive China may one day take such a course of territorial expansion, there are many reasons why this is not the method which the Chinese leaders would prefer. Expansion toward Siberia would make Russia the enemy of China, and bring about an anti-Chinese, United States of America-Russia coalition, which would be a mortal danger for China. As to expansion toward the southeast, which could occur only with Russian implicit or explicit support, there is no real economic need for such expansion. It is true that China needs many of the raw materials obtainable in Southeast Asia, but the problem, for her, is not primarily that of owning the countries that have oil, land, rubber, et cetera, but of having free and unhindered trade with them at fair prices. The crucial point in China’s whole economic situation is the fact that China has almost no long-term credits, and is being forced to industrialize on a shoestring, that is to say, by forced saving at the expense of general consumption. As China embarks on her plan for World domination, it appears to be proceeding almost completely on a pay-as-you-go basis, and this may have been an important factor behind the radical changes in domestic policies which Peking introduced during 1957-1958. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The dramatic decisions to set up decentralized, large-scale, labour-intensive industries, to mobilize labour on a mass scale for irrigation and other projects requiring little capital investment, and to regiment China’s population and resources further by establishing the communes may all be related, in some respects at least, to the fact that by 1958 Communist China was carrying out its development programs without long-term foreign loans. In spite of their fervour in pursing their type of communism, their intense nationalism, their pride, and their aggressive language, there is no reason to assume that the present leaders of China are not realistic and rational men who prefer to see their efforts succeed peacefully, rather than to provoke a war, even though they are less anxious to avoid such a war than the Russians are. There are many reasons to believe, however, that in their broad strategy Peking’s leaders do not think primarily in terms either of Chinese territorial conquest abroad or of exporting revolution by overt Chinese aggression. World conquest in traditional military terms and World revolution in Communist terms are very different concepts. Yet, Peking does attach high priority to the building up of its military strength, and in many ways it can attempt to use pressure and force while still trying to avoid war. Even after the stand of the Chinese leaders against the American accusation of being a “currency manipulator,” the Chinese have really given up their aim of avoiding war and of competitive coexistence which they followed before. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
One cannot, of course, rule out completely the possibility that Peking has made a major decision to place an increased reliance on military force to achieve its goals. However, as of the early autumn of 2020, there is little to indicate that the Chinese Communists have, in fact, decided to pursue a general policy of large-scale military aggression. The new pressures they have been exerting on China’s neighbours have to date been limited pressures, and apparently Peking’s aims in regard to Taiwan and Hong Kong and the Senkaku Islands have been limited. In all of these situations, in fact, local factors rather than broad tactical considerations seem to provide the main explanation for Peking’s recent actions, and it appears likely that after attempting to make local gains, Peking will probably try once again to reemphasize the carrot rather than the stick in its relations with Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South East Asia. And with conflict in the Middle East joining the war in Ukraine as strains on China’s foreign relations, Beijing might well be rethinking its alliance with Russian. When you look at the Russia-China relationship, the “no limits” partnership is started press its luck. Concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict and Russia’s war against Ukraine, China is a little nervous that the Russia idea of communism is clashing with their own idea. Indeed, China might be moving closer to the USA positions on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East as it seeks to rein in “chaos” that could undermine Beijing’s interests. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Time may also be running out for Norther Korea’s strengthening relationship with Russia, owing to palpable discontent in Beijing with Moscow providing some types of technology to Pyongyang. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing reliance on Pyongyang to supply artillery shells and other basic armaments for his Ukraine campaign has left some Chinese officials uneasy. There is some palpable discontent in Beijing about this idea that Mr. Putin could be playing in their backyard. There are a lot of fears that support the North Korea with the types of technologies that are back flowing…in return for the weapons shipments could embolden the North Koreans next year. USA President Joe Biden and his administration have repeatedly called on Beijing to pressure its two neighbours, both to rein in Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and to constrain Pyongyang’s provocative actions. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un vowed support for Russia’s “just fight” during a summit with Mr. Putin in September 2023, a pledge that the USA warned could translate into a new source of ammunition for Moscow’s war in Ukraine. If one takes a sober view of the Chinese situation and is not blinded by passionate hatred of their kind of communism, one might arrive at this conclusion: the more difficult, economically, the Chinese position is, the more intolerant will the regime in China become, and the more aggressive its foreign policy. If the present policy of maximal economic isolation and of political humiliation of China continues, the aggressive tendencies within China will increase and help Mr. Putin’s enemies within Russia to gain victory. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
This course is likely to lead to the increase of thermonuclear arming of China, hence of Germany, and eventually to the brink of war. If, on the other hand, the Peking government is given credits and the possibility of free trade, and if the fulfillment of the country’s economic needs is not threated by hostile governments in America, Russia and South East Asia, there is a very reasonable chance that China will revert to its earlier policy of competitive coexistence. There is little doubt that the proposal for a unilateral disarmament—in the broad sense of the unconditional dismantling of a country’s military establishment—will be acceptable neither to the United States of America nor to Russian in the immediate future. This is why many are concerned with practical suggestions for arms control, it proposes another and very limited concept of unilateral disarmament, one which has been called by Charles Osgood “graduated unilateral action (or disengagement)” or which might be called unilateral initiative in taking practical steps toward disarmament. The basic idea underlying this concept is that of a radical change of our method of negotiating multilateral disarmament. This change implies that we give up the present method of bargaining in which every concession we make is dependent on a corresponding and guaranteed concession on the part of the Russians; that, instead, we take, unilaterally, gradual steps toward disarmament in the expectation that the Russians will reciprocate and that, thus, the present deadlock in the negotiations of universal disarmament can be broken through. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, in the back of the minds of many, any kind of disarmament sounds insane because not everyone will agree. Furthermore, up and coming nations who do not currently have thermonuclear weapons will build them and everyone will be in danger. Or one nation may keep their weapons and take over the World. Nonetheless, as to the specific steps which should be taken in this fashion, it would require a great deal of further thought, aided by competent specialists. However, in order t give at least an idea of the concrete steps this policy would envisage, it would be necessary to sharing scientific information; stop atomic tests; troop reductions; evacuation of one or more military bases; discontinuation of German rearmament; et cetera. The expectation is that the Russians are as willing as we are to avoid World War III, hence they will begin to reciprocate and that once the course of mutual suspicion has been reversed, bigger steps can be taken which may lead to complete bilateral disarmament. Furthermore, disarmament negations should be paralleled by political negotiations, which aim essentially at mutual noninterference on the basis of the recognition of the status quo. Here, too (and again in essential agreement with Mr. Osgood’s position), unilateral steps such as the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line would be taken in the expectation of reciprocation by the Russians (id est, curbing of Chinee aggression, noninterference in the Middle and far East.) However, if one looks at the mindset and history of Russia, no one really believes that they will agree to any kind of disarmament. They would let the entire World burn before giving up any weapons. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, many believe the rest of the World is in the same yacht. Total unilateral disarmament is unlikely because the present method of negotiations does not seem to lead to the goal of bilateral disarmament because of the deeply ingrained mutual suspicions and fears; without achieving complete disarmament, the armament race will continue and lead to the destruction of our civilization as well as that of the Russians or, even without the outbreak of another war, will slowly undermine and eventually destroy the values in defense of which we are risking our physical existence; while unilateral steps constitute a definite risk (and must be so by the very nature of the idea), the risk at every step is not a crippling one and is infinitely smaller than the danger we run by the continuation of the arms race. Even though the broader concept of complete—rather than graduated—unilateral disarmament is, as stated before, not a practical possibility in the near future, many people like to discuss it because a small minority of people believe that the risks in the continuation of the armament race are far greater than the very serious risks of unilateral disarmament. Yet the arguments in support of unilateral disarmament, even though they are practical, they are considered unacceptable, but the position contributes to breaking through the thought barrier which prevents us now from getting out of the dangerous circle of seeking peace by means of threat and counterthreat. However, more people would be fearful of attacking Russia or China than the United States of America because they know the Russians and the Chinese will strike back, but the Americans are acting like schoolboys who pay the bully during lunch time not to steal their lunch. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, people who believe in unilateral disarmament are united by their critical attitude toward the irrational aspects of international politics and by their deep reverence for life. They share the conviction of the oneness of the human race and faith in the spiritual and intellectual potentialities of man. They follow the dictates of their conscience in refusing to have any “part in making billions of women and children and noncombatants hostages for the behaviour of their own governments.” Whether they think in theistic terms or in those of nontheistic humanism (in the sense of the philosophic continuum from Stoic to eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy), they all are rooted in the same spiritual tradition and are unwilling to compromise with its principles. They are united by their uncompromising opposition to any kind of idolatry, including the idolatry of state. While their opposition to the Soviet system is rooted precisely in this attitude against idolatry, they are critical of idolatry whenever is appears in the Western World whether it is in the name of God or od democracy. While there is no proponent of unilateral disarmament who does not believe that the individual must be willing to give one’s life for the sake of one’s supreme values, if such an ultimate necessity arises, they are all equally convinced that to risk the life of the human race, or even the results of its best efforts in the last five thousand years, is immoral and irresponsible. However, many people believe that if the Sun does not destroy the World, then a war will. It is what many people expect. As warfare becomes at once more senseless and more devastating, the convergence between religious pacifist, humanist, and pragmatic opponents to nuclear armament grows. I supposed that is better than being a nihilist. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
From the standpoint of the proponents of unilateral disarmament, to continue the armament race is catastrophic, whether the deterrent works or not. In the first place, they have little faith that the deterrent will prevent the outbreak of a thermonuclear war. They believethat the results of a thermonuclear war would be such that in the very “best” case they completely belie the idea that we ought to fight such a war in order to save our democratic way of life. There is no need to enter the guessing game as to whether one-third or two-thirds of the population of the two opponents and what proportion of the neutral World (depending on how the wind blows) will be destroyed. This is a guessing game that verges on madness; for to consider the possibility of the destruction of 30 percent, 60 percent, or 90 percent of one’s own and the enemy’s population as an acceptable (although, of course, most undesirable) result of one’s policy is indeed approaching pathology. The increasing split between intellect and affect, which is so characteristic of or Western development in the last centuries, has reached its dangerous, schizoid peak in the calm and allegedly rational way in which we can discuss possible world destruction as a result of our own action. It does not take much imagination to visualize that sudden destruction and the threat of slow death to a large part of the American population, or the Russian population, or large parts of the World, will create such a panic, fury, and despair as could only be compared with mass psychosis resulting from the Black Death in the Middle Ages. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The traumatic effects of such a catastrophe would lead to a new form of primitive barbarism, to the resurgence of the most archaic elements, which are still potentialities in every man and of which we have had ample evidence in the terror systems of Mr. Hitler, Mr. Stalin, and Mr. Obama. It would sound most unlikely to many students of human nature and psychopathology that human beings could cherish freedom, respect for life or love after having witnessed and participated in the unlimited cruelty of man against man which thermonuclear war would mean. It is a psychological fact that acts of brutality have a brutalizing effect on the participants and lead to more brutality. However, it is believed that when the World reached a population of 5 billion that it was over populated. We are nearly 2.4 billion people past that number, and there are so who would actually like to see a large section of the human population disappear from the planet to reduce the risk of threat, reduce traffic and housing prices, and reduce the strain that people are putting on the World and give it time to heal. For perpetual victory, therefore, the believer must unceasingly be on guard against the Tempter and one’s agents, praying that all hidden temptations will be revealed as such. The degree to which one understands the workings of the ultimate negative will be determined by the degree of victory experienced, for in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
For the believer to have victory over every aspect of a tempter’s working, it especially requires discrimination between what I temptation from a seducer working upon the uncrucified “old man,” temptation through the things of the World. In temptation, the crucial point is for the tempted one to know whether the tempting is the work of an evil spirit of from the evil nature. This can be discerned only by the experiential knowledge of Romans 6 as the basis of one’s life. Temptation from the fallen nature should be delt with on the foundation of “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus” reports Romans 6.11., and practical obedience to the resulting command, “Let not sin reign in your mortal body.” In the hour of temptation to sin—to visible, known sin—the believer should take his stand on Romans 6.6 as his deliberate position of faith, and in obedience to Romans 6.11 declare his undeviating choice and attitude as “death to sin, in death-union with Christ.” If this choice is the expression of his real will, and the temptation to sin does not cease, he should then deal with the spirts of evil who may be seeking to awaken sinful desires (Jas. 1.14) or to counterfeit them. For they can counterfeit the dole nature in evil desire, evil thoughts, evil words, evil presentations—and many honest believers think they are battling with the workings of the old nature when these things are given by evil spirits. However, if the believer is not standing actively on Romans 5, the “counterfeits” are not necessary, for the old fallen creation is always open to be wrought upon the powers of darkness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The most normal and nonpathological form of violence is playful violence. We find it in those forms in which violence is exercised in the pursuit of displaying skill, not in the pursuit of destruction, not motivated by hate or destructiveness. Examples of this playful violence can be found in many instances: from the war games of primitive tribes to the axe throwing of Victorian famers. In all such games of fighting it is not the aim to kill; even if the outcome is death of the opponent, it is, as it were, the opponent’s fault for having “stood in the wrong spot.” Naturally, if we speak of the absence of the wish to destroy in playful violence, this refers only to the ideal type of such games. In reality one would often find unconscious aggression and destructiveness hidden behind the explicit logic of the game. However, even this being so, the main motivation in this type of violence is the display of skill, not destructiveness. Of much greater practical significance than playing violence is reactive violence. By reactive violence I understand that violence which is employed in the defense of life, freedom, dignity, property—one’s own or that of others. It is rooted in fear, and for this very reason it is probably the most frequent form of violence; the fear can be real or imagined conscious or unconscious. This typed of violence is in the service of life, not of death; its aim is preservation, not destruction. It is not entirely the outcome of irrational passions, but to some extent of rational calculation; hence it also implies a certain proportionality between end and means. It has been argued that from a higher spiritual plane killing—even in defense—is never morally right. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, most of those who hold this conviction admit that violence in the defense of life is of a different nature than violence which aims at destructiveness for its own sake. Very often the feeling of being threatened and the resulting reactive violence are not based upon reality, but on the manipulation of man’s mind; political and religious leaders persuade their adherents that they are threatened by an enemy, and thus arouse the subjective response of reactive hostility. Hence the distinction between just and unjust wars, which is upheld by capitalist and Communist governments as well as by the Roman Catholic Church, is a most questionable one, since usually each side succeeds in presenting its position as a defense against attack. In 1939, Mr. Hitler had to organize a fake attack on a Silesian radio station by alleged Polish soldiers (who ere, in fact SS men), in order to give his population the sensation of being attacked, and hence to justify his wanton attack against Poland as a “just war.” There is hardly a case of an aggressive war which could not be couched in terms of defense. The question of who claimed defense rightly is usually decided by the victors, and sometimes only much later by more objective historians. The tendency of pretending that any war is a defensive one shows two things. First of all that the majority of people, at least in most civilized countries, cannot be made to kill and to die unless they are first convinced that they are doing so in order to defend their lives and freedom; second, it shows that it is not difficult to persuade millions of people that they are in danger of being attacked, and hence that they are called upon to defend themselves. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Such persuasion depends most of all on a lack of independent thinking and feeling, and on the emotional dependence of the vast majority of the people on their political leaders. Provided there is this dependence, almost anything presented with force and persuasion will be accepted as real. The psychological results of the acceptance of a belief in an alleged threat are, of course, the same as those of a real threat. People feel threatened, and in order to defend themselves are willing to kill and to destroy. In the case of paranoid delusions of persecution we find the same mechanism, only not on a group basis, but on an individual one. In both instances, subjectively the person feels in danger and reacts aggressively. Beware, you philosophers and friends of knowledge, and guard against martyrdom! Against suffering “for the sake of truth”! Even against defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and subtle neutrality of your conscience, it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags, it dumbs you down, makes you brutish and bullish, if, when battling danger, defamation, suspicion, expulsion, and even meaner consequences of animosity, you wind up having to play the role of protectors of truth or Earth—as if “the truth” were some harmless and clumsy person in need of protectors! And you of all people, you Knights of the Most Sorrowful Countenance, my dear loiterers and cobweb spinners of the spirit: in the end, you know well enough that nothing hinges on whether you are proved right, indeed that no philosopher has ever been proved right, and that there might by a more worthy truthfulness in every little question mark you put behind your favourite words an beloved doctrines (sometimes even behind yourselves) than in all the solemn gestures and trump cards played before accusers and courts of law! #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
No, step aside. Ruin to the shadows. And have your masks and your finesse, that you may not be recognized! Or that you may be feared a little! And do not forget the garden, the garden with the golden trelliswork! And have people around you who are like a garden—or like music on the waters, in the evening, when the day has sunk into memory—Choose that good solitude, free, playful, lighthearted solitude, which might even give you the right to be good, in some sense! How poisonous, how cunning, how bad every protracted war that cannot be waged with open force makes us. How personal and protracted fear makes us, a protracted spying on one’s enemies, on potential enemies! These outcasts of society, those long hunted, wickedly persecuted—the forced recluses, the Spinozas or the Giordano Brunos—always in the end become, albeit in the most spiritual guise, and perhaps without knowing themselves, sophisticated revenge seekers and poisoners (let someone unearth the foundations of Spinoza’s ethics and theology!); not to mention the clumsiness of moral indignation, which is a sure sign that a philosopher has lost his philosophical sense of humour. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his “sacrifice to truth,” brings to light the agitator and the actor in him; and if one has hitherto regarded him with mere artistic curiosity, in the case of some philosopher it is not hard to understand the dangerous wish to see them, too, in the degeneration (degenerating into “martyrs,” crying out from their stages and rostrums). Except that with such a wish we must be clear about what we will get to see: just a satyr play, just an epilogue farce, just more proof that the actual long tragedy has come to an end—assuming that every philosophy arose as a long tragedy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Knowledge for its own sake—this is the final snare set by morality: one thereby gets completely tangled up in it all over again. The allure of knowledge would be meager, were it not that so much shame must be overcome along the way. The meaning of history seems more important to the mind than does the meaning of being. The metaphysical interpretation of the meaning of history has become an urgent and practical concern. The necessity of acting historically in the true sense, that is, of acting so as to change history, is one of the strongest motives for the development of a metaphysics of history…the recognition of the necessity of a metaphysical interpretation of history leads to the recognition of the necessity of metaphysics. The importance of history is attached to a clear sign that the symmetry of this theonomous union of religion and culture can be appreciated only by viewing it within the historical dimension. God as the ground of being lies at the depths of theonomy. The power of the New Being enables us to rejoin the ground from which existence serves us. And the Spiritual Community is the place where the transforming impact of the Spirit is felt. However, when is theonomous fulfilment realized? This is the question of a Christian interpretation of history, and, since history moves forward to its term, it is also the eschatological question. History is the movement of creative time toward fulfilment. History is also the realization of meaning through freedom. Although the concepts of history may be opaque, we discuss the various aspects of history—the historical dimension, man and history, historical time, the ambiguities of history—in hope in this way gradually to penetrate to a better understanding of it. It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Must you salt your truth so heavily that it no longer even—quenches thirst? #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House sits on an area of ancient human settlement. In a field close to the old road is the remains of a neolithic chambered tomb that has become known as “the dungeon”; in an adjacent field were a number of scattered stones, and standing stones in the vicinity know, as “The Winchester Stonehenge.” The road itself traveled over several prehistoric burials. The dungeon itself was erected at some date between 4300 BC and 3000 BC. However, The Winchester Mansion is also of more contemporary relevance. In The Oakland Tribune, 10 September 1890, there was a report concerning numerous sightings of a girl standing by the side of the road at eleven o’clock in the evening; she was at the gate of the mansion. She was hitch-hiking, even at this late hour. She was not in the least a faint or ghostly figure. However, then, unaccountably, on all occasion, she vanished. In The Oakland Tribune of 27 February 1899, there was another disappearance along the entrance of the mansion. Claus Holestein of Germany, for example, had several times seen two pedestrians walking along the front gate of the mansion; when the carriage came close to them, however, they disappeared. On one occasion he saw them walking around the mansion, when a sudden the two people rushed into the path of a carriage which passed straight through them.
Then in 1904, the local police were called to the scene on two occasions when motorists believed that they had knocked down a young woman on the road; on both occasions there was no evidence of any accident of victim. The first encounter was Wednesday 13 July 1904 when Mr. Groning past The Winchester Mansion, when suddenly a young girl appeared in front of his vehicle. He braked and swerved, but he was sure that he had hit her; he said that he heard the sound of the impact. He left his car and found a young girl lying in the road; she was bleeding. He described her as wearing a white blouse and white dress. He wrapped her in a tartan rug taken from the car, and carried her to Mrs. Winchester’s mansion. Unable to gain entrance to the front door, he left the girl and went looking for help. By the time he found one of the farmers, and they returned to the front door of the estate, there was no girl, and no signs of blood. Tracker dogs were introduced the following morning, but there was no scent. There were marks or indentations upon the car. After this event was widely publicized there were of course innumerable local reports of phantom hitch-hikers seen near The Winchester mansion, but none of them had been substantiated. There was, however, one interesting coincidence. An investigator, on searching through the back numbers of The Oakland Tribune, discovered that three young women were killed in a car accident in Santa Clara Valley late on the evening of 19 November 1905. One of these women was to have been married on the following day.
In the autumn of 1922 three separate motorist reported that they had knocked down a young woman who had run unexpectedly into the road. A driver was quoted saying that “she ran in front of the car. She stopped and looked at me. There was no expression on her face. Then I hit her, and it was as if the ground moved apart and sent went under the car. I thought I had killed her, because it was not as if she was see-through or anything. She was solid—as real as you are.” But of course, there was no one there.
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Possibilities for Revolution in the West
In any system which substitutes ritualized ideology for reality, adherence to the correct ideology becomes a proof of loyalty. Since the Russians have ritualized their ideas, they must insist on the “sacredness” or, as they put it, on the “correctness” of their ideological formulae; and, since Mr. Khrushchev’s authority is based on the legitimacy of his succession to an idolized Marx-Lenin image, they must insist on the unbroken continuity of the ideology from Mr. Marx to Mr. Khrushchev. As a result there is endless repetition of the “correct” formula, and all new ideas can be expressed only by the slight changes of words or emphasis within the framework of the ideology. This method is well known to historians of religion. Change that have made great differences have been expressed only in small alterations within the doctrine, hardly noticeable to the outsider. To mention a more specific example: the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that states that Protestantism is a heresy has never been formally abolished since the sixteenth century. Yet nobody would conclude from this fact that the Catholic Church wants to attack or to forcibly convert the Protestants. Turning away from its attitude in the religious wars of the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church has adopted the attitude of co-existence—yet without changing the official doctrine. As we saw in the past with the election of President John F. Kennedy, only a few bigoted groups were afraid that the election of Catholic President would mean an attempt by the Vatican to subvert the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
This ritualization of the ideology leads not only to the fact that its wording remains sacrosanct, but also that it is used for the direction of men’s souls and minds. The difference between religious dogma and Communist ideology lies in the fact that theological statements are the substance of the former, while the latter has its substance in what once was a sociological or historical theory. However, for the purposes of mass influence, the political ideology needs to have moral overtones like “good,” “bad,” “sacred,” and “condemned.” In Soviet ideology “capitalism” or “imperialism” are symbols for the powers of darkness, “communism” is a symbol for the powers of light and the quasi-religious aspects is to paint the picture of a cosmic fight between the two powers, the battle of Ormudz and Ariman, of Christ and the anti-Christ. We in the West give a similar twist to our ideology, which is just the reverse of the Russian. We respect the good, and some believe that they represent the evil. In fact, if we examine all the accusations and the self-praise on both sides, they are remarkably alike in content and also in fervor. The Soviet Union is a conservative state managerialism using Communist-revolutionary ideology. What matter for the evaluation of its foreign policy is its social and political structure, however, and not its ideology. The Khrushchev regime is—and must be—most interested in the development of its system; they bureaucracy ruling in the Soviet Union is expanding and securing the good life for themselves, their children, and eventually for the rest of the population. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Mr. Khrushchev neither believed in the possibilities for revolution in the West, nor did he want it; nor did he need it for the development of his system. What he needed was peace, a reduction in the armaments burden, and unquestioned control over his system. Our main distortion lies in the fact that we manufactured a blend between a revolutionary Mr. Lenin and an imperialist Czar, and then mistook Mr. Khrushchev’s rather conventional and limited movements for signs of the “Communist-imperialist drive for World domination.” In examining the relations between the present cast of Soviet external and domestic policy in the light of the longer-run forces operating upon it, the criterion is not whether communism as a name will be abandoned; it is not whether, full blown, a parliamentary two-party system of government will promptly emerge; it is rather, whether the linked policies of external expansion, of abnormal repression of consumption and centralized police state rule will be significantly and progressively altered. It is important to focus on the reality of the social and economical development, rather than on ideology. However, external expansion, police state rule and repression of consumption are essential elements in communism, hence difficult to change; this was essential for the Stalinist period, but not as much for Khrushchevism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Nevertheless, there is considerable hope; for, the dynamics of Russian history is pressing Soviet society away from the conditions of Communist rule and in the direction of those required for an abandonment by Moscow of its aggressive stance towards the rest of the World. However, there is every reason to believe that, as the younger men shaped by the war and postwar years came to power, they dawned further along the paths leading Russian society to higher levels of welfare and consumption and to greater decentralization and diminished arbitrariness in the exercise of political power. They found it more congenial to build policy around the interests and capacities of the Russian national state than around the former Marxist-Leninist concepts and Mr. Stalin’s operational formulae, the relevance and vitality of which had steadily diminished. However, it is also possible that full consumption will enable the system to abolish most of its overtly repressive measures, and proclaim that it is fulfilling the “socialist” promises for the good life. Why should a population, caught up in the computer age be a threat to the system? More likely it will give solid support to its state managerial bureaucracy, which is making good on some of its promises. The future historian may decide that the most outstanding event in the twenty-first century was the Chinese revolution. This revolution marks the reversal of a historical trend of several hundred years. China, as well as the other countries in Asia and Africa, had been dominated politically and economically by the powerful European countries; now, not only is China seeking “great power” status and global domination, but she is building her own industrial system—although at the price of the violation of human individuality and of severe material sacrifices forced upon her less affluent masses. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The Chinese revolution has such historical significance because it is, at this moment, the most advanced example of a World-wide movement, namely, the colonial revolution. The underdeveloped nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—the “new World” of the twenty-first century—have in common a formula that, in its simplest form, is: nationalism (political independence) plus industrialization. The desire for rapid industrialization is to a large extent, of course, economically motivated, but not entirely. It has its psychological components; industrialization has for such a long time been the privilege of the Western countries—their badge of power—that industrial autonomy has become a goal for the colonial nations for psychological reasons, too. Historically speaking, the Chinese revolution marks the end of Western colonialism and the beginning of industrialization throughout the rest of the World. While the aim of China is shared by most underdeveloped countries, the decisive historical question is whether the Chinese methods will eventually also be adopted by the rest of the underdeveloped World. A feature of vital historical significance is a Chinese “discovery” that constitutes a real threat to the vales of the humanistic tradition. This is the discovery that a poor country with insufficient material capital can use another form of capital, namely its “human capital” by centrally organizing and directing the physical energy, the passion and the thoughts of all its inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This totally organized human “raw material” can replace a good proportion of the material resources that are lacking. To be sure, there have been examples of the attempt to mobilize and direct the physical energy and the thought of people before, in history. This is the way the Egyptian pyramids were built; it is how the Nazi armies marched, and the Russian workers produced. Yet none of these previous attempts have reached the degree of thoroughness and totality the Chinese leaders attempt to achieve. Furthermore, so far the Chinese system seems to have succeeded to an unheard-of degree in producing the feeling, even the conviction, in a considerable number of their people, perhaps the majority, that they are making all their sacrifices voluntarily—and even gladly. How the Chinese succeeded in brining about this result is a question about which historians will still argue for many years to come. Yet it is already possible to distinguish some aspects of this method. First, they use the Marxist ideology, as they understand it as an intellectual frame of reference. This gives them a doctrine, or rather, a dogma that provides a core to which all thoughts and plans can be referred. This dogma leaves no doubts. And it is backed up by the mythical figures of Mr. Marx, Mr. Engels, Mr. Lenin, and by the idolized Mao Tse-tung, and by the fact of the success achieved by the Soviet Union. This “theoretical” aspect of the Chinese system fits in with a past in which knowledge was the most valued property and the key to advancement in the bureaucratic system that governed China for a thousand years before the 1911 revolution. The Communist leaders are the new mandarins; they know the “book,” and they prove their power by referring to the book. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
However, new elements have been added to the Mandarin and Confucian traditions. They are a peculiar mixture of religious fervor, Russian methods of obtaining confessions and self-accusations, and the most advanced psychological method of persuasion. The quasi-religious motivation in itself is complex. To put it in a simple formula, the Chinese say: Every person is a product of his environment and can be changed if the environment is changed. Those who can not be changed must be eliminated. The first part of this formula represents eighteenth-century enlightenment philosophy, a theory according to which the environment is the only factor which accounts for character differences, attitudes, virtues, and vices. Mixed with this enlightenment formula is a concept that is similar to the thought of the Catholic Church. While most men can be saved by the Church (in the Chinese formula by the salutary influence of the new environment), those who can not be converted are lost. What is distinct about the Chinese method compared to other forms of dictatorships and communism is that it does not primarily rely on force, but on persuasion, and furthermore that this persuasion is not only intellectual, but to a large extent emotional—based on the person’s sense of guilt, isolation, and his wish to be reunited with the group—now the party and the community, and no longer the family as it was in the past. This does not mean that force is absent; it has its place within the process of persuasion. There are fundamental differences between this and the Stalinist method. Mr. Stalin wanted to liquidate all dangerous elements, and the Chinese wanted to “educate” them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Never did the Russians make such an all-out attempt to mold the minds and passions of men as have the Chinese; never has a psychological method of “persuasion” (individual and social brain-washing) been more universal, as thorough, and—as it seems—as successful. The particular feature of Chinese communism is, if one puts it in a nutshell, that the Chinese leaders have recreated an effective religion. To be sure, one without a god—but, after all, neither Taoism nor Confucianism had a theistic concept of God in their systems. This new religion is centered around a strict morality, which in itself should not seem strange to any Westerner. Pride, conceit, selfishness are considered to be the main vices; they must be replaced by humility and unselfish service to the nation. This new religion has many ramifications. It affects the person’s political views, his personal habits, his philosophy. In every sphere of life there is a “right” and a “wrong,” a “good” and an “evil.” By “thought reform,” education and reeducation, the individual is made to see the “evil” within himself—and is taught how to achieve the “good”; he is taught to lose his “impurity” and to acquire “purity.” Thoughts and feelings which deflect from this politico-moral goal are evil and must be struggled against with all might. This “totalist” system is as effective and drastic as it can be found anywhere; it is opposed to all those values of individualism and free critical thoughts, which are some of the most precious flowers of Western culture. It must be noted, however, that it is somewhat naïve to forget that such thoughts control was customary in many religions and this kind of indoctrination has existed in many cultures throughout the World. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
These and other characteristics of Chinese communism, however, can be properly understood only if we look at Chinese communism as a whole, and then compare it with the Soviet Russian system. Now, when we consider socialism, according to its basic principles, the aim of socialism is the abolition of national sovereignty, the abolition of any kind of armed forces, and the establishment of a commonwealth of nations. In the sphere of education, the main aims are those of helping to develop the critical powers of the individual and to provide a basis for the creative expression of his personality—in other words, to nurture free men wo will be immune to manipulation and to the exploitation of their suggestibility for the pleasure and profit of others. Knowledge should not be a mere mass of information, but the rational means of understanding the underlying forces that determine material and human processes. Education should embrace not only reason but the arts. Capitalism, as it has produced alienation, has divorced and debased both man’s scientific understanding and his aesthetic perception. The aim of socialist education is to restore man to the fill and free exercise of both. It seeks to make man not only an intelligent spectator but a well-equipped participant, not only in the production of material goods, but in the enjoyment of life. To offset the dangers of alienated intellectualization, factual and theoretical instruction shall be supplemented by training in manual work and in the creative arts, combining the two in craftsmanship (the production of useful objects of art), in primary and secondary education. Each adolescent must have had the experience of producing something valuable with his own hands and skills. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The principle of irrational authority based on power and exploitation must be replaced, not by a laissez-faire attitude, but by an authority which is based on the competence of knowledge and skill—not on intimidation, force, or suggestion. Socialist education must arrive at a new concept of rational authority which differs both from irrational authoritarianism and from an unprincipled laissez-faire attitude. Education must not be restricted to childhood and adolescence, but the existing forms of adult education must be greatly enlarged. It is especially important to give each person the possibility of changing one’s occupation or profession at any time in life; this will be economically possible if at least one’s minimal material needs are take care of by society. Cultural activities must not be restricted to providing intellectual education. All forms of artistic expression (through music, dance, drama, painting, sculpture, architecture, et cetera) are of paramount importance for the human development of man. Society must channel considerable means for the creation of a vast program of artistic activities and useful as well as beautiful building programs, even at the expense of other and less important consumer satisfactions. Great care should be taken, however, to conserve the integrity of the creative artist, to avoid turning socially responsible art into bureaucratic of “State” art. A healthy balance must be maintained between the legitimate claims of the artist upon society and its legitimate claims upon one. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Socialism seeks to narrow the gap between the producer and the consumer in the real of art and seeks ultimately to eliminate this distinction so far as possible by creating optimum conditions for the flourishing of every individual’s creative potentialities. However, it holds up no preconceived pattern and recognizes that this is a problem that will require much more study than has been given to it up till now. Complete equality of races and genders is a matter of course for a socialist society. This equality, however, does not imply sameness, and every effort must be made to permit the fullest development of the gifts and talents peculiar to each racial and national group, as well as to the two genders. Freedom of religious activities must be guaranteed, together with the complete separation of State and Church. The foregoing program is meant to serve as a guide to the principles and goals of socialism. Its concrete and detailed formulation requires a great deal of discussion. To conduct this discussion and to arrive at concrete and detailed suggestions is one of the main takes of a socialist party. It will take considerable time until the majority of the people in the United States of America will be convinced of the validity of socialist principles and goals. What is the task and function of a socialist party during the time before it has succeeded in this task? The SP-SDF (Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation) must embody in its own structure and activities the very principles it stands for; it must not only strive for the achievement of socialism in the future, but must begin with its realization in its own midst immediately. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Hence the SP-SDF must try to convince the people of its program by appeal to irrational emotions, hypnoid suggestions, or “attractive personalities,” but by the realis, correctness, and penetration of its analysis of economic, social, political, and human situations. The SP-SDF must become the moral and intellectual conscience of the United States of America and divulge its analyses and judgments in the widest possible manner. The conduct of activities of the SP-SDF must follow its principles in the sense of the optimum of decentralization and the active, responsible participation of its members in discussions and decisions. It must also give full scope to the expression and divulgence of minority opinions. The socialist program cannot be a fixed plan, but must grow and develop through the continuous activity, effort, and concern of the members of the party. The SP-SDF thus must be different from other political parties, not only in its program and ideals, but in its very structure and way of functioning. It must become a spiritual and social home for all its members who are united in the spirit and social home for all its members who are united in the spirit of humanistic realism and sanity, and by the solidarity of the common concern for and the common faith in man and his future. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The SP-SDF must develop an extensive educational campaign among workers, students, professionals, and members of all social classes who can be expected to have a potential understanding for socialist criticism and socialist ideals. The SP-SDF cannot expect to gain victory in a short time. However, this does not mean that it should not aim at the widest social influence and power. It must strive to gain the allegiance of an ever-increasing number of people who, through the party, make their voices heard within the United States of America and throughout the whole World. The SP-SDF is rooted in the humanistic tradition of socialism; it strives for the transformation of the traditional socialist goals to fit the conditions of twenty-first century society as a condition for their realization. Particularly it rejects the ideas of achieving its goals by force or by the establishment of any kind of dictatorship. Its only weapons are the realism of its ideas, the fact that they appeal to the true needs of man, and the enthusiastic allegiance which those citizens will give it who have seen through the fictions and delusions which fill the mind of people today, and who have faith in a richer, fuller life. It I not enough that the members of the SP-SDF believe in a common ideal. Such faith becomes empty and sterile if it is not translated into action. The life of the party must be organized in such a manner that it offers ample and varied possibility for every member to translate one’s concern into meaningful and immediate action. How can this be done? #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
It must be understood clearly that the basic goals of socialism, especially the method of management of big enterprises by the participants, union and consumers’ representatives, the revitalization of the democratic process, the guaranteed minimum for existence for every citizen, constitute problems the details of which are exceedingly difficult to solve. Their solution requires basic theoretical research in the fields of economics, work organization, psychology, et cetera; and, in addition, it requires practical plans and experimentation. If these social problems are approached in the same spirit of faith and imagination which exists among the natural scientists and technicians, solutions will be found which, looked at from the present situation, might appear as fantastic as space travel appeared sixty years ago. Yet the difficulties of arriving at a solution for a sane and human social organization are not any greater than those in the fields of the theoretical and applied natural sciences. The first task, then, for socialists is to study the problems of applied socialism within their own sphere of activity and to discuss their experiences and suggestions for socialist solutions in the working units of their SP-SDF. Supplementing this group activity are permanent committees for the investigation of these problems. These committees will be composed of specialists in the various fields of economics, sociology, psychology, foreign policy, et cetera. The committees of investigation and the working units will be in close mutual contact, exchanging their idea and experiences, and thus stimulating each other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
However, the activities of the members of the SP-SDF must not be restricted to imaginative thinking and planning. Beyond this, immediate and concrete action is necessary. It is important that each member demonstrates the socialist way of life in one’s place of work, wherever it may be—in factories, offices, schools, laboratories, hospitals, et cetera. Each member must demonstrate the socialist way of approaching problems by one’s own way of dealing with them and by stimulating others. It is especially important that the members of the SP-SDF who are union members work actively for greater member activity and participation in the life of the trade unions. Inside and outside the trade unions, the members of the SP-SDF will support all tendencies for decentralization, active grass-roots participation, and fight all forms of bureaucratism. The SP-SDF wants to attract men and women who are genuinely concerned with the problem of the humanization of society and who, out of this concern, work for it and are willing to make the sacrifice in time and money which this work requires. Although the SP-SDF has its center in the fundamental goals of its programs, it will participate actively in the furtherance of all immediate political aims which are of importance for the progressive development of our society. It will cooperate with all political groupings and individuals that sincerely strive for the same aims. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Amon these aims are, in particular: A sane foreign policy, based on a realistic appreciation of the given facts of political life—a policy which seeks reasonable compromise and realized that war can be averted only if the two power blocs accept their present economic and political positions and renounce every attempt to change them by force. Fight against the idea that our security can be gained by armaments. The only way to avoid total destruction lies in total disarmament. This implies that disarmament negotiations must not be used to prevent real disarmament, but that we must be willing to take risks in the attempt to achieve it. A program of economic assistance to underdeveloped countries on an immensely larger scale than our present one, and at the cost of considerable sacrifice on the part of our citizens for the accomplishments of such a program. We advocate a policy which does not serve the interests of American capital investments in foreign countries and does not involves the United States of America’s foreign policy in indirect interference with the independence of small nations. Strengthening of the United Nations and of all efforts to use its assistance in the solving of international disputes and in large-scale foreign assistance. Support of all measures to raise the standard of living of that part of our population which is still living below the material standard of the majority. This applies to poverty caused by economic as well as b regional and racial factors. Support of all efforts for decentralization and grassroots activities. This implies support of all attempts to curb irresponsible power in corporate, governmental, and union bureaucracy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Support of all measure for social security which lead to immediate relief in distress situations caused by unemployment, sickness, and old age. Support of all measure sin the direction of socialized medicine, with the understanding that the free choice of doctors and a high level of medical services must be upheld. Economic measures which lead to the full use of our agriculture productive capacity and our surplus, nationally and internationally. Support of measures to set up an economic commission consisting of representatives of industry, commerce, trade unions, economists, and consumer representatives. This commission should be charged with undertaking a regular examination of the needs of our economy and developing overall plans for changes in the interest of the nation as a whole. Its most immediate task would be to discuss and propose plans for the change from armaments to peace production. The reports of this commission, including minority reports, should be convoked in the field of foreign policy, culture, and education; the members of these commissions should represent wide sectors of the population, and consist of men whose knowledge and integrity are generally recognized. Vast governmental expenditures for housing, road building, and hospital construction, and for cultural activities such as music, theater, dance, and art. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Given the wealth of the United States of America, we can begin to experiment socially. State-owned enterprises must be organized in which various forms of workers’ participation in management are tried out. In industries of basic social importance, the government must organize yardstick enterprises, which compete with private industry and in this way force it to raise its standards. This must be done first of all in the field of radio, television and moves, and in other fields if desirable. Efforts must be made to begin with a program of workers’ participation in the management of the big corporations. Twenty-five percent of the votes on the decision-making boards should be given to workers and employees, freely elected in each enterprise. The influence of the unions must be strengthened, not only with regard to the problems of wages, but also with regard to the problems of wages, but also with regard to their influence on problems of working, conditions, et cetera. Simultaneously a process of democratization within the unions must be furthered with all energy. All attempts must be supported which aim at the restriction of hypnoid suggestion in commercial and political propaganda. We are aware that the above-mentioned program refers mainly to industrialized countries like those of North America and Europe. For all other countries the program must vary according to their specific conditions. However, the general principles underlying this program, that of production for social use, the strengthening of an effective democratic process, industrially as well as politically, are valid for other countries. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
We appeal to every citizen to feel one’s responsibility for one’s life, that of one’s children and that of the whole human family. Man is on the verge of the most crucial choice he has ever made: whether to use his skill and brain to create a World which can be, if not a paradise, at least a place for the fullest realization of man’s potentialities, a World of joy and creativity—or a World which will destroy itself either with atomic bombs or through boredom and emptiness. Indeed, socialism differs from other party programs in that it has a vision, an ideal for a better, more human society than the present one. Socialism does not want only to improve this or that defect of capitalism, it wants to accomplish something which does not yet exist; it aims at a goal which transcends the given empirical social reality, yet which is based on a real potentiality. Socialists have a vision and say: this is what we want; this is what we strive for; it is not the absolute and the final form of life, but it is a much better, more human form of life. It is the realization of the ideals of humanism which have inspired the greatest achievements of Western and Eastern culture. Many will say that people do not want ideals, that they do not want to go beyond the frame of reference in which they live. While I am not for nor against socialism, the socialists say that this is not true. On the contrary, people have a deep longing for something they can work for and have faith in. Man’s whole vitality depends on the fact that he transcends the routine part of his existence, that he strives for the fulfillment of a vision which is not impossible to realize—even though it has not yet been achieved. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If he has no chance to strive for a rational, humanistic vision, he will eventually, worn out and depressed by the boredom of his life, fall prey to the irrational satanic visions of contemporary society that it offers no ideals, that it demands no faith, that it has no vision—except that of more of the same. The socialists are not ashamed to confess that they have a deep faith in man and in vision of a new, human form of society. They appeal to the faith, hope and imagination of their fellow citizens to join them in their vision and in the attempt to realize it. Socialism is not only a socioeconomic and political program; it is a human program: the realization of the ideals of humanism under the conditions of an industrial society. Socialism must be radical. To be radical is to go to the roots; and the root is Man. Cause and effect.—“Explanation” we call it, but “description” is what distinguishes us from earlier stages of knowledge and science. We describe better—we explain just as little as any of our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold succession where the naïve man and researcher of earlier cultures saw only two things, “cause” and “effect,” as they put it; we have perfected the image of becoming, but we have neither gotten over the image nor gotten out of it. The series of “causes” confronts us more completely in every case, and we infer: this and that must come first for that to come next—but we have thereby grasped nothing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
In every chemical process, for example, quality appears to be a “miracle,” just like all locomotion; no one has ever “explained” an impulse. How could we possibly explain! We work only with things that do not exist, with lines, planes, bodies, atoms, units of time, units of space—how is explanation even possible if we begin by making everything into an image, our image! It is enough to regard science as an attempt to humanize things as faithfully as possible; in describing things and their successions, we learn to describe ourselves ever more precisely. Cause and effect—there probably is no such a duality; in truth, a continuum stands before us, two segments of which we isolate, just as we perceive movement always only as isolated points and, so, do not really see but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects leap out misleads us; it is an abruptness only for us. There is an endless abundance of events that elude us in this one second of abruptness. An intellect that saw cause and effect as a continuum and not, as we do, as arbitrary division and fragmentation, and which saw the flux of events—would reject the concept of cause and effect and deny all causal determination. There are seen temptations, and temptations in the unseen. Physical temptations, soulish temptations, spiritual temptations; direct and indirect temptations. The self-actualized must not only resist the ultimate negative when one tempts openly, or attacks consciously, but by constant prayer one must bring to light psychopathological offenders hidden and covered temptations, know that they are tempters, and therefore are aways planning temptation for the self-actualized. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And this holiday season, please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, for they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Happy is One Who Wisely Considers the Poor
Once upon a time, the police knew the community and community members so well that if your interior lights were on later than usual, they would knock on your door and check to see if everything was well. Times have changed. Economic good fortune smiles, if not on everyone, then on more people than in the past, and glossy magazines offer readers images of well-stocked refrigerators and other scenes from a good life of consumer plenty. It is the era of Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, and Beyonce. The American youth rebels are clad in leather and denim, wilding out of rap concerts. Replacing an old, destroyed World burdened with memory with a shimmy new and complacently forgetful one has become its own type of redemption. In the face of so much good fortune, maybe people feel less need for cosmic solace, less fear of cosmic retribution. No wonder we associate the post 911 years more with economic miracles than religious ones. However, some fear that various evils such as atomic weapons, genetic experimentation, chemical food additives, a massive overreliance on pharmaceuticals, and the fact that large portions of the Earth will soon become uninhabitable is an indication that people are becoming blind to godly powers. It is believed that people need to relearn it, to use spiritual powers to recover and maintain the divine order. Even Communist ideology is losing its influence on the minds of people in general, and of the young generation in particular, and it becomes apparent in a number of reports from Russia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
A very vivid description of this development was to be found in an article by Marvin L. Kalb, “Russian Youth Asks Some Questions.” The author reports from Moscow about a new questionnaire of the “Public Opinion Institute” of Komsomol Pravada, organ of the Communist youth organization. The paper found it necessary to ask questions like “Do you personally have a goal in life?”, “What is it?”, et cetera, not so much for the purpose of a statistical inquiry, but in order to combat the widespread phenomena of apathy and materialism, which are found in the young generation. This is the text of one letter, which is characteristic of others: “‘Are you satisfied with your generation?’ the questionnaire asked. ‘No!’ the nihilist answered. ‘Why’ the questionnaire asked. ‘I’m 19 years old,’ she explained, ‘ and I am filled with apathy and indifference to everything around me—so much so that grown-ups are surprised and wonder, “So young, and yet so bored; what will happen to her when she is 30?” However, this should not be surprising, for it is a simple fact: life is just not very interesting. And this view is not only my own, but all those people with whom I am friendly.’ ’Have you a goal in life?’ the questionnaire asked. ‘Earlier, when I still poorly understood life,’ she wrote, ‘I had a goal—to study. I finished high school; and now I am in an institute part time. But now all my pure dreams lead to only one thing money. Money is everything. Luxury, prosperity, love and happiness—if you have money, you can have all of these things, and more…I still do not know how I am going to get these things; but every girl dreams about a successful marriage with lots of money. Naturally, not everyone succeeds, for there are more people who want money than who have it…But I assure you I shall succeed. My conviction is based on the fact that I always do what I want; and what I want I normally get.’” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
I do not mean to imply, of course, that his letter is representative of all the young generation in the Soviet Union. However, the survey and the publication of letters like this show how serious the leaders take the problem. We in the West, of course, should not be surprised. We are dealing with the same problems of juvenile delinquency and juvenile immortality, and for the same reasons. The materialism, prevalent in our system as well as in the Soviet Union, corrodes the sense of meaning of life in the young generation and leads to cynicism. Neither religion, humanist teaching, nor Marxist ideology is a sufficiently strong antidote—unless fundamental changes occur in the whole society. Just because ideology is not synonymous with lies, just because they—and we—are not aware of the reality behind the conscious ideology, we can not expect that they will—or could—tell us in an aside “we really do not mean what we say; all this is for public consumption, for keeping control over the minds of the people.” Maybe there is an occasional cynic who thinks this; but it is the very nature of ideology that it deceives not only others, but also those who use it. Hence the only way of recognizing what is real and what is ideology is through the analysis of actions and not in accepting words for facts. If I watch a father treating his boy harshly because he considers it his duty to teach him virtue, I shall not be so foolish as to ask the father for his motivations; instead I shall examine his whole personality, many other acts of his nonverbal manifestations, and I shall arrive at an evaluation of the weight of his conscious intention in comparison with his real motivation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
To return to the Soviet Union, what is its ideology? It is Marxism in its crudest form; the development of man is bound up with the development of productive forces. With the development of productive forces, techniques, modes of production, man develops his own faculties, but he also develops classes which become increasingly antagonistic to each other. The development of new productive forces is hampered by the older social organization and class structure. When this contradiction becomes sufficiently drastic the older social organization is changed to accommodate the full development of the productive forces. The evolution of mankind is a progressive one; both man and his domination of nature develop increasingly. Capitalism is the most highly developed system of economic and social organization, but the private ownership of the means of production throttles the full development of the productive forces and thus hinders the full satisfaction of the needs of all men. Socialism, the nationalization of the means of production plus planning, frees the economy from its shackles; it frees man, it abolishes classes and eventually the state. At present a strong state is still needed to defend socialism against attack from abroad, but the Soviet Union is already a classless, socialist society. Capitalism, still beset with its inherent contradictions, must one day adopt the socialist system, partly because of its incapacity to cope with its own contradictions, partly because the example of the socialist countries will be so compelling that all countries will want to emulate it. Eventually, then, the whole World will be socialist, and this will be the basis for peace and the full realization of man. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
This, in short, the Soviet catechism. It contains a mixture of ideology and theory. There is one difficulty the Western observer must overcome. We are not surprised that medieval thinking was structured in the frame of reference of theology. History was seen in terms of God’s creation, man’s fall, Christ’s death and resurrection, and the final drama of the second coming of Christ. Controversies, and even purely political disputes, were expressed in terms of this central frame of refence. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a secular political-philosophical frame of reference. Monarchy versus republic, liberty versus submission, environmental influence versus innate human traits, et cetera, were the battlefields. We in the West still think in a frame of reference that is partly religious, partly political-philosophical. The Russians, on the other hand, have adopted a new frame of reference, that of a socio-economic theory of history, which, according to them, is Marxism. The whole World is looked upon from this perspective, and argument and attacks are expressed in terms of it. For the Western observer for whom such theories are at best the business of a few professors, it is difficult to understand that the Russians constantly talk in terms of class struggle, conflicts with capitalism, victory of communism. The Westerner assumes that this talk must express an aggressive and active attempt to proselytize the World. It may be useful to remember that our religious ideology, in which, for instance, Christians believe that all men will eventually believe in the true God, et cetera, does not imply that we are all set to convert the pagans. It is simply that, considering our central frame of reference, we have to express our ideas in certain term; the Russians, have their frame of reference, do so in other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Soviet thinking is evolutionary and sees as the central factor in human evolution the development of the productive forces, the transformation of one social system to the next higher one. This view is not ideological in the sense in which I have used the term, but is the way the Soviet leaders really look at history, following a crude form Mr. Marx’s historical theory. It is ideological only in the negative sense that the soviet leaders do not employ this theory to analyze their own system. (Such a Marxist analysis of the Soviet system would immediately show the fictitious character of Soviet ideology.) For most Western observers, however, the theory lends itself to serious misunderstanding. When the Communist catechism says, “Communism will be victorious all over the World,” or when Mr. Khrushchev said “We will bury you,” these statements should be understood in terms of their historical theory that the next stage of evolution will be that of communism, but that does not imply that the Soviet Union sees it as its task to bring about this change by force, subversion, et cetera. It is important to understand the ambiguity of the Marxian theory. It is a theory that claims that historical changes occur when the economic development permits and necessitates the change. This aspect of the theory is one that was the basis of socialist reformist thinking in Europe, as represented by Mr. Bernstein and others. These socialists believe in the “final victory” of socialism, but they postulated that the working class need not—and could not—push events. They held that capitalism had to go through all the necessary stages, and eventually, at some unspecified time in the future, it would transform itself into socialism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Mr. Marx’s view was not as deterministic and passive as that. Although he too thought that socialism could be ushered in only when the economic conditions were ripe for it, he believed that at this point the working class and the socialist parties, who by then would be in the majority, would have to take an active part in defending the new system against all hostile attacks from the former ruling groups. Mr. Lenin’s position deviated from Mr. Marx’s in that he substituted the avant-garde for the working class, and that he had more faith in the efficacy of force, especially in a Russia which had not yet gone through its bourgeois revolution. The Marxist goal of the final victory of socialism was common both to the nonactivist reformists and to Mr. Lenin. The formula itself—“Final victory of communism”—is a historical prediction and perfectly applicable to an evolutionary, nonaggressive policy as represented by Mr. Khrushchev. In judging whether Mr. Khrushchev aimed at a “World revolution” it is useful to ask oneself what one means by “revolution.” Of course, the word can be used in many different meanings, the most general one being that of any kind of complete and violent change of an existing government. In this case, Mr. Hitler, Mr. Mussolini, and Mr. Franko were revolutionaries. However, if one uses the concept in a more specific sense, namely the overthrow of an existing, oppressive government by popular forces, then none of these three men could be called “revolutionaries.” In fact, this usage is generally accepted in the West. When we speak of the English, the French, the America revolutions, we refer to revolutions from below, and not from above; to the popular attack against authoritarian systems not to the seizure of power by an authoritarian system. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It was in this sense that Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels used the term revolution, and it was in this sense that Mr. Lenin believed he had started his revolution. He was convinced that the avant-grade expressed the will and the interests of the vast majority of the population, even though the system he created ceased to be the expression of popular will. However, the Communist “victories” in Poland, Hungary, et cetera, were not “revolutions” they were Russian military take-overs. Neither Stalin nor Mr. Khrushchev are revolutionaries; they are leaders of conservative, bureaucratic systems, the very existence of which is based on unquestioning respect for authority. It is naïve not to see the connection between the authoritarian-hierarchical character of a system and the fact that the leaders of such a system can not be “revolutionaries.” Neither Mr. Disraeli nor Mr. Bismarck were revolutionaries although they brought about considerable changes in Europe, and remarkable advantages for their respective countries; nor was Napoleon a revolutionary, even though he used the ideology of the French Revolution. However, even though Mr. Khrushchev is not a revolutionary, his belief in the superiority of communism is perfectly sincere. For him, and probably also for the average Russian, communism and socialism are not, as for Mr. Marx, a humanist system which transcends capitalism, but an economic system that produces more effectively, that avoids economic crises, unemployment, et cetera, and hence is more capable, in long run, of satisfying the needs of a mass and machine society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
This is exactly why the Russian Communists believe that peaceful competition between the two systems will eventually lead to the acceptance of the Communist system throughout the World. Their concepts, here as in so many other respects, are those of capitalism—competition in the sphere of economic efficiency. Yet we hesitate to accept Mr. Khruschev’s challenge to compete with his system, and we preferred to believe that he wants to conquer us by force of subversions. While the basis general aims of humanistic socialism are the same for all countries, each country must formulate its own specific aims in terms of its own traditional and present situation, and devise it own methods to achieve this aim. The mutual solidarity of socialist countries must exclude any attempt on the part of one country to impose its methods on another. In the same spirit, the writings of the fathers of socialist ideas must not be transformed into sacred scriptures which are used by some to wield authority over others; the spirit common to them, however, must remain alive in the hearts of socialists and guide their thinking. Humanistic socialism is the voluntary, logical outcome of the operation of human nature under rational conditions. It is the realization of democracy, which has its roots in the humanistic tradition of mankind, under the conditions of an industrial society. It is a social system which operates without force, neither physical force nor that of hypnoid suggestions by which humans are forced without being aware of it. It can be achieved only by appealing to man’s reason, and to his longing for a more human, meaningful, and rich life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Humanistic socialism is based on faith in man’s ability to build a World which is truly human, in which the enrichment of life and the unfolding of the individual are the prime objects of society, while economics is reduced to its proper role as the means to humanly richer life. In discussing the goals of humanistic socialism we must differentiate between the final socialist goal of a society based on the free cooperation of its citizens and the reduction of centralized State activity to a minimum, and the intermediate socialist goals before this final aim is reached. The transition from the present centralized State to a completely decentralized form of society cannot be made without a transitory period in which a certain amount of central planning and State intervention will be indispensable. However, in order to avoid the dangers that central planning and State intervention may lead to, such as increased bureaucratization and weakening of individual integrity and initiative, it is necessary: a) that the State is brought under the efficient control of its citizens; b) that the social and political power of the big corporations is broken; c) that from the very beginning all forms of decentralized, voluntary associations in production, trade, and local social and cultural activities are promoted. While it is not possible today to make concrete detailed plans for the final socialist goals, it is possible to formulate in a tentative fashion the intermediate foals for the socialist society. However, even as far as these intermediate goals are concerned, it will take many years of study and experimentation to arrive at more definite and specific formulations, studies to which the best brains and hearts of the nation must be devoted. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Following the principle that social control and not legal ownership is the essential principle of socialism, its first goal is the transformation of all big enterprises in such a way that their administrators are appointed and fully controlled by all participants—workers, clerks, engineers—with the participation of trade union and consumer representatives. These groups constitute the highest authority for every big enterprise. They decide all basic questions of production, price, utilization of profits, et cetera. The stockholders continue to receive an appropriate compensation for the use of their capital, but have no right of control and administration. The autonomy of an enterprise is restricted by central planning to the extent to which it is necessary to make production serve it social ends. Small enterprises should work on a cooperative basis, and they are to be encouraged by taxation and other means. Inasmuch as they do not work on a cooperative basis, the participants must share in the profits and control the administration on an equal basis with the owner. Certain industries which are of basic importance for the whole of society, such as oil, banking, television, radio, medical drugs, and transportation, must be nationalized; but the administration of thee nationalized industries must follow the same principles of effective control by participants, unions and consumers. In all fields in which there is a social need but not an adequate existing production, society must finance enterprise which serve these needs. The individual must be protected from fear and the need to submit to anyone’s coercion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In order to accomplish this aim, society must provide, free for everyone, the minimum necessities of material existence in food, housing, and clothing. Anyone who has higher aspirations for material comforts will have to work for them, but the minimal necessities of life being guaranteed, no person can have power over anyone of the basis of direct or indirect material coercion. Socialism does not do away with individual property for use. Neither does it require the complete leveling of income; income should be related to effort and skill. However, differences in income should not create such different forms of material life that the life experience of one cannot be shared by, and this remains alien to, another. The principle of political democracy must be implemented in terms of the twenty-first century reality. Considering our technical instrumentalities of communication and tabulation, it is possible to reintroduce the principle of the town meeting into contemporary mass society. The forms in which this can be accomplished need study and experimentation. They may consist of the formation of hundreds of thousands of small face-to-face groups (organized along the principle of place of work or place of residence) which would constitute a new type of Lower House, sharing decision-making with a centrally elected parliament. Decentralization must strive at putting important decisions into the hands of the inhabitants of small, local areas which are still subject to the fundamental principles which govern the life of the whole society. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
However, whichever forms are to be found, the essential principle is that the democratic process is transformed into one in which well-informed and responsible citizen—not automatized mass-men, controlled by the methods of hypnoid mass suggestion—express their will. Not only in the sphere of political decisions, but with regard to all decisions and arrangements, the grip of the bureaucracy must be broken in order to restore freedom. Aside from decisions which filter down from above, activity in all sphere of life on the grass-roots level must be developed which can “filter up” from below to the top. Workers organized in unions, consumers organized in consumers’ organizations, citizens organized in the above-mentioned face-to-face political units, must be in constant interchange with central authorities. This interchange must be such that new measures, laws, and provisions can be suggested and, after voting, decided from the grass roots, and that all elected representatives are subject to continuous critical appraisal and, if necessary, recall. Origin of knowledge. –Over vast stretches of time, the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and species-preserving: whoever hit upon or inherited them waged the battle for themselves and their offspring with better luck. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were further passed on and finally became almost the basic endowment of the human species, are, for example: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, materials, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in and for itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Only very late did the deniers and doubter of such propositions come on the scene—only very late did truth come on the scene as the weakest form of cognition. It seemed as if one could not live with it; our organism was geared to the opposite: all its higher functions, sense perception and every kind of sensation generally, worked with those fundamental errors, incorporated from archaic times. Moreover, even in the realm of knowledge those propositions became norms according to which one measured “true” and “untrue”—down to the mot remote regions of pure logic. Thus, the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth but in its age, its being incorporated, its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to come into conflict, there was never any serios contest; denial and doubt were considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, such as the Eleatics, who, in spite of everything, fixed and held fast to the opposite of the natural error, thought it possible also to live this opposite; they invented the sage as the man of immutability, impersonality, universality of intuition, as at once one and all, with a special capacity for that inverted knowledge; they were of the belief that their knowledge was also the principle of life. However, in order to assert all this, they had to deceive themselves about their own condition: they had to credit themselves with impersonality and duration without change to misconceive essence of knowledge, to deny the force of impulses in knowledge, and to conceive of reason in general as a wholly free, self-originating activity; they closed their eyes to the fact that they, too, had arrived at their propositions in opposition to what was considered valid, or from a desire for tranquility, or disinterestedness, or domination. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The more refined development of honesty and skepticism in the end rendered even these men impossible; their life and judgment, too, turned out to be parasitic on the age-old drives and fundamental errors of all sentient existence. That more refined honesty and skepticism arose where two antithetical propositions both seemed to apply to life, both being compatible with the fundamental errors, hence where it was possible to argue about greater and lesser degrees of utility for life; likewise, where new propositions showed themselves to be, if not especially useful to life, then at least not harmful either—expressions of an intellectual play impulse, innocent and happy like all play. Gradually the human brain filled itself with such judgments and convictions, and a ferment, a struggle, a craving for power emerged in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took part in the fight over “truths”; the intellectual fight became occupation, attraction, profession, duty, dignity; knowledge and striving for the true in the end took their place as a need among other needs. From then on, not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power; all “evil” instincts were subordinated to knowledge, put in its service, and acquired the luster of the permissible, the honored, the useful, and finally the eye and the innocence of the good. Knowledge thus became part and parcel of life itself and as such an ever-increasing power—until finally knowledge and those age-old fundamental errors collided, both as life, both as power, both in the same man. The thinker: this is now the creature in whom the drive to truth and all those life-preserving errors wage their first battle, once the drive to truth has proved that it, too, is a life-preserving power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Compared to the significance of this battle, all else is a matter of indifference: here, the ultimate question concerning the condition of life is posed, and here, the first attempt is made to answer the question with an experiment. To what extent can truth be incorporated?—that is the question, that is the experiment. Victory over the ultimate negative as a tempter, and all its temptations—whether direct or indirect—must be learned by the believer from personal experience. One must remember that not all “temptations” are recognizable as temptations, nor are they always visible—for half their power lies in their being hidden. A believer often thinks that one will be as conscious of the approach of temptations as one is of a person coming into the room. Hence the children of God are only fighting a small proportion of the ultimate negative’s workings: that is, only what they are conscious of as supernatural workings of evil. Because of their knowledge of the ultimate negative’s character and methods of working is limited and circumscribed, many true children of God only recognize “temptation” when the nature of the thing presented is visible evil, and accords with their limited knowledge of evil. So they do not recognize the temper and one’s temptations when they come under the guise of lawful and apparent “good.” When the ultimate negative and one’s emissaries come as angles of light clothe themselves in light, which, in their case, stands for evil. It is a “light” which is really darkness. They come in the guise of good—for darkness is opposed to light, ignorance is opposed to knowledge, falsehood is opposed to truth. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Darkness is a term we ordinarily apply to evil morality and moral darkness. Hence the believer may need to discern evil spirits in the realm of the supposed good. That which comes to them as “light” actually may be darkness. The apparent “good” may be really evil. And so the apparent “help” which the believer clings to may be really a hindrance. There needs to be a choice between good and evil made perpetually by every man. The Hebrew priests of old were specially called to discern and tech the people the difference between “the holy and the common,” “the unclean and the clean,” reports Ezekiel 44.23. Yet is the Church of Christ today able thus to discern what is good and what is evil? Does she not continually fall into the snare of calling good “evil,” and evil “good”? Because the thoughts of God’s people are so often governed by ignorance and limited knowledge, they can call the works of God “diabolic” and the works of the ultimate negative “divine.” For they are not taught the necessity of learning to discern the difference between “the unclean and the clean,” nor how to decide for themselves what is of God and what is of the ultimate negative—although they are unknowingly compelled to make a choice every moment of the day. Neither do all believers know that they have a choice between good and good, id est, between the lesser and the greater good—and the ultimate negative often entangles them here. The place of the church is in a purely vertical relationship to God, the distinction between the latent and manifest church is challenged, and, the Spirit which constitutes the churches is not the Spirit of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Gestalt of grace and the sacramental principle are vehicles for the holiness of the “is,” the actual presence of the divine which, in turn, provides the positive base for the prophetic demand for the holiness of the “ought.” Furthermore, the church portrays an image which it presents to the non-believer who is incapable of seeing its theological side. On the one hand, the latent church under the vivifying power of the Spiritual Presence is in preparation for the reception of the New Being in Jesus the Christ. However, the latent church is not simply an infant awaiting baptism; it is already a mature, adult member of the Spiritual Community, ad under the drive of the Spirit it voices criticism of the manifest church through non-sectarian, secular, or even anti-religious movements. Its protest appears as a cultural phenomenon, but the underlying inspiration is religious. On the other hand, the manifest church openly and consciously acknowledges the New Being in Jesus the Christ, and, united by the bonds of a common faith, it proclaims the Word of the Gospel and the sacraments of the New Law. However, these acts of religion must be expressed in relevant cultural form. The latent church joins the Spiritual Community by participation in the New Being, but it does not know Jesus crucified. The manifest church’s explicit acknowledgement of Jesus as the bearer of the New Being gains for it the symbol of the Cross, the Protestant principle of self-reformation which is the only antidote to demonization. Possession and non-possession of the Cross seems a clear-cut distinction. How can the secular World voice truly prophetic criticism unless it too has the Cross, the symbol of the struggle against the demonic, at least implicitly? #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
What does the explicit reception of the New Being in Jesus the Christ add to the manifest church? In the manifest church, one finds that the Christian Bible, the document of the reception of final revelation, the sacraments which deepen the experience of the New Being, and the corporate organization rallies and sustains Christians in their effort to live the Gospel. Here is certainly a concrete difference between the latent and manifest churches. However, what immediately springs to mind, the demonization and profanization into which these two churches inevitably fall makes one wonder if the transition from the latent to the manifest church is worth the price. It seems that most of the latter’s energy is expended in applying the Cross to correct its own ambiguities. The impression is that the latent church is dynamic, exciting, productive, and pregnant with hope, while the manifest church is tired, dull, weighed down with ambiguities, and moribund—despite the fact that it has received the New Being in Jesus the Christ. One is tempted to conclude almost blasphemously—because it has received the New Being in Jesus the Christ. All Americans are brothers, responsible for one another. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for al. If there be among you a need may, do not harden your heart. The generous heart shall be enriched, and one that satisfies others hall be satisfied oneself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
It is safe to say that the second most important room in the Victorian home was the dining room, where not only the family gathered, but where social interaction took place among family and visitors. In the family it should be observed as a rule to meet together at all meals of the day around one common table where the same rules of etiquette should be as rigidly observed as the table of a stranger.
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Ancient, Haunted, Shadowed Town
The clatter at the eastern door was terrific. The paneling was beginning to splinter. A wave of almost abnormal horror swept over me, as days bled into weeks. Glancing up at the window, I observed that it was still dark outside, though to the north I could see lights ominously blazing from the Tower of Babel. There has seemed to be no one in the courtyard below. Every waking hour and every spectral sound seemed like a piece of an intricate puzzle. Llanada Vila was an enigma of tantalizing secrets and I was entangled in its spectral web. Its ghoulish spirits looming over me like ominous storm clouds threatening to consume me. I was a prisoner within the walls of my labyrinth, and each passing day bore a heavier, more costly weight than the day before. Llanada Villa had become my World, my obsession. Its spirits whispered to me, enticing me to build new rooms and enhance architectural features to feed its haunting heart. Echoes answers my foot falls and the gaze of the mansion’s eyes weaved their dark emotions into my skin. Walking softly on the third floor, the hallway was black, and I perceived several open doorways. Uncanny shapes were pouring in as my lantern bobbed in the darkness. Figures moved with uncertainty and I realized to my relief that they did not know where I had gone; but for all that they sent a shiver of horror through my frame. Their features were indistinguishable, but their crouching, and shambling git was abominably repellent. My reality was painted in shades of terror. Shadows pulsating with a life of their own. From several directions in the distance, I could hear the sound of hoarse voices, of footsteps, and of a curious kind of pattering which did not sound quite like footsteps. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
Ascending the staircase, the steps creaked under my weight, each groan echoing the palpitations of my heart. I was shackled by dreadful anticipation. I walked rapidly, and knew there would be plenty of doorways to shelter me in case I came face to face with a macabre delight. As the figures spread throughout the fourth floor, I felt my fears increase. It was an arduous climb, and there were two shambling figures crossing in front of me. They looked dangerous. Terror washed over me with an icy wave that froze my blood. They moved with a curious gliding motion into the darkness and melted away. When I looked behind me, there was a specter disappearing into the mansion’s tapestry. To my great surprise, I saw, as it were, a dead corpse, a scream clawed its way up my throat, tearing through the silent mansion. As I thought, the corpse was lying extended upon the floor, just as a dead body should be, excepting that foot of one leg was fixed on the ground as it is in bed, when one lies with one knee up; I looked at it awhile, and by degrees withdraw my eyes from so unpleasing an object: however a strange kind of air of curiosity soon overcame my fears, and I ventured a second time to look that way, and saw it a considerable time longer fixed as before. I durst not stir from my position. I again turned from the horrible and melancholy spectacle, and, resuming my courage, after a little reflection, got up with a deign to ascertain myself of the reality of the vision by going nearer to it; but it was vanished! My home has become a haunted stage where my fears came to life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
Llanada Villa was veritable gateway to realms of unfathomed horror and inconceivable abnormality. As I was sitting, no, moving about, in an old-fashioned sort of paneled room, there was a fireplace and a lot of burnt papers in it, and I was in a great state pf anxiety about something. There were intermittent flashes of light in the distance. They were definite and unmistakable, and awakened my mind to a blind horror beyond all rational proportion. There was someone else—a servant, I suppose, and I heard several people coming upstairs and a noise like spurs on the wooden floor, and then the door opened and whatever it was that I was expecting happened. It was the sort of shock that upsets you in a dream. You either wake up or else everything goes black. That was what happened to me. Then I was in a big dark-walled room, paneled like the other, and a number of people, and I was being tried, for my life. I had no one speaking for me, and somewhere there was a most fearful fellow—on the bench; he was pitching into me most unfairly, and twisting everything I said, and asking most abominable questions about dates when I was at particular places, and letter I was supposed to have written, and why I had destroyed some papers; and he was laughing at answers I made in a way that quite daunted me. It does not sound like much, but it was really appalling. This man, he was such a horrible villain. The things he said. The next morning, I awoke to a horrifying sight. Tracing the length of my arm were savage scratches, crimson welts etched into my skin. Then I recollected an attack, claws ripping into me in the room on the fourth floor while I was being questioned. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
From that day on, the hauntings gained a monstrous momentum. I would find myself in unknown corners of Llanada Villa, with no recollection of my journey. Each phenomenon brought new marks, bruises blooming on my skin, cuts etching their painful paths. Fear was my constant companion, ghoulish shadows leered at me from the corners of my home. I was lost in a whirlwind the supernatural. There were cryptical flashings of ghosts and unexplainable beacons appeared before my eyes. For a moment my brain reeled with sheer hopelessness. The feeling of being watched amplified, a malevolent crescendo in the haunting symphony of my mansion. A dread, bone-deep and paralyzing, filled me. There was a spectral figure inching closer, its icy breath on my neck. I became conscious of a peculiar sound in the room—a sort of shuddering sound in the room, as of suppressed dread. It seemed close to me. I gave little heed to it at first, setting it down for the wind in the chimney, or a draught from the half-open door; but moving about the room I perceived that the sound moved with me. Whichever way I turned it followed me. I went to the furthest extremity of the chamber—it was also there. Feeling uneasy, and being quite unable to account for the singularity of this stranger horror, I closed my eyes and put every ounce of will power into the task of holding my eyelids down. Of course, my resolution to keep my eyes closed failed. It was foredoomed to failure—for whom could crouch blindly while a legion of croaking, ghouls hovered noisomely around? #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
I thought I was prepared for the worst, and I really ought to have been prepared considering what I had seen before. My other pursuers had been accursedly abnormal. Can it be possible that this mansion actually spawned such demonic, blasphemous things that human eyes have never truly seen? Despite Llanada Villa’s imposing grandeur, its gilded embellishments, and regal expanse, I found myself unable to dispel the gnawing sense of dread that lingered on the fringe of my reality. Each creak of the ancient wood, the muted rustle from the ghouls’ cloaks, the cold draughts of phantom breath, and the ghostly echoed in my heart. My mansion’s cryptic maze, each chamber was a portal to some other realm. I was a woman divided. Caught in the eternal conflict between the angel of my better nature and the demon of my dark distress. As heiress to the Winchester Rifle Fortune, I was curse for all eternity to be haunted. As the days went on, the atmosphere of Llanada Villa grew denser, the air chillier. They very walls were constricting around me, Llanada Villa was swallowing me into its haunted foundation. Even as I expanded the mansion, my mind found itself incessantly pulled back to the clandestine otherworldly depths manifestations that waver between the phlegmatic and the melancholy. As I gaze over Llanada Villa’s grandiosity, I saw it clearly. Spirits swept through the veins of my mazelike corridors, casting eerier shadows through this ancient mansion, which concealed ghastly secrets for ages untold. It seemed to me that there were limitless swarms of them—and certainly my momentary glimpse could have shewn only the least fraction lurking beneath the foundation and ancient towers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
In 1923 when the Winchester Mansion opened for tours, the ghosts were known as “hobs.” They often performed the role of nightwatchmen, and under cover of night and darkness their footsteps could be heard. One of the tour guides became so accustomed to the tread that she would call out “Hello there, I’m quite all right, thank you,” Then the hob would depart. The owners were alerted to the presence of the ghost when they heard from time to time the noise of skittles in one of the kitchens; when they would investigate, no one was playing However, glasses left on the counter overnight to dry, would often be returned to their proper places. Clean linen was pressed and folded.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
God, Fate, History, Nature
We have seen that certain socioeconomic and political changes, notably the decline of the middle class, war on vehicles powered by gasoline, and the rising power of the monopolistic capital, has had a deep psychological effect. These effects are increased or systematized by a political ideology—as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century—and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction that was opposite to the original economic interest of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position. It mobilized its emotional energies to become an important force in the struggle for the economic and political aims of German imperialism. Mr. Hitler’s personality, his teachings, and the Nazi system express an extreme form of the character structure which we have called “authoritarian” and that by this very fact he made a powerful appeal to those parts of the population which were—more or less—of the same character structure. Mr. Hitler’s autobiography is as good an illustration of the authoritarian character as any, and since in addition to that it is the most representative document of Nazi literature used for analyzing the psychology of Nazism. The essence of the authoritarian character has been descried as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. Sadism was understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory. Both the sadistic and the masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and one’s need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The sadistic craving for power funds manifold expression in Mein Kampf. It is characteristic of Mr. Hitler’s relationship to the German masses whom he despises and “loves” in the typically sadistic manner as well as to his political enemies towards whom he evidences those destructive elements that are an important component of his sadism. He speaks of the satisfaction the masses have in domination. “What they want is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or the unconditional surrender of the weaker.” “Like a woman,…who will submit to the strong man rather than dominate the weakling, thus the masses love the ruler rather than the suppliant, and inwardly they are far more satisfied by a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom; they often feel at a loss what to do with it, and even easily feel themselves deserted. They neither realized the impudence with which they are spiritually terrorized, nor the outrageous curtailment of their human liberties for in no way does the delusion of this doctrine dawn on them.” Mr. Hitler described the breaking of the will of the audience by the superior strength of the speaker as the essential factor in propaganda. He does not even hesitate to admit that physical tiredness of his audience is a most welcome condition for their suggestibility. Discussing the question which hour of the day is most suited for political mass meetings he says: “It seems that in the morning and even during the day men’s power revolts with highest energy against an attempt at being forced under another’s will and another’s opinion. In the evening, however, they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will. For truly every such meeting presents a wrestling match between two opposed forces. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
“The superior oratorical talent of a domineering apostolic nature will now succeed more easily in winning for the new will people who themselves have in turn experienced a weakening of their force of resistance in the most natural way, than people who still have full command of the energies of their minds and their will power.” Mr. Hitler himself is very much aware of the conditions which make for the longing for submission and gives an excellent description of the satiation of the individual attending a mass meeting. “The mass meeting is necessary if only for the reason that in it the individual, who is becoming an adherent of a new movement feels lonely and is easily seized with the fear of being alone, receives for the first time the pictures of a greater community, something that has a strengthening and encouraging effect on most people…If he steps for the first time out of his small workshop or out of the big enterprise, in which he feels very small, into the mass meeting and is now surrounded by thousands and thousands of people with the same conviction…he himself succumbs to the magic influence of what we call mass suggestion.” Mr. Goebbels describes the masses in the same vein. “People want nothing at all, except to be governed decently,” he writes in his novel Michael. They are for him, “nothing more than the stone is for the sculptor. Leader and masses are as little a problem as painter and color.” In another book Mr. Goebbels gives an accurate description of the dependence of the sadistic person on his objects; how weak and empty he feels unless he has power over somebody and how this power gives him new strength. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This is Mr. Goebbels’ account of what is going on in himself: “Sometimes one is gripped by a deep depression. One can only overcome it, if one is in front of the masses again. The people are the fountain of our power.” A telling account of that particular kind of power over people which the Nazi ca leadership is given by the leader of the German labour front, Mr. Ley. In discussing the qualities required in a Nazi leader and the aims of education of leaders, he writes: “We want to know whether these men have the will to lead, to be masters, in one word, to rule…We want to rule and enjoy it…We shall teach these men to ride horseback…in order to give them the feeling of absolute domination over a living being.” The same emphasis on power is also present in Mr. Hitler’s formulation of the aims of education. He says that the pupil’s “entire education and development has to be directed at giving him the conviction of being absolutely superior to the others.” The fact that somewhere else he declares tht a boy should be taught to suffer injustice without rebelling will no longer strike the reader—or so I hope—as strange. This contradiction is the typical one for the sado-masochistic ambivalence between the craving for power and for submission. The wish for power over the masses is what drives the member of the “elite,” the Nazi leaders. This wish for power is sometimes revealed with an almost astonishing frankness. Sometimes it is put in less offensive forms by emphasizing that to be ruled is just what the masses wish. Sometimes the necessity to flatter the masses and therefore to hide the cynical contempt for them leads to tricks. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
To further highlight that illustration: In speaking of the instinct of self-preservation, which for Mr. Hitler as we shall se later is more or less identical with the drive for power, he says that with the Aryan the instinct for self-preservation has reached the most noble form “because he willingly subjects his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour should require it, he also sacrifices it.” While the “leaders” are the ones to enjoy power in the first place, the masses are by no means deprived of sadistic satisfaction. Racial and political minorities within Germany and eventually other nations which are described as weak or decaying are the objects of sadism upon which the massed are fed. While Mr. Hitler and his bureaucracy enjoy the power over the German mases, these masses themselves are taught to enjoy power over other nations and to be driven by the passion for domination of the World. Mr. Hitler does not hesitate to express the wish for World domination as his or his party’s aim. Making fun of pacifism, he says: “Indeed, the pacifist-humane idea is perhaps quite good whenever the man of the highest standard has previously conquered and subjected the World to a degree that makes him the only master of this globe.” Again he says: “A state which in the epoch of race poisoning dedicates itself to the cherishing of its best racial elements, must some day be master of the World.” Usually, Mr. Hitler tries to rationalize and justify his wish for power. The main justifications are the following: his domination of other peoples is for their won good and for the good of the culture of the World; the wish for power is rooted in the eternal laws of nature and he recognizes and follows only these laws; he himself acts under the command of a higher power—God, Fate, History, Nature; his attempts for domination are only a defense against the attempt of others to dominate him and the German people. He wants only peace and freedom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
An example of the first kind of rationalization is the following paragraph from Mein Kampf: “If, in its historical development, the German people had possessed this group unity as it was enjoyed by other peoples, then the German Reich would today probably be the mistress of this globe.” German domination of the World could lend, Mr. Hitler assumes, to a “peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful pacifist professional female mourners, but found by the victorious sword of a people of overloards which puts the World int the service of a higher culture.” In recent years his assurance that his aim is not only the welfare of Germany but that his actions serve the best interests of civilization in general have become well-known to every newspaper. The second rationalization, that his wish for power is rooted in the laws of nature, is more than a mere rationalization; it also springs from the wish for submission to a power outside oneself, as expressed particularly in Mr. Hitler’s crude popularization of Darwinism. In “the instinct of preserving the species,” Mr. Hitler sees “the first cause of the formation of human communities.” This instinct of self-preservation leads to the fight of the stronger for the domination of the weaker and economically, eventually, to the survival of the fittest. The identification of the instinct of self-preservation with power over others finds a particularly striking expression in Mr. Hitler’s assumption that “the first culture of mankind certainly depended less on the tamed animal, but rather on the use of inferior people.” He projects his own sadism upon Nature who is “the cruel Queen of all Wisdom,” and her law of preservation is “bound to the brazen law of necessity and of the right of the victory of the best and the strongest in this World.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Russian is another power the people believe wants to eventually dominate the World. The thesis that the aim of Russia is to dominate the World is based on two assumptions. The main one is the Mr. Khrushchev, being a communist and a successor of Mr. Lenin, wanted to revolutionize the World for the victory of communism. The auxiliary assumption is that Mr. Khrushchev, as the successor of the Czars, is the leader of Russian imperialism, the aim of which is World domination. Sometimes the two assumptions are combined, sometimes it is even said that it is futile “to debate whether the Soviet Union is ‘really’ interested in World domination. For the problem may be that the Soviet conception of security results in undermining all other states.” Furthermore, there are also divided opinions about how the Soviet Union wants to achieve World domination. The opinion prevailing until recently—and maybe still today—is that the Soviet Union wants to conquer the World by the force of arms, while in view of Russian peace gestures the added assumption is frequently made that, if not by violence, the Soviet Union want to achieve domination and examine the validity of the arguments in favour of the thesis. The oldest, and probably still the most popular concept is that of the continuity of the Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev regies and from the revolutionary communism of 1917-21 to Soviet power forty hears later. Indeed, if Mr. Khrushchev were the legitimate successor of Mr. Lenin and a Communist in the Marx-Leninist tradition, his main interest would be to the communization of the World; for, no doubt, Mr. Lenin hoped and worked for an international revolution, for the victory of communism—not of the Russian state—in the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, Mr. Stalin and Mr. Khrushchev, all ideology to the contrary, do not represent revolutionary communism but a conservative, totalitarian managerialism, and the dominate class of this system. The question arises whether the representatives of this system and this class can be communist revolutionaries—whether they can desire, or even be in sympathy with, revolutions abroad, the spirit of which would be the opposite of that which dominates Russian. We must consider if the internal structure of a regime determines it attitude toward revolutions. A conservative power has by its very nature no use for revolutionary movements abroad. For one thing, the leaders of a conservative power are humans who rule on the basis of authority and obedience, and revolutions are movements that fight authority and obedience. Those who come to power in conservative systems are, as persons, unsympathetic to anti-authoritarian attitudes. More important, however, is the fact that revolutions in other countries, especially if they are not too distant (geographically and culturally), constitute a threat to the conservative countries. This means, concretely, that if there were workers’ revolutions in Berlin, West Germany, France, Italy, for example, the Soviet bureaucracy would have a difficult task in keeping these revolutions from spreading to East Germany, Poland, Hungary, et cetera. At best the Soviet regime would have to use tanks and machine guns again, as it had to use them against the uprising in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary to crush the uprising of the revolutionary workers. Would, or could, Mr. Khrushchev like this? #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The idea that the Soviet Union, being a conservative, hierarchical system, is against revolutions, will at first strike many readers as little better than nonsense. They will think of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky’s hope for a World revolution, of Mr. Stalin’s and Mr. Khrushchev’s declarations about the “victory of communism,” and of the conquest of the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Rumania by Russia. How, so they will argue, can one maintain that Khruschevism is not a revolutionary system in view of all the obvious evidence to the contrary? There has always been ambiguity in the relationship between Russian and the international Communist movement. However, the nature of this ambiguity changed drastically between 1917 and 1925. Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky had believed that only a revolution in Germany (or Europe) could save the Russian revolution. Their foreign policy was subordinated to their revolutionary aims; but when the German revolution failed to materialize and Russian remained the only Communist country, she became the symbol and the center of the Communist hopes. The survival of Soviet Russian became a goal in itself although it was still believed that the survival of Russian was necessary for the final victory of communism. Yet, in a subtle way the interest for foreign Communist Parties began to be subordinated to the interests of Soviet foreign policy. This development began as early as 1920. After the threat from the civil war and allied intervention had virtually been ended, there were first attempts to open negotiations with the West and to put the interest of the survival of the Russian state above that of the World revolution. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Mr. Chicherin sent out an appeal to the allied governments to enter into peace negotiations, and both he and Mr. Radek declared for the first time that capitalist states and Soviet Russia could peacefully coexist, just as “liberal England did not fight continuously against serf-owning Russia.” However, the French-supported Polish attack on Russian and the initial Russian successes put a stop to this first appearance of the hope for coexistence. Instead, these events brought the revolutionary hopes of Mr. Lenin to a last intense climax. The disappointment of these hoes was virtually the end of Moscow’s revolutionary strategy in the West. The years 1921 and 1922 mark this end unmistakably. In 1921 the German Communist uprising was defeated, Mr. Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy or NEP, concluded a trade agreement with Great Britian, and supposed the Kronstadt rebellion. Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky did not give up their revolutionary hopes, but they acknowledged defeat. For the first time in the history of the Comintern, the suspicion was voiced both by Italian and by German Communists and left socialists, that there might be a latent contradiction between the interests of Russian and those of the Comintern and its member parties. One of the first signs of the subordination of communism to Russian foreign policy may be seen in the new line of the Germany Communist Party (K.P.D.) about the time the Rapallo treaty. While, until then, the K.P.D. had declined to support a German bourgeois government (as evidenced in its passive attitude toward the reactionary Kapp Putsch), between the summer of 1921 to the conclusion of the Rapallo pact in April 1922, a new attitude developed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The Communist supported the treaty in the Reichstag, and the Rote Fahne praised it as “the first independent act of foreign policy by the German bourgeoisie since 1918.” These events meant, writes Mr. Carr, “that among the most advanced Communist parties in the World, attitudes and policies would be different according to whether the governments of their respective countries were in hostile or friendly relations with the Soviet government, and would have to be modified from time to time, to take into account the changes in those relations. These consequences took a long time to develop fully, and were certainly not realized by those who made the Rapallo treaty in the spring of 1922.” Six months after Rapallo, the Soviet government made a second attempt for a comeback as a World power by its support of the Turk at the Lausanne conference; the persecution of the Communist in Turkey was no hindrance to the Russo-Turkish friendship. By 1922 the failure of the revolutionary hopes was openly acknowledge. Mr. Radek declared at the IV Congress of the Comintern (November-December 1922): “The characteristic of the time in which we are living is that, although the crisis of the World capital has not yet been overcome, although the question of power is still the center of all question, the broadest masses of the proletariat have lost belief in their ability to conquer power in any foreseeable time…If that is the situation, if the great majority of the working class feels itself powerless, then the conquest of power as an immediate task of the day is not on the agenda.” The speeches of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Zinoviev, while not as drastically pessimistic, were essentially in the same minor key. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The Revolution failed. People do not cling to life when it is threatened; how else could one explain their passivity before the threat of nuclear slaughter? Furthermore, people confuse excitement with joy, thrill with love of life. They are “without joy in the midst of plenty.” The fact is that all the virtues for which capitalism is praised—individual initiative, the readiness to take risks, independence—have long disappeared from industrial society and are to be found mainly in westerns and among gangsters. In bureaucratized, centralized industrialism, regardless of political ideology, there is an increasing number of people who are fed up with life and willing to die in order to get over their boredom. They are the ones who say “better dead than red,” but deep down their motto is “better dead than alive.” The extreme form of such an orientation was to be found among those fascists whose motto was “Long live death.” Nobody recognized this more clearly than did Miguel de Unammo when he spoke for the last time in his life at the University of Salamanca, where he was Rector at the time of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War; the occasion was a speech by General Millian Astray, whose favourite motto was “Viva la Muerte!” (Long live death!) and one of his followers shouted it back from the hall. When the general had finished his speech Mr. Unamuno rose and said: “…Just now I heard a necrophilous and senseless cry: ‘Long live death!’ And I, who have spent my life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this outlandish paradox is repellent to me. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“General Millan Astray is cripple. Let is be said without any slighting undertone. He is a war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are too many cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that General Millian Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology. A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of a Cervantes is wont to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.” At this General Millan Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. “Abajo La inteligencia!” (Down with the intelligence!) he shouted. “Long live death!” There was a clamour of support for this remark from the Falangist. However, Mr. Unamuno went on: “This is the temple of the intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain. I have done.” However, the attraction to death which Mr. Unamuno called necrophilia is not a product of fascist thought alone. It is a phenomenon deeply rooted in a culture which is increasingly dominated by the bureaucratic organization of the big corporations, governments, and armies, and by the central role of man-made things, gadgets, and machines. This bureaucratic industrialism tends to transform human beings into things. It tends to replace nature by technical devoices, the organic by the inorganic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
In some remote corner of the sprawling Universe, twinkling among the countless solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever beings invented knowledge. It was the most arrogant, most mendacious minute in “World History,” but it was only a minute. After nature caught its breath a little, the star froze, and the clever beings have to die. One could invent a fable like this and still not have illustrated sufficiently how miserable, how shadowy and fleeting, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect appears in nature. There were eternities in which it did not exist, and when it vanished once again, it will have left nothing in its wake. For the human intellect has no further task beyond human life. Instead, it is merely human, and only its owner and producer regards it so pathetically as to suppose that it contains in itself the hinge on which the World turns. If we could communicate with a mosquito, we would learn that it, too, files through the air with this same pathos, feeling itself to be the moving center of the entire World. There is nothing in nature so abject and lowly that it would not instantly swell up like a balloon at the faintest breath of that cognitive faculty. And just as every baggage carrier wants admirers, so, too, the proudest man of all, the philosopher, thinks one sees the eyes of the Universe trained from all sides telescopically on one’s thought and one’s deeds. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is remarkable that the intellect manages this, considering it is simply an expedient supplied to the unluckiest, the most delicate, the most transitory creatures in order to detain them for a minute in existence; from which, without that added extra, they would have every reason to flee as swiftly as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s son. The arrogance involved in cognition and sensation, spreading a blinding fog over men’s eyes and senses, deceives them about the value of existence by implying the most flattering evaluation of cognition. Its most general effect is deception—but even its most particular effects have something of the same quality. The intellect, as a means of preserving the individual, develops its principal strengths in dissimulation, for this is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, it being denied to them to wage the battle of existence with the horns or shape fangs of a breast of prey. This art of dissimulation reaches it peak in humans: here deceptions, flattery, lying, and cheating, talking behind the backs of others, keeping up appearances, living in borrowed splendour, donning masks, the shroud of convention, playacting before others and before oneself—in fort, the continual fluttering around the flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that virtually nothing is as incomprehensive as how an honest and pure drive to truth could have arisen among human. They are deeply immersed in allusions and dream images; their eyes glide only over the surface of things and see “forms”; their sensations nowhere lead to truth but content themselves with registering stimuli and playing a touching—feeling game, as it were, on the back of things. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
What is more, humans let their dreams lie to them at night, their whole life long, their moral sense never trying to prevent it; whereas they say there are people who have managed to quit snoring by sheer willpower. What does man actually know of himself? Could one ever be capable, even just once, of perceiving oneself entire, laid out as if in a glass case? Does nature not conceal virtually everything from one, even one’s body, banishing and locking one up in a proud, spurious consciousness, far removed from the convolution of the bowels, the rapid flow of the bloodstream, the intricate vibrations of nerve fibers? Nature has thrown away the key; and woe unto that fateful curiosity that might once manage to peer out through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and gain intimation that humans rest in the indifference of one’s ignorance on the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, suspended in dreams on the back of a tiger. Where in the World, given this setting, can the drive to truth ever have come from? In the natural state of things, that individual, inasmuch as one wants to protect oneself against other individuals, uses one’s intellect mostly for dissimulation. However, because, out of both necessity and boredom, one wants to exist socially and in herds, humans need a peace treaty and strive at the least to rid their World of the crudest forms of bellum omnium contra omnes.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
This peace treaty, however, brings with it something like the first step in the attainment of that enigmatic drive to truth. Namely, what is henceforth to count as “truth” is now fixed, that is, a uniformly valid and binding designation of things is invented, and the legislation of language likewise yields the first laws of truth. For here a distinction is drawn for the first time between truth and lie: the lair uses valid designations—words—to make the unreal appear real; he says, for instance, “I am rich,” precisely when the proper designation for his condition would be “poor.” He misuses fixed conventions by various substitutions or even inversions of names. If he does this in self-serving or otherwise injurious ways, society will no longer trust him and will therefore exclude him from its ranks. So it is that humans flee not so much from being cheated as from being harmed by cheating. Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception they hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception. So, too, only to a limited extent do humans want truth. Humans desire the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth; to pure knowledge without consequences one is indifferent, to potentially harmful and destructive truths one is even hostile. And besides, what is the status of those linguistic conventions? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, of our senses for truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is the language the full and adequate expression of all realities? Only through forgetfulness can one ever come to imagine that one possesses truth to that degree. If one does not wish to rest content with truth in the form of tautology, this is, with empty husks, one will forever be passing illusions off as truth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
What is a word? The copy of a nerve stimulus to cause outside us, however, is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been decisive in the genesis of language, and the standpoint of certainty in the genesis of the designations of things, how would we be entitled to say, “The stone is hard,” as if “hard” were something otherwise known to us and not a wholly subjective impression? We divined things according to genders: we call the tree (der Baum) masculine, the plant (die Pflanze) feminine—what arbitrary transferences! How far-flung beyond the canon of certainty! We speak of a snake: the designation pertains only to its slithering movement and so could as easily apply to a worm. What arbitrary demarcations, what one-sided preferences for now this, now that property of a thing! All the different languages, set alongside one another, show that when it comes to words, truth—full and adequate expression—is never what matters; otherwise there would not be so many languages. The “thing it itself” (which would be, precisely, pure truth without consequences) is utterly unintelligible, even for a creator of language, and certainly nothing to stive for, for one designates only the relations of things to human beings and helps oneself to the boldest metaphours. The image again copied in a sound—second metaphour! And each time a complete leap out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one. One can imagine someone profoundly dear who has never had any sensation of tone or of music: just as one will gaze in amazement at Chladnian sounds figures in sand, will find their causes in the vibration of the strings, and will swear that one now surely knows what people call a tone—so it is for all of us when it comes to language. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
How may a believer be victorious over the powers of darkness? How may one have authority and victory over psychopathological offenders rather than be mastered by them? Any Christian who has come to recognize the devices of the enemy in one’s own life, and has learned the way of deliverance, will be deeply concerned that others also be set free. “Authority…over all the power of the enemy,” reports Luke 10.19—what a wonderful goal, for oneself and for others! A believer must learn to walk in personal victory over the ultimate negative at every point if one is to have the fullest victory over darkness. For this, one needs to know the Lord Christ in all the aspects of His name and character, so as to draw upon His power in living union with Him. The believer must also learn to know the Adversary in his various workings, as described in his names and character, so that one may be able to discern the presence of the Ultimate Negative and all one’s wicked spirits wheresoever they may be—either in attacks upon oneself, upon other, or in their working as “World-rulers” of the darkness in the World. Although the ambiguous churches are not immune to demonic distortion, nevertheless the impact of the Spiritual Presence on the functions of cultural creativity is impossible without an inner-historical representation of the Spiritual Community in a church. Culture is not vague and indeterminate; cultural creations are produced by definite individuals and social groups. The Spiritual Community must be just as specific if its force is to be felt. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The Spiritual Community must be localized in a human community; the Spiritual Presence, concertized in the symbols of cult and doctrine. And yet, the Spiritual Community is broader than any church which represents it, for the Spirit cannot be fettered. The Spiritual Presence works latently to prepare for the fuller manifestations of the Spiritual Community in a church. Consequently, the role of the Spiritual Community as embodies in the churches can be described as both cause and effect. The Spiritual Presence is felt within a culture because the Spiritual Community has first opened men’s hearts to it, and the free stirring of the Spirit within the cultural realm leads humans to the Spiritual Community. The free impact of the divine Spirit on a culture prepares for a religious community or is received because such a community has prepared human beings for the reception of the Spiritual impact. Giving is not the essential thing, but to give with delicacy of the feeling. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it Stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justic for All. The generous heart shall be enriched, and one that satisfies others shall be satisfied oneself. And this is the offering you shall take: Gold, silver, and copper. One who give when well, one’s gift is gold; one who gives only when ill, one’s gift is silver; one who gives only in one’s will, one’s gift is copper. From Thee, O Lord, comes our wealth, and from Thine own, do we give unto Thee. Please be sure to show charity to the Sacramento Fire Department by making a donation; they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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If You Do Not Know Who You are, this is an Expensive Place to Find Out!
Since wealth awaits those who can play this game well, it is not surprising that there is a large body of serious literature devoted to telling you how. The economy is all about hopes, fears, greed, ambition, acts of God—it would be hard to put it more succinctly. The one thing we have, whether or not we ever find true Value, is liquidity—the ability to buy and sell momentarily and relatively effortlessly. Liquidity is the cornerstone of Wall Street. It is what makes it the financial capital of the World, for it is, except for rare, odd moments of panic, a truly liquid market. It is liquid and it is run honestly, and there are few places like that in the World that if you are a rich international person who wants to be able to cash in on any given day and yet wants to make capital gains, you have virtually only one place to go. The dominate note of our time is unreality. In good times it is not hard to make money, but in times of unreality the market is saying, “You do not understand me anymore; do not trust me until you understand me.” When it comes to understanding the market, computers and statistics are important, but even more import is personal intuition. One has to know how to sense patterns of behaviour. A person’s behaviour can tell you from the start if you want to do business with them or not. Do not learn the hard way. Learn to read signs and trust your intuition. If you have problems in business when dealing with people who act goofy, sarcastic and patronizing, then take that as an indication that this will be a bad business deal and do not get burned. Professional money managers often seem to make up their minds in a split second, but what pushes them over the line of decision is usually an incremental bit of information which, added to all the slumbering pieces of information filed their minds, suddenly makes the picture whole. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
What is it the good managers have? It is a kind of locked-in concentration, an intuition, a feeling, nothing that can be schooled. The first thing you have to know is yourself. It sounds simplistic to say the first thing you have to know is yourself, and of course you are not necessarily out to become a professional money manager. However, if you stop to think about it, here is one authority saying there are no formulas which can be automatically applied. If you are not automatically applying a mechanical formula, then you are operating in this area of intuition, and if you are going to operate with intuition—or judgment—then it follows that the first thing you have to know is yourself. You are—fact it—a bunch of emotions, prejudices, knowledge, education, faith, and twitches, and this is all very well as long as you know it. Successful speculators do not necessarily have a complete portrait of themselves, hair and all, in their own minds, but they do have the ability to stop abruptly when their own intuition and what is happening Out There are suddenly out of the kilter. A couple of mistakes crop up, and they say, simply, “This is not my kind of market,” or “I do not know what in the World is going on, do you?” and return to established lines of defense. A series of market decisions does add up, believe it or not, to a kind of personality portrait. It is, in one small way, a method of finding out who you are, but it can be very expensive. That is one of the cryptograms which are my own, and this is the first Irregular Rule: If you do not know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
It may seem a little silly to think that a portfolio of stocks can give you a portrait of the human who picked them, but any turned-in stock-picker will swear to it. I know a private fund where there are four managers, each with one section–$60 million or so—to run. Every three months they switch chairs. You can have no preconceived ideas. There are fundamentals in the marketplace, but the unexplored area is the emotional area. All the charts and breadth indicators and technical palaver are the statistician’s attempts to describe an emotional state. If the emotional area is the unexplored area, and the statistical area is being so thoroughly explored, why not explore the unexplored area? Such a study seems to require a cross of disciplines. Mass psychology and the marketplace are great areas of study. The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with the necessaries and connivences of life which it annually consumes, and which conflict always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According, therefore, as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences which it has occasion. However, this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance of scantiness, depend on upon those two circumstances. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The abundance of scantiness of this supply too seems to depend more upon the former of those two circumstances than upon the latter. Among the savage nations of hunters and fishers, every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as one can, the necessaries and conveniences of life, for oneself, or such of one’s family or tribe as either too old, or too young, or too infirm to go a hunting and fishing. Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beast. Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce of times, frequently of a hundred time more labour than the greater part of those of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman or woman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if one is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and convivences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire. The causes of this improvement, in the productive powers of labour, and the order, according to which its produce is naturally distributed among the different ranks and conditions of human in the society are subjects of great importance. Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The number of useful and productive labourers, it will hereafter appear, is every where in proportion to the quantity of capital stock which is employed in setting them to work, and to particular way in which it is so employed. The nature of capital stock, of the manner in which it is gradually accumulated, and of the different quantities of labour which it puts into motion, are central focuses and we must understand the different ways in which they are employed. Nations tolerably well advanced as to skill, dexterity, and judgment, in the application of labour, have followed very different plans in the general conduct of direction of it; and those plans have not all been equally favourable to the greatness of its produce. The policy of some nations has given extraordinary encouragement of the industry of the country; that of others to the industry of towns. Scarce any nation has dealt equally and impartially with every fort of industry. Since the downfall of the Roman empire, the policy of Europe has been more favourable to arts, manufactures, and commerce, the industry of towns; than to agriculture, the industry of the country. The circumstances which seem to have introduced and established this policy are crucial. Russia is still a reactionary welfare state; we are still a liberal welfare state. However, it is to be assumed that things in Russian will slowly change. Clearly, the more Russian can satisfy the material need of her population, the less will she need the methods of the police state. The Russian system will shift to the same means that are used in the West: the methods of psychological suggestion and manipulation that give the individual the illusion of having and following one’s own convictions, while “one’s” decisions are in reality made by the elite of “decision makers.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Russians believe that they represent socialism because they talk in terms of Marxist ideology, and they do not recognize how similar their system is to the most developed form of capitalism. We in the West believe that we represent the system of individualism, private initiative, and humanistic ethics, because we hold on to our ideology, and we do not see that our institutions are, in fact, in many ways becoming more and more similar to the hated system of communism. We believe that the essence of the Russian system is that the individual is subservient to the State, and hence that one has no freedom. However, we do not recognize that in Western society the individual is becoming more and more subservient to the economic machine, to the big corporation, to public opinion. We do not recognize that the individual, confronted with giant enterprises, giant government, giant trade unions, is afraid of freedom, has no faith in one’s own strength, and seeks shelter by identifying with these giants. Our mode of industrial organization needs men and women similar to men and women the Russian system needs: humans who feel that they are the masters of their society (both capitalism and communism make this claim), yet who are willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction and who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim—except the one of making good, of being on the move, of getting ahead. We try to reach this result by means of the ideology of free enterprise, individual initiative, et cetera; the Russians by the ideology of socialism, solidarity, and equality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The question whether the Soviet system is a socialist system has been answered in the negative. We have concluded that it is a state managerialism, using the most advanced methods of total monopolization, centralization, mass manipulation, and moving slowly from exercising this manipulation by violence to exercising it by mass suggestion. It is, while resembling socialism in certain economic features, its very contradiction in a social and human sense, and is actually converging with the trends of the most advanced capitalistic countries, provided these do not change their present course. It is economically a very successful system, and while unfavourable to development of authentic freedom and individualism, it has many features of planning and social welfare which can be counted as very beneficial achievements. It has often been said tht the treatment of Germany by the victors in 1918 was one of the chief reasons for the rise of Nazism. During this time, there was also an increase in witchcraft accusations as a social problem linked to the past. In fact, witchcraft accusations were the social issues of this era. Witchcraft beliefs and the trials actually still took place in the 1950s. Lawmakers and police also held meetings to discuss popular fears of witches based on evidence provided to them. The fears inspired a search for enemies, and made outsiders out of community members, and the community was encouraged to train a suspicious gaze on these “others,” now regarded as the cause of their various misfortunes. The witchcraft fears bore clear similarities to the scapegoating and persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
As a result, and despite attention given to the subject, the public and relevant authorities remained largely impervious to the notion of any underlying social danger in witchcraft fears—they could and did chalk them up, however vaguely, to village intrigues and “age-old” superstition. When we reflect on the Treaty of Versailles, which was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919, the majority of Germans felt that the peace treaty was unjust; but while the middle class reacted with intense bitterness, there was much less bitterness at the Versailles Treaty among the working class. They had been opposed to the old regime and the loss of the way for them meant defeat of the regime. They felt that they had fought bravely and that they had no reason to be ashamed of themselves. On the other hand, the victory of the revolution which had only been possible by the defeat of the monarchy had brought them economic, political, and human gains. The resentment against Versailles had its basis in the lower middle class; the nationalistic resentment was a rationalization, projecting social inferiority to national inferiority. This projection is quite apparent in Mr. Hitler’s personal development. He was the typical representative of the lower middle class, a nobody with no chances or future. He felt very intensely the role of being an outcast. He often speaks in Mein Kampf of himself as the “nobody,” the “unknow man” he was in his youth. However, although this was due essentially to his own social position, he could rationalize it in national symbols. Being born outside of the Reich he felt excluded not so much socially as nationally, and the great German Reich to which all her sons could return became for him the symbol of social prestige and security. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The old middle class’s feeling of powerlessness, anxiety, and isolation from the social whole and the destructiveness springing from this situation was not the only psychological source of Nazism. The peasants felt resentful against the urban creditors to whom they were in debt, while the workers felt deeply disappointed and discouraged by the constant political retreat after their first victories in 1918 under a leadership which had lost all strategic initiative. The vast majority of the population was seized with the feeling of individual insignificance and powerlessness which we have described as typical for monopolistic capitalism in general. Those psychological conditions were not the “cause” of Nazism. They constituted its human basis without which it could not have developed, but any analysis of the whole phenomenon of the rise and victory of Nazism must deal with the strictly economic and political, as well as with the psychological, conditions. The representatives of big industry and the half-bankrupt Junkers played a huge role in the establishment of Nazism. Without their support Mr. Hitler could never have won, and their support was rooted in their understanding of their economic interests much more than in psychological factors. This property-owning class was confronted with a parliament in which 40 percent of the deputies were Socialists and Communists representing groups which were dissatisfied with the existing social system, and in which were an increasing number of Nazi deputies who also represented a class that was in bitter opposition to the most powerful representatives of German capitalism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
A parliament which thus in is majority represented tendencies directed against their economic interest deemed them dangerous. They said democracy did not work. Actually one might say democracy worked too well. The parliament was a rather adequate representation of the respective interests of different classes of the German population, and for this very reason the parliamentary system could not any longer be reconciled with the need to preserve the privileges of big industry and half-feudal landowner. The representatives of these privileged groups expected that Nazism would shift the emotional resentment which threatened them into other channels and at the same time harness the nation into the service of their own economic interests. On the whole they were not disappointed. To be sure, in minor details they were mistaken. Mr. Hitler and his bureaucracy were not tools to be ordered around by the Thyssens and Krupps, who had to share their power with the Nazi bureaucracy and often to submit to them. However, although Nazism proved to be economically detrimental to all other classes, it fostered the interests of the most powerful groups of German industry. The Nazi system is the “streamlined” version of German prewar imperialism and it continued where the monarchy had failed. (The Republic, however, did not really interrupt the development of German monopolistic capitalism but furthered it with the means at her disposal.) There is one question that a reader will have in mind at this point: How can one reconcile the statement that the psychological basis of Nazism was the old middle class with the statement that Nazism functions in the interests of German imperialism? #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
In the postwar period it was the middle class, particularly the lower middle class, that was threatened by monopolistic capitalism. Its anxiety and thereby its hatred were aroused; it moved into a state of panic and was filled with a craving for submission to as well as for domination over those who were powerless. These feelings were used by an entirely different class for a regime which was to work for their own interests. Mr. Hitler proved to be such an efficient tool because he combined the characteristics of a resentful, hating, petty bourgeois, with whom the lower middle class could identify themselves emotionally and socially, with those of an opportunist who was ready to serve the interests of the German industrialists and Junkers. Originally he posed as the Messiah of the old middle class, promised the destruction of department stores, the breaking of the domination of banking capital, and so on. The record is clear enough. These promises were never fulfilled. However, that did not matter. Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism. What mattered was that hundreds of thousands of petty bourgeois, who in the normal course of development had little chance to gain money or power, as members of the Nazi bureaucracy now got a large slice of the wealth and prestige they forced the upper classes to share with them. Others who were not members of the Nazi machine were given the jobs taken away from the Jewish people and political enemies; and as for the rest, although they did not get more bread, they got “circuses.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
The emotional satisfaction afforded by these sadistic spectacles and by an ideology which gave them a feeling of superiority over the rest of humankind was able to compensate them—for a time at least—for the fact that their lives had been impoverished, economically and culturally. The lover, the poet, and the mystic find a fuller satisfaction than the seeker after power can ever know, since they can retain the object of their love, whereas the seeker after power must be perpetually engaged in some fresh manipulation if one is not to suffer from a sense of emptiness. When I come to die I shall not feel I have lived in vain. I have seen the Earth turn red at evening, the dew sparking in the morning, and the snow shining under a frosty sun; I have smelt rain after drought, and have heard the stormy Atlantic beat upon the granite shoes of Cornwall. Science may bestow these and other joys among more people than could otherwise enjoy them. If so, its power will be wisely used. However, when it takes out of life the moments to which life owes its values, science will not deserve admiration, however, cleverly and however elaborately it may lead humans along the road to despair. Some feel that intellects exhaust reality, and that there is nothing of significance which cannot be grasped of it. They are skeptical toward everything which cannot be caught in an intellectual formula, but they are naively unskeptical toward their own scientific approach. They are more interested in the results of their thoughts than in the process of enlightenment which occurs in the inquiring person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Pragmatism appeals to the temper of mind which finds on the surface of this planet the whole of its imaginative material; which feels confident of progress, and unaware of nonhuman limitations to human power; which loves battle, with all the attendant risks, because it has no real doubt that it will achieve victory; which desires religion, as it desires railways and electric light, as a comfort and a help in the affairs of this World, not as providing nonhuman objects to satisfy the hunger for perfection and for something to be worshipped without reserve. In contrast to the pragmatist, rational thought is not the quest for certainty, but an adventure, an act of self-liberation and of courage, which changes the thinker by making one more awake and more alive. One must have faith in the power of reason, faith in the human capacity to create one’s own paradise through one’s own efforts. Humans have existed only for a very short period—1,00,000 years at the most. What they have achieved, especially during the last 6,000 years, is something utterly new in the history of the Cosmos, so far at least as we are acquainted with it. For countless ages the sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was only with the coming of Man that these things were understood. In the great World of astronomy and in the little World of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable. In art and literature and religion, some humans have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving? Is this to end in trivial horror because so few are able to think of Man rather than of this or that group of men? #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Is our race so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its stilly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet?—for it will be not only men who will perish, but also the animals and plants, who no one can accuse of communism or anticommunism. I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have humans forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past. There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a ne Paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death. This faith is rooted in a quality without which neither philosophy nor fight against war could be understood: one’s love for life. To many people this may not mean much; they believe that everybody loves life. Does one not cling to it when it is threatened, does one not have a great deal of fun in life and plenty of thrilling excitement? Only in the most rugged mountain wasteland can one get a chilling sense of the feeling of solitude that pervaded the recluse of the Ephesian temple of Artemis. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
No overwhelming feeling of sympathetic excitement, no caving, no desire to help or to save emanates from him—he is like a shining planet without an atmosphere. His eye, fiery, and turned inward, looks lifeless and cold from without, as if just for the sake of appearance. All around him, waves of delusion and distortion crash onto the fortress of his pride; he turns away in disgust. Yet even people with tender hearts shun such a tragic mask; in some remote sanctuary, amid the images of gods, in cold, magnificent architecture, such a figure might seem more intelligible. Among humans, as a man, Heraclitus was an enigma; and when he was seen watching the games of shouting children, he was pondering what no mortal ever pondered on such an occasion: the game of the great cosmic child, Zeus, and the eternal sport of World destruction and World creation. He had no need of men, not even for his knowledge; he cared not at all for what one could learn from them, nor what other sages before him were at pains to discover. “I searched out myself,” he said, using a word that refers to the fathoming of an oracle: as if he and no one else were the true embodiment and achievement of the Delphic Maxim “Know yourself.” What he heard in this oracle, however, he took to be immortal wisdom, eternally worthy of interpretation, in the same sense in which the prophetic utterances of the sibyl are immortal. It is sufficient for the most distant generations; may they interpret it simply as the saying of an oracle, just as he himself, like a Delphic god, “neither speaks nor conceals.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Although he pronounces it “without laughter, without ornament, and scented ointments” but rather “fronting at the mouth,” it must resound thousands of years into the future. For the World always needs truth, and so will always need Heraclitus, though he does not need it. What is fame to him! “Fame among constantly fleeting mortals!” as he scornfully exclaims. That is something for singers and poets, and for those before him who were known as “wise” men—let them gulp down the most delicious morsels of their self-love; the stuff is too common for him. His fame matters to men, not to him; his self-love is the love of truth—and this very truth tells him that the immortality of man needs him, not that he needs the immortality of the man Heraclitus. Truth! Rapturous delusion of a god! What does truth matter to human beings! And what was the Heraclitean “truth”! And where has it gone? A vanished dream, wiped from the faces of humans, along with other dreams!—It was not the first! Of all that we with such proud metaphours call “World history” and “truth” and “fame,” a heatless demon might have nothing to say but this: “In some remote corner of the sprawling Universe, twinkling among the countless solar systems, there was once a stare on which some clever animals invented knowledge. It was the most arrogant, most mendacious minute in World history, but it was only a minute. After nature caught its breath a little, the star froze, and the clever animals had to die. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“And it was time, too: for although they boasted of how much they had come to know, in the end they realized they had gotten it all wrong. They died and in dying cursed truth. Such was the species of doubting animal that had invented knowledge.” This would me man’ fate were he nothing more than a thinking animal; truth would drive him to despair and annihilation, truth eternally damned to be untruth. All that is proper to man, however, is faith in the attainable truth, in the ever approaching, confidence-inspiring illusion. Does he not in fact live by constant deception? Does not nature conceal virtually everything from him, even what is nearest, for example, his own body, of which he has only a spurious “consciousness”? He is locked up in this consciousness, and nature has thrown away the key. O fateful curiosity of the philosopher, who longs to peer out just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness—perhaps then one gains an intimation that humans rest in the indifference of their ignorance on the greedy, the insatiable, the disgusting, the merciless, the murderous, suspended in dreams on the back of a tiger. “Let him hang,” cries art. “Wake him up,” cries the philosopher, in the pathos of truth. Yet, even as he believes himself to be shaking the sleeper, he himself sinks into a still deeper magical slumber—perhaps then he dreams of “ideas” or of immortality. Art is mightier than knowledge, for it wants life, and knowledge attains as its ultimate end only—annihilation. The great need of the Church is to know and understand the laws of the spirit, so as to co-work with the Spirit of God in fulfilling the purpose of God through His people. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
However, the lack of knowledge of the spirit life has given the deceiving spirits of the ultimate negative the opportunity for the deceptions of which we have spoken of in the past. There is a need for concrete embodiment of the Spiritual Presence. The twofold experience of the holy as being and as demand gives rise to two types of religion: the sacramental, priestly type founded upon the ontological presence of the holy, and the eschatological, prophetic type stemming from its moral insistence. Both components are actually present in both types, but one of them will predominate. It is consider domical to attribute holiness to finite beings, nevertheless the solid doctrines of the church according to which “the moral perfection of the community does not bring about the holiness of the church, but rather the holiness of the church sanctifies the community by preaching the forgiveness of sins and by leading it to the New Being upon which the church rest. Neither the prophetic type of Christianity can survive without the priestly type, nor can the eschatological, without the sacramental. The World can honestly respect one another by a mutual recognition of the Spiritual Presence that animates them all. In practical terms, the ecumenical movement is a limited, short-range success and long-range failure: In practical terms it is able to heal divisions which have become historically obsolete, to replace confessional fanaticism by interconfessional co-operation, to conquer denominational provincialism, and to produce a new vision of the unity of all churches in their foundation. However, neither the ecumenical nor any other future movement can conquer the ambiguity of unity and division in the churches’ historical existence. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Even if it were able to produce the United Churches of the World, and even if all latent churches were converted to this unity, new divisions would appear. The dynamics of life, the tendency to preserve the holy even when it has become obsolete, the ambiguities implied in the sociological existence of the churches, and above all, the prophetic criticism and demand for reformation would being about new and, in many cases, Spiritually justified divisions. The unity of the churches, similar to their holiness, has a paradoxical character. It is the divided church which is the united church. All your children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all God’s holy mountain, for the Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever. Then shall they sit every man under his vine. And under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the Lord Himself hath spoken it. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All. All Americans are brothers and sisters, responsible for one another. If there be among you a needy man, do not harden your heart. Shut not your hand to your needy brother, but surely open your hand unto him. The Sacramento Fire Department has proudly been serving the community since 1851, please consider donating to their organization so they can have the resources to continue doing an exemplary job. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Does Every Institution in America Need to be Under Federal Investigation?
Exceptional people should not be hindered by bureaucratic laws, especially not when on the streets, there are people in the shadow economy trading tinfoil balls for outrageous prices. Obviously, dysfunction is happening not only because of corruption, but due to a lack of resources to investigate and properly remediate the problems. Because of this, dysfunction spreads until communities, cities, and even states become undesirable. There comes a time when you have to ask yourself what is important. As leaders, and lawmakers, do you want to keep spending resources on people from other nations, while homeless Americans camp outside of hotels? Do you want to pack this nation so full of people, that no laws will be enforced? People are getting tired and frustrated of dealing with the dysfunction, crime and taxation without representation, and many fear what may happen as a consequence. One can report things until they are blue in the face, but nothing is done. However, if certain people, or Americans took these same kinds of liberties with others or in other countries, not only would they be arrested, but they might even face the death penalty without trial. I know I am sick of dealing with chaos, incompetence, and repetitive dysfunction every day. Even if one is not being physically assaulted, it is physically and mentally painful to have to withstand corruption, violence, unnecessary noise, violation of constitutional rights, the deterioration of the church, family and state. While some people are rich enough to run from these problems and pretend the World is perfect, not all people are able to do the same. It is not just a problem with the democrats, it takes two to tango, and republicans are sitting back doing the Harlem Flame, and complicit in the obstruction of justice, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You cannot serve two masters. You have to serve America, or step aside. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
People say the country is too big to run. However, you notice when you call US Bank or any other bank, someone picks up the phone and can immediately address their issue because they are trained to and have adequate staff. The American government has more resources than any private company, yet the country is falling apart. Perhaps privatization is the answer because public employees are not held responsible for financial malfeasance. We cannot blame everything on the organized crime carried on by the fake news media because law enforcement is allowing them to engage in criminal acts, and if they are terrorizing and committing treason, that is grounds for a federal investigation. American streets are starting to resemble an army camp. The number of people without homes has swelled to such proportions that the Red Cross needs to provide people with tents, food, water, soap, warm clothes, shoes, blankets and medication. Some people have lung ailments and COVID. The head of the local health office has warned of the possibility of an epidemic. Officials need to resolve to the American military police to provide security. As housing prices continue to rise and inflation is sky high, mass hysteria is developing. Things cannot be allowed to go on a they are. The swarm of people without homes is being caused by the state of California being overpopulated. Half of all Americans living outside on the streets, federal data shows, live in California. California’s homelessness crisis is a homegrown problem that is deepening amid a shortage of affordable housing and emergency shelter, and it is often the brutal conditions of living on the street that trigger behavioural health problems, such as depression and anxiety. At least 90 percent of adults who are experiencing homelessness in the state became homeless while living in California due primarily to the dire lack of affordable house. Let us be realistic, the population of the United States of America is approximately 325,000,000. Therefore, realistically at least 10 percent of those people are homeless. They may be living with someone and are not officially counted, but there are probably 32,500,000 people without homes in America. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Homeless people are at relatively high risk for a broad range of acute and chronic illnesses. Precise data on the prevalence of specific illnesses among homeless people compared with those among nonhomeless people are difficult to obtain, but there is a body of information indicating that homelessness is associated with a number of physical and mental problems. This is evident not only in recent data from Social and Demographic Research Institute but also in individual published reports in medical literature. In examining the relationship between homelessness and health, the committee observed that there are three different types of interactions: some health problems precede and causally contribute to homelessness, others are consequences of homelessness, and homelessness complicates the treatment of many illnesses. Of course, certain diseases and treatments cut across these patterns and may occur in all three categories. Certain illnesses and health problems are frequent antecedent of homelessness. The most common of these are the major mental illnesses, especially chronic schizophrenia. As mentally ill people’s disabilities worsen, their ability to cope with their surroundings—of the ability of those around them to cope with their behaviour—becomes severely strained. In the absence of appropriate therapeutic interventions and supportive alternative housing arrangements, many wind up on the streets. Another contemporary example of illness leading to homelessness are deadly viruses. As the illness progresses and leads to repeated and more serious bouts with opportunistic infections, the individual becomes unable to work and may be unable to afford to continue paying rent. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Other health problems contributing to homelessness include alcoholism and drug dependence, disabling conditions that cause a person to become unemployed (which is why people are thankful prescription grade pain medication exists), or any major illness that results in massive health care expenses. One type of health problem in this category—about which the committee heard much during several site visits—is accidental injury, especially job-related accidents. Although such programs as Workers’ Compensation were designed to prevent economic devastation as a result of workplace casualties, they often fall far short of what is optimal for many reasons, including lack of knowledge of the program by the employee, low levels of benefits under the program, and lack of benefits for “off the books” work and migrant farm labour. Homelessness increases the risk of developing health problems such as diseases of the extremities and skin disorders; it increases the possibility of trauma, especially as a result of physical assault or rape. It can also turn a relatively minor health problem into a serious illness. Other health problems that may result from or that are commonly with homelessness include malnutrition, parasitic infestations, dental and periodontal disease, degenerative joint disease, venereal disease, hepatic cirrhosis secondary to alcoholism, and infectious hepatitis related to intravenous (IV) drug abuse. For even the most routine medical treatment, that state of being homeless makes the provision of care extraordinarily difficult. If not impossible, even the need for bed rest is complicated when the patient does not have a bed or, as is the case in may shelters for the homeless, must leave the shelter in the early morning hours. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Diabetes, for example, usually is not difficult to treat in a domiciled person. For most people, daily insulin injections and control of diet are adequate. In a homeless person, however, treatment is virtually impossible: Some types of insulin need to be refrigerated; syringes may be stolen (in cities where IV drug abuse is common, syringes have a higher street value) or, sometimes, the homeless diabetic may be mistaken for an IV drug abuser; and diet cannot be controlled because soup kitchens serve whatever they can get, which rules out special therapeutic diets. Contusions, lacerations, sprains, bruises, and superficial burns are more commonly reported in the homeless population. Homeless people are frequently victims of violent crimes such as rape, assault, and attempted robbery. In addition, primitive living conditions result in unusual risks; for example, the use of open fires for warmth predisposes them to potential burns. Pustular skin lesions secondary to insect bites and other infestations are common among homeless people. In addition, venous stasis of the lower extremities (id est, poor circulation because of varicose veins) caused by prolonged periods of sitting or sleeping with the legs down predisposes homeless people to dependent edema (swelling of the feet and legs), cellulitis, and skin ulcerations. Although there is reason to speculate that venous valve incompetence would develop more frequently in homeless patients and lead to chronic phlebitis, data are meager. Recurrent dermatitis, which is possibly related to inadequate opportunities to bathe or shower and which is associated with infestations with lice and scabies, is prevalent among the homeless population. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This form of dermatitis is frequently confused with bacterial cellulitis, since they both present with red, warm, tender skin lesions. Finally, homeless people are at high risk of developing subu-Collecting tenuous abscesses, but this may be related in part to an increased prevalence of needle-stick infections from drug abuse. Acute nonspecific respiratory diseases (MINURI and SERRI) are commonly reported in populations of homeless people in shelters. Living in groups, crowding, environmental stresses, and poor nutrition may predispose homeless people to infections of the upper respiratory tract and lungs. Tuberculosis has become a major health problem among homeless people. Characteristically, this has been a disease associated with exposure, poor diet, alcoholism, and other illnesses that can lead to decreased resistance in the host. Substance abusers and the elderly are at high risk for developing tuberculosis. Immigrants from less developed countries (LCDs) also have an increased risk of infections. Many homeless people also suffer from greater frequency of hypertension, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Also there is a tendency for cardiovascular and renal diseases, as well as metabolic disorders. Homeless people are more likely to contract superficial fungal infections and calluses, corns, bunions that are apparently the result of trauma from ill-fitting shoes. Homeless people suffer from many dental problems. Reports of poor oral hygiene, cavities, gingival disease, and extraction with no prosthetic replacements appear to be extremely common among homeless people. These problems are also common among indigent patients in general who have limited or no access to dental care. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Finally, various illnesses associated with increased mortality are related to environmental exposure, such as hypothermia and frostbite or hyperthermia. These life-threatening problems are especially prevalent among alcoholic homeless people and those who abuse other drugs. Many homeless adults suffer from chronic and severe mental illness. The visibility of mentally ill people has led to the creation of a negative stereotype for the entire homeless population, but let us keep it real. Many of the homeless people that I see are more civilized than the people who live at a particular address in Midtown Sacramento, California. It leads some to believe that some parts of Sacramento have become a psychiatric dumping ground. Personality disorders should not be seen primarily as a consequence of homelessness. Rather, because they impair a person’s ability to cope with the demands of life and the expectations of society, they may contribute to the factors that cause certain people to become homeless. Other psychiatric illnesses, such as the anxiety and phobic disorders and milder depressive reactions, can either be contributing factors in causing homelessness or, more commonly, result from the stress of homelessness. Becoming homeless is a psychologically traumatic event that commonly is accompanied by symptoms of anxiety and depression, sleeplessness and loss of appetite. Sometimes, homeless people try to “mediate” these feelings away with alcohol or drugs. Veterans who experience sheltered homelessness often live in places such as emergency shelters, transitional housing programs or other supportive settings. Veterans who experienced unsheltered homelessness live in places not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, abandoned buildings and literally on the street. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Homelessness is a serious problem and is a threat to national security. Many homeless people are exposed to animals, such as rats, mice, snakes, and insects such roaches, fleas and spiders. And without adequate public bathrooms or places to dispose of waste, some are exposed to feces, urine, and trash. As you recall, the Black Death is believed to have been the result of a plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas. It is not known for certain how many people died during the Black Death. About 25,000,000 people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351. With an extremely high level of people living on the street, the Black Death could manifest again, and even spread to those who have homes. The effects of the Black Death were many and varied. Trade suffered for a time, and wars were temporarily abandoned. Many labourers died, which devasted families through lost means of survival and caused personal suffering; landowners who used labourers as tenant farmers were also affected. Yersinia causes three types of plague in humans: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Although there is DNA evidence that Yersinia was present in victims of the Black Death, it is uncertain which form the majority of the infection took. It is likely that all three played some role in the pandemic. Bubonic plague causes fever, fatigue, shivering, vomiting, headaches, giddiness, intolerance to light, pain in the back and limbs, sleeplessness, apathy, delirium. It also causes buboes: one or more of the lymph nodes become tender and swollen, usually in the groin or armpits. Pneumonic plague affects the lungs and causes symptoms similar to those of severe pneumonia: fever, weakness, and shortness of breath. Fluid fills the lungs and can cause death if untreated. Other symptoms may include insomnia, stupor, a staggering git, speech disorder, and loss of memory. Septicemic plague is an infection of the blood. Its symptoms include fatigue, fever, and internal bleeding. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The masses of homeless people are desperately sick. They are broken spiritually, suffering appalling things, and many see no way out, and cannot find a helping hand. They need homes and medical treatment for the body and soul. People without homes come at the cost of a considerable damage to the body of society as a whole. Many of the homeless people plead from the bottom of their hearts that someone will come, they wait with pain every day that someone will free them from suffering. Some cannot walk and wait with great yearning for a home. One should know that when one’s spirit is touched by the poison of the spirits of evil—by the injection, for instance, of sadness, soreness, complaint, grumbling, fault-finding, touchiness, bitterness, feeling hurt, jealousy, et cetera—all direct from the to the spirit. One should resist all sadness, gloom and grumbling injected into one’s spirit—for the victory life of a freed spirit means joyfulness. Believers ordinarily think that sadness had to do with their disposition, and so yield to it without a thought of resistance or reasoning out the cause. If they were asked if a human with a strong disposition to steal should yield to it, they would at once answer “no”; yet they yield to other “dispositions” less manifestly wrong without a question. In the stress of conflict, when the believer find that the enemy succeeds in reaching one’s spirit with any of these “fiery darts,” one should know how to pray immediately against the attack, asking God to destroy the causes of it. It should be noted that this touching of the spirit by the various things just named is not a manifestation of the “works of the flesh”—assuming the believer is one who knows the life after the spirit—but they will quickly reach the sphere of the flesh if not recognized and dealt with in sharp refusal and resistance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
One should know when one’s spirit is in the right position of dominance over soul and body, and not driven beyond due measure by the exigencies of conflict or environment. These are three conditions of the spirit which the believer should be able to discern and deal with: The spirit depressed, id est, crushed or “down.” The spirit in its right position, in poise and calm control. The spirit drawn out beyond “poise,” when it is in strain, or driven, or in “flight.” When the human walks after the spirit, and discerns it to be in either of the wrong conditions, one knows how to “lift” it when it is depressed; and how to check the overaction by a quiet act of one’s own volition when it is drawn out of poise by over-eagerness, or the drive of spiritual foes. The believer must know what the spirit is, and how to give heed to the demands of the spirit and not quench it: exempli gratia, a weight comes on one’s spirit, but one goes on with one’s work, putting up with the pressure; one finds the work had, but one has no time to investigate the cause…until at last the weight become unendurable, and one is forced to stop and see what is the matter—whereas one should have given heed to the claims of the spirit at the first, and in a brief prayer taken the “weight” to God, refusing all pressure from the foe. One should be able to read one’s spirit, and know at once when it is out of cooperation with the Holy Spirit, quickly refusing all attacks which are drawing one’s spirit out of the poise of fellowship with God. Even if this claim is made by a Protestant church, the Protestant principle, in name derived from the protest of the “protestants” against decisions of the Catholic majority, contains the divine and human protest against any absolute claim made for a relative reality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Is the Protestant era at an end? Is Protestantism as an historical reality dying, is its soul fleeing a moribund body that failed to adjust to the demands of its times? The social, political, economic, and spiritual disintegration of the masses can be relieved only by a tight centralization of power in all these areas. Protestantism, however, inspired by its principle of prophetic protest against hierarchical authority, ecclesiastical or political, which wraps itself in the mantle of the sacred, stands opposed to the trend toward centralization. Protestantism, out of step with the rhythm of history, leaves the field open to the tree forces capable of mass reintegration of society: communism, nationalism, and Roman Catholicism. Grim as the Protestant prospect is, renewal will be achieved by a Protestant movement that transcends all churches, political parties and ideologies and yet impregnates them. The prophetic spirit which lists where it will, without ecclesiastical conditions, organization, and traditions. Thus it will operate through Catholicism as well as through orthodoxy, through fascism as well as through communism; and in all these movements it will take the form of resistance against the distortion of humanity and divinity which necessarily is connected with the rise of the new systems of authority. However, this imperative would remain a very idealistic demand if there were no living group which could be bearer of this spirit. Such a group could not be described adequately as a sect. It would approximate more closely an order or fellowship and would constitute an active group, aiming to realize, first, in itself that transformation of Protestantism which cannot be realized either by the present churches or by the movement of retreat and defense. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
However, whether the Protestant era ends or not, the Protestant principle will never die. If the Protestant reality expires under the protesting blast of the Protestant principle, then the power and vitality of the principle is proved all the stronger. This principle is not a special religious or cultural idea; it is not subject to changes of history; it is not dependent on the increase or decrease of religious experience or spiritual power. It is the ultimate criterion of all religious and all spiritual experiences; it lies at their base, whether they are aware of it or not. It goes without saying how important it is not only to realize the dynamic role of destructiveness in the social process but also to understand what the specific conditions for tis intensity are. We have already noted the hostility which pervaded the middle class in the age of the Reformation and which found its expression in certain religious concepts Protestantism, especially in its ascetic spirit, and in Mr. Calvin’s picture of a merciless God to whom it had been pleasing to sentence part of humankind to eternal damnation for no fault of their own. Then, as later, the middle class expressed its hostility mainly disguised as moral indignation, which rationalized an intense envy against those who had the means to enjoy life. In our contemporary scene the destructiveness of the lower middle class has been an important factor in the rise of Nazism which appealed to these destructive strivings and used them in the battle against its enemies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The root of destructiveness in the lower middle class is easily recognizable as the one which has been assumed in this discussion: the isolation of the individual and the suppression of the individual expansiveness, both of which were true to higher degree for the lower middle class than for the classes above or below. In the mechanisms we have been discussing, the individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming power of the World outside of oneself either by renouncing one’s individual integrity, or by destroying others so that the World ceases to be threatening. Other mechanisms of escape are the withdrawal from the World so completely that it loses its threat (the picture we find in certain psychotic states, and the inflation of oneself psychologically to such an extent that the World outside becomes small in comparison. Although these mechanisms of escape are important for individual psychology, they are only of minor relevance culturally. Another mechanism of escape which is of the greatest social significance is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be oneself; one adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to one by cultural patterns; and one therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect one to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the World disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective colouring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up one’s individual self and becomes an automation, identical with millions of other automatons around one, need not feel alone and anxious anymore. But the price one pays, however, is high; it is the lose of oneself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Avoidance of error of accepting ideologies (rationalizations) for expressions of the inner, and usually unconscious, reality may become manifest after some time. One method which has proved to be very useful is that of an open-ended questionnaire, the answers to which are interpreted as to their non-intended or unconscious meaning. Thus, when one answer to the question, “Who are the men in history whom you most admire?” is “alexander the Great, Nero, Marx, and Lenin” and another answer is “William Randolph Hearst, William Wirt Winchester, George Fisher Winchester, and Sokrates,” the inference is made that the first respondent is an admirer of power and strict authority, the second an admirer of those who work in the service of life and who are benefactors of humankind. By using an extended projective questionnaire it is possible to obtain a reliable picture of the character structure of a person. Other projective tests—the analysis of favourite jokes, songs, stories, and observable behaviour (especially the “small acts” so important for psychoanalytic observation)—help in obtaining correct results. Methodologically, the main emphasis in all these studies is on the mode of production and the resulting class of stratification, on the most significant character traits and the syndromes they form, and on the relationship between these two sets of data. With the method or stratified samples, whole nations or large social classes can thus be studied by including less than a thousand persons in the investigation. Another important aspect of analytic social psychology is what Dr. Freud called the “unconscious.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
However, while Dr. Freud was mainly concerned with individual repression, the student of Marxist social psychology will be most concerned with the “social unconscious.” This concept refers to that repression of inner reality which is common to large groups. Every society must make every effort not to permit its members, or those of a particular class, to be aware of impulses which, if they were conscious, could lead to socially “dangerous” thoughts or actions. Effective censorship occurs, not at the level of the printed or spoken word, but by preventing thought from even becoming conscious, that is, by repression of dangerous awareness. Naturally the contents of the social unconscious vary depending on the many forms of social structure: aggressiveness, rebelliousness, dependency, loneliness, unhappiness, boredom, to mention only a few. The repressed impulse must be kept in repression and replaced by ideologies which deny it or affirm its opposite. The bored, anxious, unhappy human of today’s industrial society is taught to think that one is happy and full of fun. In other societies the human deprived of freedom of thought and expression is taught to think that one has almost reached the most complete form of freedom, even though at the moment only one’s leaders speak in the name of that freedom. In some systems love of life is repressed and love of property is cultivated instead; in others, awareness of alienation is repressed, and instead the slogan, “there can be no alienation in a socialist country,” is prompted. Another way of expressing the phenomenon of the unconscious is to speak of it in terms of Mr. Hegal and Mr. Marx, that is, as the totality of forces which work behind humans’ back while they have the illusion of being free in their decisions, or as Adam Smith put it, “economic man is lead by invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
While for Mr. Smith this invisible hand was a benevolent one, for Mr. Marx (as well as for Dr. Freud) it was a dangerous one; it had to be uncovered in order to be deprived of its effectiveness. Consciousness is a social phenomenon; for Mr. Marx it is mostly false consciousness, the work of the forces of repression. The unconscious, like consciousness, is also a social phenomenon, determined by the “social filter” which does not permit most real human experiences to ascend from unconsciousness to consciousness. This social filter consists mainly of language, logic, and social taboos; it is covered up by ideologies (rationalizations) which are subjectively experienced as being true, when in reality they are nothing but socially produced and shared fictions. This approach to consciousness and the repression can demonstrate empirically the validity of Mr. Marx’s statement that “social existence determines consciousness.” As a consequence of these considerations, another theoretical difference between dogmatic Freudian- and Marxist-oriented psychoanalysis appears. Dr. Freud believed that the effective cause for repression—the most important content to be repressed being incestuous desires—is the fear of castration. On the contrary, it is believed that humans’ greatest fear is that of complete isolation from their fellow humans, of complete ostracism. Even fear of death is easier to bear. Society enforces its demands for repression by the threat of ostracism (which is why haters and cancel culture have come together to turn the tide for their unacceptable behaviour). If you do not deny the presence of certain experiences, you do not belong, you belong nowhere, you are in danger of becoming insane. (Insanity is, in fact, the illness characterized by total absence of relatedness to the World outside.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
When it comes to property rights, we generally have two categories. Rights to assets that exist in nature, such as land, forests, and mineral deposits, and the emphasis on rights to assets that have to be produced, such as buildings and machines. The latter brings in the added issues of incentives to engage in this production and the efficiency of this productive activity. Even more complex issues arise in the context of other kinds of property, such as intellectual property and commercial brand names. These issues have to do with balancing private incentives to produce new assets of this kind and the social incentives efficiently to use the assets once they exist. Study of property rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth century whaling industry supports and extends many of these ideas by considering the information aspects of the enforcement of property rights. Many boats may participate in the killing of one whale, either simultaneously or sequentially. Or one boat may kill a whale and take it in tow only to lose it, and then another boat may find it. When disputed arise in such situations, their resolution depends on the verifiability of information. Therefore it makes sense to define property rights in the first place so as to be consistent with the verifiability of information regarding any violations of these rights. Mr. Ellickson finds that the definition of fishermen’s property rights over whale carcasses did indeed differ across whale types and regions, and evolved over time, in just this way. This can be thought of as another aspect of the complexity inherent in the concept of property rights. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
However, optimal evolution of property rights and their enforcement should not be taken for granted. Given this multiplicity of dimensions of property rights, for formal and informal, explicit, and implicit allocations of rights among various claimants, the transaction costs of enforcing rights, and the conflicts that confront any attempts to change any right, it is not surprising that reform is often stalled or makes matters worse. Traditional property rights to land in Africa are a complex system—titles are granted to individual families by clan chiefs, and sales are subject to their approval and also that of heirs (all sons usually have expectations of equal division). Many family stakeholders have usufruct rights. When the Kenyan government attempted to impose a system of formal land titles, this ran into conflict with the traditional arrangements. The expected capital market did not develop because lenders knew that foreclosure was infeasible in the face of opposition from family and community, so the land could not be used as collateral. Attempts to consolidate scattered holdings for scale economy reasons did not work because there was a good economic reason (diversification of risks) for the scattering. Many formally registered titles are now being allowed to lapse and revert to older arrangements, and the laws are being changed to resemble traditional forms more closely. The importance of developing public institutions for property right protection that build on, and work synergistically with, the historical and cultural endowment of norms and practices in a society are very important. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
If a government cannot or does not provide adequate protection for property rights, individuals and groups will attempt to provide private protection. They may do this using their own individual or collective efforts, or hire professional guards. The latter approach carries the risk that the guards become predators or extortionists; this problem exists with some governments too. The outcome of such games may be more or less efficient depending on the specifics of the situation—the technologies of protection and predation, the information, the skills in alternative occupations, the time-horizon of the predation, the information, the skills in alternative occupations, the time-horizon of the participants, and so on. However, some form of private protection will usually be better than none at all. The educational system of Russian serves, like that of any other country, to prepare the individual for the function one is to assume in society. The first task is to inculcate those attitudes and values that are dominant in Russian society. The values impressed on Russian youth and citizens correspond to the dominant Western morality, although heavily accented on the conservative idea. Care, responsibility, love, patriotism, diligence, honesty, industriousness, the injunction against transgressing the happiness of one’s fellowman, consideration for the common interest—there is nothing in this catalogue of values that could not be included in the ethics of the Western tradition. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Respect for property is emphasized as respect for socialist property, submission to authority as acceptance of national or international solidarity. As far as sexual morality is concerned, Russian morality is conservative and puritanical. The family is praised as a center of social stability, and any kind of sexual promiscuity is sternly discouraged. Since the betrayal or the part or the Russian system is about the worst imaginable crime in Russian mortality, the following statement gives an idea of this Russian puritanism. Komsomolskaya Pravda asked in reporting a case of marital betrayal: “How many steps are there from this to treason in the broader sense…? Communism is described as a system of “consistent monogamy” and as being opposed in principle to liaisons born of “dissoluteness and flightiness.” Aside from the central goal of Russian education, dutiful subordination of the individual to the demands of Russian society and its representatives, the other sim is that of creating the proper spirit of a competitive work morality. Families in which a genuine mutual concern about cultural growth is evident and domestic responsibilities are properly shared by all members of the family should be held up as examples. It is necessary to encourage the participation of children, adolescents, and young men and women in the performance of domestic chores and to appreciate this as an important and integral pater of labour training. “Ye shall respect every man his mother and his father. Ye shall rise up before the hoary head, and honour the aged among you. Ye shall not steal; neither shall ye deal falsely, nor lie one to another. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in court or in commerce, in weight or in measure. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Correct balances and just weights shall ye have; I am the Lord your God. Ye shall not oppress your neighbour, nor steal from him; the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with you all night until the morning. Ye shall not be unrighteous in judgment; ye shall not be partial even to the poor. Ye shall not favour the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shall ye judge your neighbour. Thou shalt not go about slandering people; neither shalt thou stand idly by when thy neighbor’s life is in danger. And if a stranger sojourn with thee in thy land, thou shalt not wrong him or her. The stranger that sojourn with thee in thy land, thou shall be unto thee like the native-born. Thou shalt love one as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear any grudge. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; I am the Lord. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may life in the land which God gives you. You shall not prevent judgment, nor favour persons, neither shall you take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous. Hear the causes between your brothers, judge righteously your brothers and the strangers. You shall hear the small and great alike, you shall not be afraid of the face of any human; for the judgment is God’s. Woe unto them that call evil “good,” and good “evil,” that turn darkness into light, and light into darkness.” I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. Please be kind enough to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Production of Too Many Useful things Results in Creation of too Many Useless People
Destructiveness is different from the sado-masochistic strivings since it aims not at active or passive symbiosis but at elimination of its object. However, it, too, is rooted in the unbearableness of individual powerlessness and isolation. I can escape the feeling of my own powerlessness in comparison with the World outside of myself by destroying it. To be sure, if I succeed in removing it, I remain alone and isolated, but mine is a splendid isolation in which I cannot be crushed by the overwhelming power of the object outside myself by destroying it. To be sure, if I succeed in removing it, I remain alone and isolated, but mine is a splendid isolation in which I cannot be crushed by the overwhelming power of the object outside of myself. The destruction of the World is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it. Sadism sims at incorporation of the object; destructiveness at its removal. Sadism tends to strengthen the atomized individual by the domination over others; destructiveness by the absence of any threat from the outside. Any observer of personal relations in our social sense cannot fail to be impressed with the amount of destructiveness to be found everywhere. For the most part it is not conscious as such but is rationalized in various ways. As a matter of fact, there is virtually nothing that is not used as a rationalization for destructiveness. Love, duty, conscience, patriotism have been and are being used as disguises to destroy others or oneself. However, we must differentiate between two different kinds of destructive tendencies. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
There are destructive tendencies which result from a specific situation; as reaction to attacks on one’s own or others’ life and integrity, or on ideas which one is identified with. This kind of destructiveness is the natural and necessary concomitant of one’s affirmation of life. The destructiveness where under discussion, however, is not this rational—or as one might call it “reactive”—hostility, but a constantly lingering tendency within a person which so to speak waits only for an opportunity to be expressed. If there is no objective “reason” for the expression of destructiveness, we call the person mentally or emotionally sick (although the person oneself will usually build up some sort of a rationalization). In most cases the destructive impulses, however, are rationalized in such a way that at least a few other people or a whole social group share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be “realistic” to the member of such a group. However, the objects of irrational destructiveness and the particular reasons for their being chosen are only of secondary importance; the destructive impulses are a passion within a person, and they always succeed in finding some object. If for any reason other persons cannot become the object of an individual’s destructiveness, one’s own self easily becomes the object. When this happens in a marked degree, physical illness is often the result and even suicide may be attempted. We have assumed that destructiveness is an escape from the unbearable feeling of powerlessness, since it aims at the removal of all objects with which the individual has to compare oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
However, in view of the tremendous role that destructive tendencies play in human behaviour, this interpretation does not seem to be a sufficient explanation; they very conditions of isolation and powerlessness are responsible for two other sources of destructiveness: anxiety and the thwarting of life. Concerning the role of anxiety not much needs to be said. Any threat against vital (material and emotional) interests creates anxiety, and destructive tendencies are the most common reaction to such anxiety. The threat can be circumscribed in a particular situation by particular persons. In such a case, the destructiveness is aroused towards these persons. It can also be a constant—though not necessarily conscious—anxiety springing from an equally constant feeling of being threatened by the World outside. This kind of constant anxiety results from the position of the isolated and powerless individual and is one other source of the reservoir of destructiveness that develops in him. Another important outcome of the same basic situation is what I have just called the thwarting of life. The isolated and powerless individual is blocked in realizing one’s sensuous, emotional, and intellectual potentialities. One is lacking the inner security and spontaneity that are the conditions of such realization. This inner blockage is increased by cultural taboos on pleasures and happiness, like those that have run through the religion and mores of the middle class since the period of the Reformation. Nowadays, the external taboo has virtually vanished, but the inner blockage had remained strong in spite of the conscious approval of sensuous pleasure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This problem of the relation between the thwarting of life and destructiveness has been touched upon by Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud realized that he had neglected the weight and importance of destructive impulses in his original assumption that the sexual drive and the drive for self-preservation were two basic motivations of human behaviour. Believing, later, the destructive tendencies are as important as the sexual ones, he proceeded to the assumption that there are two basic strivings to be found in humans: a drive that is directed toward life and is more or less identical with sexual libido, and a death-instinct whose aim is the very destruction of life. He assumed that the latter can be blended with the sexual energy and then be directed either against one’s own self or against objects outside of oneself. He furthermore assumes that the death-instinct is rooted in a biological quality inherent in all living organisms and therefore a necessary and unalterable part of life. The assumption of the death-instinct I satisfactory inasmuch as it takes into consideration the full weight of destructive tendencies, which had been neglected in Dr. Freud’s earlier theories. However, it is not satisfactory inasmuch as it resorts to a biological explanation that fails to take account sufficiently of the fact that the amount of destructiveness varies enormously among individuals and social groups. If Dr. Freud’s assumptions were correct, we would have to assume that the amount of destructiveness either against others or oneself is more or less constant. However, what we do observe is to the contrary. Not only does the weight of destructiveness among individuals in our culture vary a great deal, but also destructiveness is of unequal weight among different social groups. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Thus, for instance, the weight of destructiveness in the character of the members of some of the lower middle class in Europe is definitely much greater than among the working and the upper classes. Anthropological studies have acquainted us with peoples in whom a particularly great amount of destructiveness is characteristic, whereas others show an equally marked lack of destructiveness, whether in the form of hostility against others or against oneself. It seems that any attempt to understand the roots of destructiveness must start with the observation of these very differences and proceed to the question of what other differentiating factors can be observed and whether these factors may not account for the differences in the amount of destructiveness. This problem offers such difficulties that it requires a detailed treatment of its own which we cannot attempt here. However, it would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of humans’ sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived. It seems that if this tendency is thwarted the energy directed toward life undergoes a process of decomposition and changes into energies directed toward destruction. In other words: the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those individual and social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies—either against others or against oneself—are nourished. The character structure of the industrial worker contains punctuality, discipline, capacity for teamwork; this is the syndrome which forms the minimum for the efficient functioning on an industrial worker. (Other differences—dependence-independence, interest-indifference, activity-passivity—are at this point ignored, although they are of utmost importance for the character structure of the worker now and in the future.) The most important application of the concept of the social character lies in distinguishing the future social character of a socialist society as visualized by Mr. Marx from the social character of nineteenth-century capitalism, with its central desire for possession of property and wealth; and distinguishing it from the social character of nineteenth-century capitalism, with its central desire for possession of property and wealth; and distinguishing it from the social character of the twentieth century (capitalist or communist), which is becoming ever more prevalent in the highly industrialized societies—the character of homo consumens. Homo consumens is the human whose main goal is not primarily to own things, but to consume more and more, and thus to compensate for one’s inner vacuity, passivity, loneliness, and anxiety. In a society characterized by giant enterprises and giant industrial, governmental and labour bureaucracies, the individual, who has no control over one’s circumstances of work, feels impotent, lonely, bored, and anxious. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
At the same time, the need for profit of the big consumer industries, through the medium of advertising, transforms one into a voracious human, an eternal suckling who wants to consume more and more and for whom everything becomes an article of consumption—premium cranberry juice, dinner dates, movies, television, travel, and even education, books, and lectures. New artificial needs are created and humans’ tastes are manipulated. (The character of homo concumnes in its more extreme forms is a well-known psychopathological phenomenon. It is to be found in many cases of depressed or anxious persons who escape into overeating, overbuying, or alcoholism to compensate for the hidden depression and anxiety.) The greed for consumption, an extreme form of what Dr. Freud called the “oral-receptive character,” is becoming the dominant psychic force in present-day industrialized society. Homo consumnes is under the illusion of happiness, while unconsciously one suffers from one’s boredom and passivity. The more power one has over machines, the more powerless one becomes as a human being; the more one consumes, the more one becomes a slave to the ever-increasing needs which the industrial system creates and manipulates. One mistakes thrill and excitement for joy and happiness and material comfort for aliveness; satisfied green becomes the meaning of life, the striving for it a new religion. The freedom to consume becomes the essence of human freedom. This spirit of consumption is precisely the opposite of the spirit of a socialist society as Mr. Marx visualized it. He clearly saw the danger inherent in capitalism. His aim was a society in which man is much, not in which one has or uses much. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Mr. Marx wanted to liberate humans from the chains of one’s material greed so that one could become fully awake, alive, and sensitive, and not be the slave of one’s greed. “The production of too many useful things,” Mr. Marx wrote, “result in the creation of too many useless people.” He wanted to abolish extreme poverty, because it prevents humans from becoming fully human; he also wanted to prevent extreme wealth, in which the individual becomes the prisoner of one’s greed. His aim was not the maximum but the optimum of consumption, the satisfaction of those genuine human needs which serve as a means to a fuller and richer life. It is one of the historical ironies that the spirit of capitalism, the satisfaction of material greed, is conquering the communist and socialist countries which, with their planned economy, would have the means to curb it. This process has its own logic; the material success of capitalism was immensely impressive to those less developed countries (LCDs) in Europe in which communism had been victorious, and the victory of socialism became identified with successful competition with capitalism within the spirit of capitalism. Socialism is in danger of deteriorating into a system which can accomplish the industrialization of LCDs more quickly than capitalism, rather than of becoming a society in which the development of humans, and not that of economic production, is the main goal. This development has been furthered by the fact that Soviet communism, in accepting a crude version of Mr. Marx’s “materialism,” lost contact, as did the capitalist countries, with the humanist spiritual tradition of which Mr. Marx was one of the greatest representatives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
It is true that socialist countries have still not solved the problem of satisfying the legitimate material needs of their populations (and even in the United States fifty percent of the population is not “affluent”). However, it is of the utmost importance that socialist economists, philosophers, and psychologists be aware of the danger that the goal of optimal consumption can easily change to that of maximal consumption. The task for the socialist theoreticians is to study the nature of human needs; to find criteria for the distinction between genuine human needs, the satisfaction of which makes humans more alive and sensitive, and synthetic needs created by capitalism which tend to weak humans, to make one more passive and bored, a slave to one’s greed for things. Production should not be restricted, but, once the optimal needs of individual consumption are fulfilled, it should be channeled into more production of the means for social consumption such as schools, libraries, theaters, parks, hospitals, public transportation, et cetera. Some much money is being blown on assisting other nations and their people that buildings like the California Department of Veteran Affairs on O street in Sacramento, California is actually holding at least 15 windows together with clear plastic tape. The building cannot be safe for people to work in. However, no one would know that considering how taxpayer dollars are being thrown away on nonessential programs and services the government cannot afford. The State of California is literally crumbling because it is overwhelmed by people and does not have the resources to keep it running efficiently. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The ever-increasing individual consumption in the highly industrialized counties suggests that competition, greed, and envy are engendered not only by private property, but also by unlimited private consumption. Socialist theoreticians must not lose sight of the fact that the aim of a humanistic socialism is to build an industrial society whose mode of production shall serve the fullest development of the total human and not the creation of homo consumens; that socialist society is an industrial society fit for human beings to live in and to develop. There are empirical methods which permit the study of the social character. The aim of such study is to discover the incidence of the various character syndromes within the population as a whole and within each class, the intensity of the various factors within the syndrome, and new or contradictory factors which have been caused by different socioeconomic conditions. All such existing character structure, the process of change, and also what measures might facilitate such changes. Needless to say, such insight is importation in countries in transition from agriculture to industrialism, as well as for the problem of the transition of the worker under capitalism or state capitalism, that is, under alienated conditions, to the conditions of authentic socialism. Furthermore, such studies are guides to political action. If I know only the political “opinions” of people as ascertained by the opinion polls, I know how they are likely at act in the immediate future. If I want to know the strength of psychic forces (which at the moment may not yet be manifest consciously) such as, for instance, racism, war- or peace-mindedness, such studies of character inform me of the strength and direction of the underlying forces which operate in the social process and which may become manifest only after some time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
There is are several important characteristics of the managerial group. One, as Granick reports, is that Soviet data show that, as early as the 1930s, a great deal of social stability had developed. “Statistics on this subject,” writes Granick, “unfortunately end in the 1930s. Moreover, the data as to the occupation of parents is broken down into only a threefold classification: worker, farmer, and white-collar. Still, even this data is reasonably strong. It shows that the son of a white-collar employee, professional or business owner, had eight times as good a chance of reaching top management rank in the United States of America [in 1952] as did the son of manual workers and farmers, and that he had six times as good a chance in the Soviet Union [1936].” As far as the situation today is concerned, one can only guess. However, Granick sounds convincing when he says that the tendency against social mobility “has probably increased in present-day Russia simply because of the lesser amount of hostility toward the children of white collar parents.” This class stratification exist in spite of the fact that education in the Soviet Union is absolutely free and most of the better students receive stipends besides. This apparent contradiction is probably explained to some extent by the fact that many young Soviet people may not be able to go on to college because their families need their earnings. Considering the very high scholastic standards of Russian higher education, it would also appear likely that the cultural atmosphere of a managerial family provides a better preparation in this respect than that of a worker’s or peasant’s family. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The surprising fact—surprising for those who believe in the socialist character of the Soviet system—is, as Berliner reports, that to be a “worker” is “something devoutly to be shunned by most young people who have reached the high school level.” This attitude toward being a worker is, of course, not expressed in the official ideology, which extolls the workers as being the true masters of Soviet society, and the myth of great social mobility continues to exist in the Soviet Union. It is correct, then, to speak of a managerial class in the Soviet Union? If one uses Mr. Marx’s concept, the term “class” could not very well be applied, since in Marxist thought this refers to a social group with reference to its relation to the means of production; that is, whether the group owns capital or its tools (artisans), or is made up of propertyless workers. Naturally in a country where the state owns all the means of production, there is no managerial “class” in this sense, nor any other for that matter, and, if one uses the term “class” in a strict Marxist sense, one can claim that the Russia is a classless society. In reality, however, this is not so. Mr. Marx did not foresee that in the development of capitalist society there would be a vast group of managers who, while not owning the means of production, exercise control over them, and who have in common a high income and high social status. Hence Mr. Marx never transcended his concept of class beyond that of ownership of the means of production to that of control of the means of production and of the “human material” employed in the process of production, distribution, and consumption. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In terms of control, Russia is a society with rigid class distinctions. Aside from the managerial bureaucracy, there are the political bureaucracy of the Communist Party and the military bureaucracy. All three share control, prestige, and income. It is important to note that they largely overlap. Not only are most managers and top officers members of the party, but also they often “change hats,” that is, work for a time as managers, and then again as party officials. On the fringes of the three bureaucracies are the scientists, others intellectuals and artists, who are highly rewarded although they do not share in the power of the three main groups. The foregoing considerations make one point clear. Russian, in the process of developing into a highly industrialized system, has not only produced new factories and machines but also new classes, which direct and administer production. These classes have acquired interests of their own, which are quite different from those of the revolutionaries who took over in 1917. They are interested in material comforts, in security, and in education and social advancement for their children, in short, in the very same aims as the corresponding classes in capitalist countries. The continued existence of the myth of equality, however, does not mean that the fact of the rise of a Russian hierarchy is disputed in Russia. Mr. Stalin quite overtly-0and of course always quoted the proper passages from Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin out of context—as early as 1925 warned the Fourteenth Congress: “We must not play with the phrase about equality. This is playing with fire.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
As Deutscher puts it: Mr. Stalin, in later years, spoke “against the ‘levellers’ with a rancour and venom which suggested that in doing so he defended the most sensitive and vulnerable facet of his policy. It was so sensitive because the highly paid and privileged managerial groups came to be the props of Mr. Stalin’s regime.” In fact, Russia copes with the same problem as the capitalist countries do—namely how to reconcile the ideology of an open, mobile society with the need for a hierarchically organized bureaucracy and how to give prestige and moral justification to those on top. The Russian solution is not too different from our own; both principles are emphasized, and the individual is supposed not to stumble over the contradiction. The growth of Russian industry not only produced a new class of managers, but also a growing class of manual workers. In 1928, 76.5 percent of the Russian population were dependent on agricultural occupation, as against 23.5 percent on nonagricultural occupations. In 2021, 5.8 percent of the workforce in Russian was employed in agriculture, 26.7 percent in industry and 67.32 percent in service. The majority of Russia’s labour force works in the services sector, which accounts for more than half the jobs in the country. About 30 percent work in the industry sector and the rest in agriculture. Interestingly, Russia is among the leading export countries in the Worldwide agricultural products, as well as meat, are among the main exported goods. Russia’s economy also profits significantly from selling and exporting fish and sea food. Due to large oil resources, Russian is also among the largest economies and the countries with the largest gross domestic product (GDP) Worldwide. Subsequently, living in working conditions in Russia should be above average, but for a long time, many Russians have struggled to get by. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
While conditions seem to improve nowadays, many Russian still live below the poverty line. One suggested reason for this is corruption, which has been cited as a severe problem for the country for a long time, and continues to pose difficulties for Russia’s economy. Illicit employment and the so-called “shadow economy,” which does not officially contribute to the fiscal system, yield amounts worth almost half of Russia’s GDP. This can be seen on a ranking of the untaxed economy in selected countries as a share of GDP. The develop of industry requires more than an ever larger number of industrial workers. It also requires increasing productivity of the labour force. How serious this necessity is for Russia is illunstrated by the fact that labour productivity is 3-4 times lower in Russia than in the United States of America. Aside from higher levels of technology, one of the decisive factors in labour productivity is the character of the workers themselves. In order to further the development of a more independent and responsible character, not only have punitive policies been replaced, (absenteeism, for instance, which under Mr. Stalin was a criminal offense, is now a disciplinary matter to be dealt with by management), but Russian labour policy has moved in many respects to encourage the beneficial manifestations of application and effectiveness on the job, [in the area of wage policy and even in the worker’s greater role in the day-to-day decision-making of the enterprise] without, however, fundamentally usurping the prerogatives of management. The roles of education, material satisfaction, and incentives are generally recognized by Russian hierarchy as being of basic importance, and the state is trying its best to improve these factors and this to increase labour productivity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This development will undoubtedly lead to the very thing it has led to in the Western countries. The workers not only work better, they are also more satisfied and more loyal to the system: in the one case “capitalism,” in the other “communism.” While the gap between the situations of the workers in both systems is narrowing, there is one difference that shows no signs of being erased, a political and psychological rather than an economic one—the absence of independent trade unions in Russian. The “company union” character of their unions is, of course, denied by Russian ideology. The reasoning is that a workers’ state, in which the workers themselves “own” the means of production, does not need the type of unions the workers need under capitalism. However, this reasoning is mainly, of course, ideological. The crucial point is that the domination of the unions by party and state in Russian stifled the spirit of independence and freedom and thus tends to strengthen the authoritarian character of the whole Russian system. America is another country that often sees collective action. For instance, mineral rights in California in the mid nineteenth century—the aggregate gains from avoiding a free-for-all among prospectors were huge, so the need for delineation of property rights was quickly recognized. Camps formed their own “governments” and “laws.” Many of the resulting arrangements were then officially accepted, even though they did not conform to the Federal or State laws and practices. The homogeneity and lack of ex ante private information among the prospectors helped achieve agreement. Federal land policies in late nineteenth century western USA areas: here the process of delineation of property rights was slowed by the conflicting interests of ranchers, timber companies, and homesteaders in matter of size of land allocations, rules concerning fences, access to water, and so on. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Fisheries raised some serious conflicts that delay or prevent agreement. More efficient incumbents are against uniform quotas and against tradeable quotas because they are hurt if low-efficiency incumbents can sell their quotas to better operators. Fish migrate, so property rights to an area may not solve externality problems. Also, efficiency-promoting arrangements may serve as a cloak for cartelization. Oil fields in Texas. Several drillers usually have the right to tap into a single pool of underground oil, so their free-rider problem needs to be solved by arrangements to treat the pool as a single entity and internalize the externality. The need for such arrangements, called “unitization,” was widely recognized but the efficient arrangements were delayed or not made either in private arrangements or government-imposed rules. Asymmetric information at the time of the negotiation may have been the key difficulty. For fisheries as well as oil, historically determined laws such as “rule of capture” also inhibited efficiency-enhancing adaptations. If there had been good planning up to the last phase, goals will already have been stated in quantitative terms. The index of progress, therefore, is mainly a matter of comparing expected and achieved results. In many cases, however, especially among new agencies, goals may not have been given quantitative formulation in advance. Nevertheless, if there is to be an appraisal at all, there must be quantitative indices. In the course of constructing such measures, there is, or ought to be, a progressive evolution of objective bases of comparison between periods. That is, the process of evaluating results of a program leads to a clarification of the objectives of the program itself, which is of great significance for the next cycle of planning. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Even where there has been much previous experience and many careful estimates and predictions, there are always unexpected deviations and consequences in the actual working-out of the program. Thus the task of appraisal always to some degree involves the technical problem of modifying and applying indices of progress, and there is no end to the improvement can be made. When it comes to religion, when a believer understands the direct onslaughts of wicked spirits, one becomes able to discern the condition of one’s spirit and to retain control over it—refusing all forced elation and strain and resisting all weights and pressure to drive it below the normal state of poise—so that it is capable of cooperation with the Spirit of God. The danger of the human spirit acting out of cooperation with the Holy Spirit and becoming driven or influence by deceiving psychopathological offenders is a very serious one, yet it can be increasingly detected by those who walk softly and humbly with God. For instance, a human is liable to think one’s own masterful spirit is evidence of the power of God because in other directions one sees the Holy Spirit using one in winning souls. In another instance, one may have a flood of indignation inserted into one’s spirit which one pours out thinking it is all of God, though others shrink and are conscious of a harsh note which is clearly not God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
This influence on the human spirit by psychopathological offenders counterfeiting the divine workings—or even the workings of humans themselves, because one is out of coworking with the Holy Spirit—needs to be understood and detected by the believer who seeks to walk with God. One needs to know that because one is spiritual one’s spirit is open to two forces of the spirit-real, and that is one thinks only the Holy Spirit can influence one in the spiritual sphere one is likely to be mislead. If such were so, one would become infallible; but one needs to watch and pray, and seek to have the eyes of one’s understanding enlightened to know the true workings of God. Critical judgment is the second mode of the relating function of the churches. By it they publicly expose and energetically protest the negatives of society. If the silent penetration of a society by the Spiritual Presence can be called “priestly,” the open attack on this society in the name of the Spiritual Presence can be called “prophetic.” The success of this criticism may be modest, but even a rejected criticism has been heard. Prophetic judgment will not create the Spiritual Community, but it can advance toward it by encouraging a state of society which approaches theonomy—the relatedness of all cultural forms to the ultimate. However, again, the relationship between the churches and society is mutual. By a kind of “reverse prophetism” society criticizes ecclesiastical injustice and forms of saintliness which verge on the inhuman. In the thirteen and twentieth centuries society’s criticism of the churches resulted in their loss of the labouring class, but eventually it forced them to revise their views of social justice and the nature of humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The third made my which the churches are related to society is political establishment. Although at first sight this seems to be a non-religious arrangement, Christ has not only a priestly and prophetic office, but also a royal one. So, too, the churches. Their royal character consists in exercising sufficient influence to safeguard the free exercise of their priestly and prophetic duties. The danger is that power politics may replace spiritual persuasion in achieving this objective. Sometimes the royal office of the churches is exercised by a political establishment in which the reciprocity of influence between church and state is clearly evidenced. The church is never totally free; inevitably there are limits imposed by its political milieu. However, these restrictions are tolerable, even desirable, as long as the church remains unhindered to express itself as the Spiritual Community. A political arrangement between church and states is inimical to the interest of both, only if it permits either party to assume a totalitarian control over the other. In general, the churches as actualizations of the Spiritual Community relate to society by belonging to it and by opposed by the church is not simply not-church but has in itself elements of the Spiritual Community in its latency which work toward a theonomous culture. Pledging allegiance to the flag is very important. This is a promise that we will always be true to our country and our special red, white, and blue flag represents all 50 states in our country. We are all on a team together and the flag is our symbol…our nation’s family crest. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All. “Ye shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy; ye shall revere your God; I am the Lord.” And please be kind and donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart, for they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Ready to End the Unwanted Pursuit?
The haunting beauty of Llanada Villa was undeniably captivating. I had to go downstairs to procure another light. Echoes transcended time and space. Whispers were soft, indiscernible murmurs, barely distinguishable from the gentle rustle of the curtain. My heartbeat quickened as I strained to comprehend the words, but they remained elusively haunting. As I made my way back to my chamber, I found my windows open. The chilling draft caused the candles to flicker, casting shadows on the walls. Crossing the threshold, I shivered, and goosebumps formed on my arms as an unsettling feeling enveloped me. I was caught off guard by the shutters were flapping in the frigid breeze. As I went to bolt them again, a horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. Vanishing into the darkness. As this ghastly situation progressed, the covers had been snatched from the bed, and my books had been scattered about. The sound that the wind made was something hellish, full of screams and wailing that raised the hackles on my neck. The Indians who used to live around here called it a “black wind”; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that is you listened to it long enough, it could drive you mad and loose untold terrors on all humankind. A cold gust of wind swept through my chamber, extinguishing the candles. As darkness covered the room, I felt disoriented and vulnerable in the pitch-black abyss. The mansion seemed to come alive with a haunting presence. The moon had reached its zenith, casting an eerie light through the stained-glass windows of the Daisy Bedroom. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
In the midst of the haunting beauty, there are black zones of shadows, and now and then some evil soul breaks through. However, it is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. I slept fitfully that night, even in my sleep listening for footsteps on the veranda. It was already afternoon before I finally rose from my bed and ventured from my sunny room. I could feel strange energy permeating the air, like an intangible veil separating the living World from the dead. Llanada Villa had a life of its own. Its history seeped through the walls, whispering forgotten secrets to anyone who would listen. I sat in silence for a while, lost in a nightmare, my own private hell. These echoing words painted a tapestry of human suffering, of moments that had broken these spirits, shaped them and made them who they were. I had become a soul lost, adrift in a sea of sorrow, desperately seeking an anchor in my constantly expanding home. As the day wore on and became night, a chill ran down my spine, a nagging feeling that something was not quite right. The darkness in the mansion was a thick, oppressive weight on my chest. I could feel it, the sensation of being watched. My heart raced. Struggling to move, I realized I was trapped in my own body—the suffocating grip of sleep paralysis. My eyes, the only part of me that I could move, darted around, trying to make out of the shadows shifting in the corner of my room. Fear propelled me. Reality, with its vivid hues and resonant sounds, tried to assert its dominance, but the boundaries were blurring. Everywhere I looked, a surreal hazed seemed to cover my room, threatening to meld the familiar with the phantasmagorial. The intimacy was beyond untangling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
A gust of wind rattled the windows, amplifying a growing horror, of outré and morbid cast. Something was waving my fate in this dark tapestry, and I needed comfort. As I regain my strength, I ventured outside of my chamber. Each shadow seemed to harbour potential threats; every eerie whisper echoed with foreboding. Even my sleep was haunted. Every night, the same shadowed figure emerged, drawing near. Its presence is cold, its intentions unclear. Yet, there is an unspeakable dread that tugged at my soul. It was a warning? Maybe a premonition? I felt like it was calling me, urging me into its dark embrace. That path I was on was treacherous. However, sometimes salvation lies in the shadows. As the day went by, daylight, which once offered refuge from the terror of my nightmares, because just another playground for the menacing specters that haunted Llanada Villa. Morning’s golden glow no longer held the promise of safety, and the warmth of the sun could not dispel the bone-chilling cold that now seemed to follow me wherever I went. As the carpenter’s hammers fell, the miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course into an impressive nine stories. Afear gnawed at my inmost soul. Between my room and the staircase are two dark and empty chambers, which would have once caused me alarm, but which I now welcome. I opened a pair of the big windows, a grimy and, I fear a noisy task. I flitted out in the moon light on the balcony, and gazed down into the garden where the dwarf pines, pale birches, and a vast hiding place lay, where many forms often invisible life lurked in the dense undergrowth of the boxwood hedges. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
The howl of what was supposed to be a dog brought me to an immediate standstill and for a while I listened, trying to determine from which direction the sound came. There was an unmistakable pricking sensation on the back of my neck, an exceedingly cold, almost icy chill slithered down my spine and gave me reason to remember the conditions laid down by legend and superstition. The howl rang out again. A long, drawn-out cry of canine anguish. I saw something dart behind a gnarled oak, a shadowy silhouette that moved with an unnatural fluidity. It was there and then it was not, leaving behind only the whisper of dread and the echoing silence of the night. There was a creaking of settling timbers, the ticking of an old grandfather clock. Then, without warning, the lights began to flicker, the bulbs were throwing a staccato pattern on the walls, turning the familiar into the grotesque. Then a growl erupted from the floor below. Pity fled like a leaf before a raging wind, and a stark terror filled my brain with blind, unreasoning panic. I ran, fell, got up and rain again, and from behind came the sound of a heavy body crashing on the floor, the rasp of a laboured breathing the bestial growl of some enraged being. Reason had gone, coherent thought had been replaced by an animal instinct for survival; I knew whatever ran behind me was closing the gap. In the blackness, I heard it—a whisper. A voice so faint and fragmented it was like the memory of a sound, speaking words that were not words, a language that transcended mere speech. It was a whisper that crawled into my ear and lay there, festering. Frozen with terror, I could only listen as the whisper grew louder, more insistent. It was calling to me, beckoning me, its very existence a violation of everything safe and sane. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
My consciousness was blotted out by a merciful darkness. An hour passed, perhaps more, before I awakened. I lay quite still and tried to remember why I should be lying on the floor in the parlor. Then memory sent its first cold tentacles shuddering across my brain and I dared to sit up and face reality. Night was enforcing its guard, but I was still able to see the dead man who lay but a few feet away. I shrank back with a little muffled cry and tried to dispel this vision of a purple face and bulging eyes, by the simple act of closing my own. However, this was not a wise action for the image of that awful countenance was etched upon my brain, and the memory was even more macabre than the reality. I opened my eyes again, and there it was: a man in late middle life, with grey, close-cropped hair, a long moustache and yellow teeth, that were bared in a death grin. The purple face suggested he laid dead of a heart attack. The ghost of the Winchester Rifle grew more intrusive, more menacing, and with a boldness that sent cold shivers down my spine. They were no longer content to haunt the shadows; they demanded to be seen, to be felt, to be feared. I dragged myself through the halls of Llanada Villa and by sheer good fortune emerged out on to one of the main paths. I engrossed myself in research, buried in the arcane knowledge of the forbidden text, only to feel a chill breeze in the library where no windows were open. I looked up to find my notes shuffled, some even flung across the room. Blood spots, staring back at me like red eyes. My breath became labourious, my pulse quickened, but there was nothing there. Nothing I could see. A cyclone of cold carried with it whispers, indistinct yet filled with malice. Clutching my heart in fear, I could do nothing but listen. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
You do not have to believe in cursed objects to be fascinated by them. Because another, less paranormal definition of a cursed object is an item that gathers stories to itself—and more specifically, tragedies. Objects are intimately connected to people. We make them, live with them, use them, love them, and are sometimes even buried with them, and people continuously find themselves in the midst of tragedy. Cursed objects are those items that have simply been the mute witnesses to more tragedies than other items. They then become devices for remembering those stories and provide opportunities for retelling them. For those who are curious, visiting a museum is the easiest way to see a cursed object firsthand.
The people who have owned The Winchester Mystery House or inherited money from The Winchester Fortune have been ripped apart by dogs, shot, beheaded, pushed over cliffs, starved to death, and drowned aboard sinking ships. Many people believe The Winchester Mystery House to be the most popular object in California, making it more of a lucky charm for conservators of The Winchester Mystery House, than a cursed object. While it cannot be denied that everyone who has ever owned The Winchester Mystery House has died—The Winchester Mystery House can sometimes seem less the direct cause of trouble than a side effect. After all, you have to be extremely rich to own it. That level of wealth comes with its own problems, whether these problems are born of politics, vengeful spirits, or profligacy. But one thing is certain, the Devil is far more powerful than any person.
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What Miracles is He Not Capable!
Man is an indolent creature, but light the fire of fear under him, and of what miracles is he not capable! However, not only the forces that determine one’s own life directly but also those that seem to determine life in general are felt as unchangeable fate. It is fate that there are wars and that one part of humankind has to be ruled by another. It is fate that the amount of suffering can never be less than it always has been. Fate may be rationalized philosophically as “natural law” or as “destiny of man,” religiously as the “will of the Lord,” ethically as a higher power outside of the individual, toward which the individual can do nothing but submit. The authoritarian character worships the past. What has been, will eternally be. To wish or to work for something that has not yet been before is crime or madness. The miracle of creation—and creation is always a miracle—is outside of one’s range of emotional experience. Religious experience as experience of absolute dependence is the definition of the masochistic experience in general; a special role in this feeling of dependence is played by sin. The concept of original sin, which weighs upon all future generations, is characteristic of the authoritarian experience. Moral like any other kind of human failure becomes a fate which humans can never escape. Whoever has once sinned is chained eternally to one’s own sin with iron shackles. Human’s own doing becomes the power that rules over one and never lets one free. The consequences of guilt can never be softened by atonement, but atonement can never do away with the guilt. Isaiah’s words, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” express the very opposite of the authoritarian philosophy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The feature common to all authoritarian thinking is the conviction that life is determined by forced outside of humans’ own self, one’s interest one’s wishes. They only possible happiness lies in the submission to these forces. The powerlessness of humans is the leitmotif of masochistic philosophy. One of the ideological fathers of Nazism, Moeller van der Bruck, expressed this feeling very clearly. He writes: “The conservative believers rather in catastrophe, in the powerlessness of man to avoid it, in its necessity, and in the terrible disappointment of the seduced optimist.” In Mr. Hitler’s writings we shall see more illustrations of the same spirit. The authoritarian character does not lack activity, courage, or belief. However, these qualities for one mean something entirely different from what they mean for the person who does not long for submission. For the authoritarian character activity is rooted in a basic feeling of powerlessness which it tends to overcome. Activity in this sense means to act in the name of something higher than one’s own self. It is possible in the name of God, the past, nature, or duty, but never in the name of the future, of the unborn, of what has no power, or of life as such. The authoritarian character wins one’s strength to act through one’s leaning on superior power. This power is never assailable or changeable. For one lack of power is always an unmistakable sign of guilt and inferiority, and if the authority in which one believes shows signs of weakness, one’s love and respect change into contempt and hatred. One lacks an “offensive potency” which can attack established power without first feeling subservient to another and stronger power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The courage of the authoritarian character is essentially a courage to suffer what fate or its personal representative or “leader” may have destined one for. To suffer without complaining is one’s highest virtue—not the courage of trying to end suffering or at least to diminish it. Not to change fate, but to submit to it, is the heroism of the authoritarian character. One has belief in authority as long as it is strong and commanding. One’s belief is rooted ultimately in one’s doubts and constitutes an attempt to compensate them. However, if we mean by faith the secure confidence in the realization of what now exists only as a potentiality, one has no faith. Authoritarian philosophy is essentially relativistic and nihilistic, in spite of the fact that it often claims so violently to have conquered relativism and in spite of its show of activity. It is rooted in extreme desperation, in the complete lack of faith, and it leads to nihilism, to the denial of life. Authoritarian leaders come out to speak to crowds. These wild-eyed charismatic people mount stages in the darkness and feed crowds words like manna. As they stand out on the balcony—gazing out over the masses in their own kind of uniform—they may telegraph, at least for some, a specific and undeniable memory: that of Mr. Hitler addressing the Volk. Those memories, those aesthetic elements: they charge the air with emotional fervor, at least, for those inclined to be so enchanted. This is not to discount the religious significance so many attach to the leader’s presence and ability to cure the sick. There is no reason in fact to separate those two things at all. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
For some of the people standing in these fields on an Alpine summer’s night, seeing an authoritarian leader is a little like seeing a friendly ghost. That encounter has enormous, even curative, power. In authoritarian philosophy the concept of equality does not exist. The authoritarian character may sometimes use the word equality either conventionally or become it suits one’s purpose. However, it has no real meaning or weight for one, since it concerns something outside the reach of one’s emotional experiences. For one the World is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of one’s sado-masochistic strivings, one experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity. Differences, whether of gender or race, to one are necessarily signs of superiority or inferiority. A difference which does not have this connotation is unthinkable to one. In Germany, reporters described many people getting suddenly healed at the Trotter Farm, especially of paralysis, and trouble with their ears or eyes. Maria Wurstel told the journalist Heueck how she had suffered since 1938 from near-paralysis of the spine. The slightest movement caused her terrible pain. Her doctor had recommended she see Herr Groning. Heueck saw her run like a child, “partly laughing, partly crying from happiness.” Another woman—she had had polio and had used a wheelchair since the age of three—got up and walked too. A man who said he had suffered brain damage in the war rejoiced, “The buzzing in my ears is gone, my head is free again!” Sometimes people brought photos of their sick relatives—perhaps those too ill to travel—and held them up before the resort’s windows in the hopes of receiving Mr. Groning’s energies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
As new of these gatherings and cures multiplied, the crowds grew larger. The description of the sado-masochistic strivings and the authoritarian character refers to the more extreme forms of helplessness and the correspondingly more extreme forms of escaping it by the symbiotic relationship to the object of worship or domination. Although these sado-masochistic strivings are common, we can consider only certain individuals and social groups as typically sado-masochistic. There is, however, a milder form of dependency which is so general in our culture that only in exceptional cases does it seem to be lacking. This dependency does not have the dangerous and passionate qualities of sado-masochism, but it is important enough not to be omitted from out discussion here. I am referring to the kind of persons whose whole life is in a subtle way related to some power outside themselves. There is nothing they do, feel, or think which is not somehow related to this power. They expect protection from “him,” wished to be take care of by “him,” make “him” also responsible for whatever may be the outcome of their own actions. Often the fact of his dependence is something the person is not aware of at all. It worried police. “There people cannot understand why anyone would hinder” Mr. Groning’s “practicing,” one reported, and said he feared a riot if anyone tried. In truth, banning Mr. Groning’s healing work, as Herford officials had done, was not much discussed in local papers. Rather, something like the opposite was generally true. A number of local politicians and officials spoke up for him publicly. Munich’s police commissioner, Social Democrat Franz Xaver Pitzer, thanked Mr. Groning personally in the front of the Trotter Farm crowds for helping him over an illness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
A state parliamentary representative, Hans Hagn of Bavaria’s conservative party, the Christian Social Union, exhorted the crowds to “believe in the healing power of Groning and to trust him.” Even the highest officeholder in the Bavarian government, Minister President Hans Ehard, openly expressed support for Mr. Groning. The healer should not be subject to a lot of “red tape” (Paragraphenschwierigkeiten), Mr. Ehard said. Members of the press were as smitten as politicians. One local paper described the public’s trust in Mr. Groning—“a simple, uneducated man…the son of a Danzig bricklayer”—as “limitless.” The very air in Rosenheim, correspondent Hans Bentzinger rhapsodized, was “filled with a special excitement” that “grows from hour to hour, as it becomes known that Her Groning will speak to the waiting crowds.” Mr. Bentzinger described an “unbearable” tension, the atmosphere “so laden with the energy of expectation that one can hear his own heart beating and that of his neighbor at the same time.” Everyone and everything in Germany was waiting for some kind of miracle. Even if there is a dim awareness of some dependency, the person or power on whom one is dependent often remains nebulous. There is no definite image linked up with that power. Its essential quality is to represent a certain function, namely to protect, help, and develop the individual, to be with one and never leave one alone. The “X” which has these qualities may be called the magic helper. Frequently, of course, the “magic helper” is personified: one is conceived of as God, as a principle, or as real persons such as one’s parent, husband, wife, or superior. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
It is important to recognize that when real persons assume the role of the magic helper they are endowed with magic qualities, and the significance they have results from their being the personification of the magic helper. This process of personification of the magic helper is to be observed frequently in what is called “falling in love.” A person with that kind of relatedness to the magic helper seeks to find one in flesh and blood. For some reason or other—often supported by sexual desires—a certain other person assumes for one those magic qualities, and one makes that person into the being to whom and whom one’s whole life becomes related and dependent. The fact that the other person frequently does the same with the first one does not alter the picture. It only helps to strengthen the impression that this relationship is one of “real love.” This need for the magic helper can be studied under experiment-like conditions in the psychoanalytic procedure. Often the person who is analyzed forms a deep attachment to the psychoanalyst and his or her whole life, all actions, thoughts, and feelings are related to the analyst. Consciously or unconsciously the analysand asks oneself: would he (the analyst) be pleased with this, displeased with that, agree to this, scold me for that? In love relationships the fact that one chooses this or that person as a partner serves as a proof that this particular person is loved just because he is “he”; but in the psychoanalytic situation this illusion cannot be upheld. The most different kinds of persons develop the same feelings toward the most different kind of psychoanalysts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The relationship looks like love; it is often accompanied by sexual desires; yet magic helper, a role which obviously a psychoanalyst, like certain other persons who have some authority (physicians, ministers, teachers), is able to play satisfactorily for the person who is seeking the personified magic helper. The reasons why a person is bound to a magic helper are, in principle, the same that we have found at the root of the symbiotic drives: an inability to stand alone and to fully express one’s own individual potentialities. In the sado-masochistic strivings this inability leads to a tendency to get rid of one’s individual self through dependency on the magic helper—in the milder form of dependency I am discussing now it only leads to a wish for guidance and protection. The intensity of the relatedness to the magic helper is in reverse proportion to the ability to express spontaneously one’s own intellectual, emotional, and sensuous potentialities. In other words, one hopes to get everything one expects from life, from the magic helper, instead of by one’s own actions. The more this is the case, the more is the center of life shifted from one’s own person to the magic helper and one’s personifications. The question is then no longer how to life oneself, but how to manipulate “him” in order not to lose him and how to make him do what one wants, even to make him responsible for what one is responsible oneself. In the more extreme cases, a person’s whole life consists almost entirely in the attempt to manipulate “him”; people differ in the means which they use; for some obedience, for some “goodness,” for others suffering is the main means of manipulation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
We see, then, that there is no feeling, thought, or emotion that is not at least coloured by the need to manipulate “him”; in other words, that no psychic act is really spontaneous or free. This dependency, springing from and at the same time leading to a blockage of spontaneity, not only gives a certain amount of security but also results in a feeling of weakness and bondage. As far as this is the case, the very person who is dependent on the magic helper also feels, although often unconsciously, enslaved by “him” or “her” and to a greater or lesser degree, rebels against “him” or “her.” The television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer is another example of a magic helper. This rebelliousness against the very person on whom one has put one’s hopes for security and happiness, creates new conflicts. It has to be suppressed is one is not to lose “him” or “her,” but the underlying antagonism constantly threatens the security sought for in the relationship. If the magic helper is personified in an actual person, the disappointment that follows when one falls short of what one is expecting for this person—and since the expectation is an illusory one, any actual person is inevitably disappointing—in addition to the resentment resulting from one’s own enslavement to that person, leads to continuous conflicts. This can be seen in the conflicts between Buffy and her friends, which frequently arise. These sometimes end only with separation, which is usually followed by a choice of another object who is expected to fill all the hopes connected with the magic helper. This is seen many times with Buffy, like when her friends abandon her when she runs for homecoming queen, or when her mother kicks her out of the house, or when Buffy’s friends kick her out of her own house and turn to the leadership of Faith, another slayer. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If this relationship proves to be a failure too, it may be broken up again or the person involved may decide that this is just “life,” and resign. What one does not recognize is the fact that one’s failure is not essentially the result of one’s not having chosen the right magic person; it is the direct result of having tried to obtain by the manipulation of a magic force that which only the individual can achieve oneself by one’s own spontaneous activity. The phenomenon of life-long dependency on an object outside of oneself has been seen by Dr. Freud. He has interpreted it as the continuation of the early, essentially nurturing bonds with the parents throughout life. As long as the infant is small it is quite naturally dependent on the parents, but this dependence does not necessarily imply a restriction of the child’s own spontaneity. However, when the parents, acting as the agents of society, start to suppress the child’s spontaneity and independence, the growing child feels more and more unable to stand on its own feet; it therefore seeks for the magic helper and often makes the parents the personification of “him” or “her.” Later on, the individual transfers these feelings to somebody else, for instance, to a teacher, a husband, or a psychoanalyst. Again, the need for being related to such a symbol of authority is caused by anxiety. What we can observe at the kernel of every neurosis, as well as of normal development, is the struggle for freedom and independence. For many normal persons this struggle has ended in a complete giving up of their individual selves, so that they are thus well adapted and considered to be normal. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The neurotic person is the one who has not given up fighting against complete submission, but who, at the same time, has remained bound to the figure of the magic helper, whatever form or shape “one” may have assumed. One’s neurosis is always to be understood as an attempt, and essentially an unsuccessful one, to solve the conflict between that basic dependency and the quest for freedom. The concept of social character is not only a theoretical one lending itself to general speculation; it is useful and important for empirical studies which aim at finding out what the incidence of various kinds of social character is in a given society or social class. Assuming that one defines the “peasant character” as individualistic, hoarding, stubborn, with little satisfaction in cooperation, little sense of time and punctuality, this syndrome of traits is by no means a summation of various traits, but a structure, charged with energy. This structure will show intensive resistance by either violence or silent obstructionism if attempts are made to change it; even economic advantages will not easily produce any effects. The syndrome owes its existence to the common mode of production which has been characteristic of peasant life for thousands of years. The same holds true for a declining lower-middle class, whether it is that which brought Mr. Hitler to power, or the poor Whites in the South of the United States of America. The lack of any kind of beneficial cultural stimulation, the resentment against their situation, which is one of being left behind by the forward-moving currents of their society, the hate toward those who destroy the images which once gave them pride, have created a character syndrome which is made up of love and death (necrophilia), intense malignant fixation to blood and soil, and intense group narcissism (the latter expressed in intense nationalism and racism). #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The striking feature of a socialist economy is the fact that there is no private ownership in the fact that there is no private ownership in the means of production, and that all enterprises are administered by a state-appointed managerial bureaucracy. (There is, of course, private ownership of consumer goods, like houses, furniture, automobiles, and personal accumulation of saving such as bank accounts and government bonds, just as in the United States of America. The differences in this respect is only that one cannot own a factory or stock in a corporation, a difference, incidentally, which would be relevant only for a small part of the population of the United States of America.) The Soviet leaders and their peoples, assuming that Marxist socialism is characterized by the ownership and management of enterprises by the state, take this to mean that their system is socialism. Whether this claim is justified or nor will be discussed later, along with the fact that current developments in the Soviet system are in many respects more akin to the trends existing in the twenty-first century capitalism than they are to socialism. Over-all planning, introduced for the first time by Mr. Stalin’s Five-Year Plan in 1928, offers Soviet ideology an additional reason to speak of their system as socialism. The over-all plan (Gosplan) is centrally made in Moscow for the USSR after intensive deliberation over a great amount of data. The planning determines what is to be produced and at what rate, in contrast to the relatively free market in the Western countries. Until 1957 the Moscow ministries for various ranches of industry were the central authorities for the respective industries under their administration. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Mr. Khrushchev abolished this centralized system, which had existed for over twenty years, and inaugurated a process of decentralization by replacing the ministries by regional economic councils (sownarkhoz). In the United States of American 1 percent of all families own 4/5 of all Industrial stocks which can be owned by individuals. There are somewhat over one hundred such councils within the Soviet Union. They appoint the top personnel (or confirm their appointments) in the enterprises under them, determine the production program of “their” industries (although within the framework of the general plan), are active in determining prices and production methods, and the securing of scarce materials and conduct research on the quality of products et cetera. The control of the sownarkhoz over the many industries under its control is exercised through subdivisions, the “chief administrations,” which in turn control the individual enterprises, headed by their managers. Who are the administrators working in the regional councils, the chief administrations, and the individual enterprises? The majority have a college education (in fact, a greater percentage than in the United States of America), with the greater proportion of graduates in engineering and a small proportion in business administration. The vast majority of them are members of the Communist Party. (It is important for the America reader to remember that the Communist Party in Russia is, by intention, not a mass party, but represents the elite of those who want to get to the highest position and who are willing to exert the greatest efforts; actually, only about 4 percent of the total population are party members.) The director of a plant earns from five to ten times (including bonuses) what the worker earns, depending on the size and kind of factory. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If we compare the American situation, an American plant director would have to earn $232,115.88 a year to attain the same position in relation to the worker. A small scale study of American firms showed that in actual fact the top policy-making executive in firms of under 1,000 employees earned an annual average of $305,933.38 in salary and bonus. These figures are difficult to compare since on the one hand prices for consumer goods are relatively much higher in the Soviet Union than in the United States of America, while on the other hand rents are much lower in the Soviet Union and fringe benefits are higher than in the United States of America. Thus, the income differential between managers and workers is not too different in the Soviet Union from what it is in the United States of America. What is particularly important is the role of bonuses which reach 50 to 100 percent of the manager’s salary and which constitutes the most important incentive for optimal production. (Often this system emphasizes quantity rather than quality—hence leading to the production of inferior consumer goods.) Thus, the managers represent a social group that in income, consumption, and authority, is as different from the workers as in any capitalist country of the West. In fact, judging from many reports, rigidities in class stratification, status-differential, et cetera, are greater than in the United States of America. Something we value in the United States of America is legal property rights. Legal property rights are not absolute. They are to some extent subject to private modification by mutual consent for mutual benefit. More generally, security of property rights depends on: government protection, private protection, and other people’s attempts to capture some of the rights. All these are costly in different ways; therefore rights are generally not complete. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
When transacting is costly, all contract forms are costly, so choice of governance form is at best a constrained optimum. Most assets and commodities have multiple dimensions. It may be optimal to divide the property rights to different attributes of a commodity between different owners. Different dimensions of assets and contracts interact: they may be mutually substitutes or complements. This can be utilized to achieve better outcomes for seemingly incomplete contracts. For example, in a short-term rental contract, the landlord is usually responsible for maintenance and improvement, whereas in the long-term contract, the tenant is. This goes with their natural incentives; therefore it can even be left unspecified. When the rights and responsibilities governing real aspects of behaviour have been efficiently specified, the financial aspects of the contract can adjust to satisfy the participation constraints and division of surplus. Even a given attribute may have shared ownership, of if ownership is not specified or enforced because of incompleteness, it may be placed in the public domain. Actions of individuals in shared ownership can be constrained for their mutual benefit. Income from an asset or attribute may be affected by the actions of others; transaction costs may preclude attainment of the optimum indicated by the Coase Theorem. As transaction technology (information, enforcement, et cetera) changes, the nature and governance mode of property rights also evolves. Disputes arise when some previously unexercised rights become worth exercising, so an owner who had preciously left them in the public domain now wants to reclaim them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Leicap (1989) studies how property rights come to be delineated and enforced in the first place. His general idea is that property rights are needed t reduce or eliminate efficiency losses due to common pool problems. However, the process is political, with distributional conflicts. Bargaining may not lead to an efficient outcome, or may do so only with long delay. The analytical framework argues that efficient adaptation of rights to new circumstances is more difficult if: aggregate gains are small; the number of participants is large; interests are heterogeneous; the sizes of participants’ gains or losses are private information; the efficient regime will involve greater concentration of wealth, so there will be more losers. The outcome of the political conflict between the winners and losers may be determined by who is better able to organize for political action; this is usually the smaller group with more concentrated benefits or costs. When participation in the conduct of programs lags, these programs cease to represent planning, and become something else, for which epithets abound, if analytic concepts do not. Planning, by definition, stands for the guidance of present action by prospective and retrospective reference. It does not stand for mere maintenance of present routine, however well devised, or it does so only to the extent that this may be useful within the context of a more enveloping goal. The vital element, or condition, in maintaining participation by clientele and personal in the programs of agencies is the constant emergence of new goals. Only thus can the sense of creation, of values in process of realization, be maintained. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In part, this is a task of leadership, by leaders who do not sink into mere office-holding, but continually find new and inspiring areas for effort. Viewed thus, leadership may spring from any member of a group; if anything, the reverse may be true. It is the realization of such a relationship which provides the political solution to the problem of maintaining both citizen participation in government and clientele participation in social agencies. One way of maintaining public interests is through competition for office, success in which occurs through appeals to the diverse interests and shifting ideas among the public. The dynamic effect of aspiring leaders setting forth rival promises regarding the future, as a mans of securing office, is to generate new wants, new hopes and aspirations, new goals for concerted effort. It happens, however, that even competition for office may be an insufficient source of renewal of group purpose. The insecurities of office-holding may be so intense that, by various schemes of co-optation, monopoly, quietism, or even more drastic devices, office-holders succeed in cementing themselves into place. Or it may be that imagination lag, and rivals come to be so little different that they make no difference. Or, on the other hand, the strife of competition for office may become so intense that its contribution to unified community action is nullified and reversed. Without depreciating the stimulus of competitive politics, of the part they play as a guarantee against worse events, as incentive to progress they must be assessed as sporadic, inconsistent, and unpredictable. Happily, it is quite possible for new goals to form rationally, continually, and effectively without continual changes of personnel. This can come about through the vigorous and careful implementation of the fifth phase of the planning process, the making of the periodic appraisals of progress. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Walking “after the spirit” and “minding the spirit”—these expressions do not merely mean mind and body are subservient to the spirit, but they denote the humans’ own spirit co-working with the Holy Spirit in one’s daily life, and in all the occasions of life. To do this, the believer needs to know the laws of the spirit—not only the conditions necessary for the Holy Spirit’s working but the laws also governing one’s own spirit, so that it may be kept open to the Spirit of God. When the Holy Spirit takes the spirit of human beings as His sanctuary, psychopathological offenders attack the spirit to get it our of their object being to close the outlet of the Spirit of God dwelling at the center. And yet, when the human is “spiritual” and the mind and body is subservient to the spirit, the spiritual forces of the ultimate negative can come into DIRECT CONTACT with the spirit—and then follows the “wrestling” referred to by Paul (Eph. 6.12). If the human is ignorant of the laws of the spirit, especially the tactics of the ultimate negative, one is liable to yield to an onslaught of deceiving spirits by which they forced one’s spirit into strained ecstasy, or elation, or elation, or else press it down, as it were into a vice. In the former case one has given “visions” and revelations which appear to be divine, but afterwards are proved to have been of the enemy, by their passing away with no results; in the latter, the mortal sinks into darkness and deadness as if one had lost all knowledge of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The relationship between the churches and society are within the context of the functions of the churches. Certain functions flow from their very nature. However, a function of the church is not the same as that of an institution. To further highlight this illustration, mediation is a constitutive function of the church, and it frequently is served by the institution of the priesthood. However, mediation may take place without the priesthood, for an institution is only an organizational mechanism for the function. Institutions may come and go, but the function always remains. The function of a church is constitution. By its constitutive function a church receives and mediates the New Being. Expansion is the church function that is behind missionary activity, education, and evangelization of fallen-away members. The constructive function of the churches includes both Theoria (the aesthetic and cognitive functions) and praxis (the personal and communal functions). The aesthetic function struggles to express the meaning of the church through medium of religious art—pictorial, musical, and visual. Theology is the cognitive function which interprets religious symbols and relates them to the categories or rational knowledge. The personal function of the church is the development of saintliness in its members, while the communal function promotes the Holy Community in which justice and holiness flourish together. The problem in all these functions of the church is how to preserve their autonomy of form within the body of the church. Must aesthetic expressiveness, cognitive truth, personal humanity, and communal justice be twisted out of shape in order to fit within the cadre of the church? #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I feel it is possible to maintain autonomy of form in these functions by the Spiritual Presence; in other words, though theonomy. We come now to the relating function, the function that governs the mutual interaction between the churches and other groups in society. The relating function operates in a threefold way: the way of the silent interpenetration, the way of critical judgment, and the way of political establishment. By silent interpretation the churches radiate the Spirital Presence into the social units which they are contiguous. One could call it the pouring of priestly substance into the social structure of which the churches are a part. The rapid spread of secularism obscures this influence, but if the churches disappeared overnight, society would be impoverished. Interpenetration also means that the current of influence flows from society toward the churches via the cultural forms develop in society. The most obvious of these influences is felt in the continuous transformation of the ways of understanding and expressing experiences in a living culture. To put it another way, the churches’ creative function of Theoria and praxis draws upon society for the forms in which its substance is preserved and conveyed. You shall deal your bread to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out to your house. When you see the naked, cover him or her, and hide not yourself from your own flesh. Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your healing shall spring forth speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of God shall be your protection. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. And please open your hearts and be kind enough to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart for they are not receiving all of their vital resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 