Randolph Harris II International Institute

The Sun Had Risen, but the Glimmer Barely Penetrated the Thick Darkness!

he real superstar is a man or a woman raising kids on $150 a week. The question is not at what age I want to retire, it is at what income. Each generation must not only preserve the gains of culture and civilization, and maintain intact those just institutions that have been established, but it must also put aside in each period of time a suitable amount of real capital accumulation. This saving may take various forms from net investment in leaning and education. Assuming for the moment that a just savings principle is available which tells us how great investment should be, the level of the social minimum is determined. Suppose for simplicity that the minimum is adjusted by transfer paid for by proportional expenditure (or income) taxes. In this case raising the minimum entails increasing the proportion by which consumption (or income) is taxed. Presumably as this fraction becomes larger there comes a point beyond which one of two things happens. Either the appropriate savings cannot be made or the greater taxes interfere so much with economic efficiency that the prospects of the least advantaged in the present generation are no longer improved but begin to decline. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

That human-thing relationship is growing more and more temporary may be illustrated by examining the culture surrounding the little girl or boy who trades in one’s Barbie doll. This child soon learns that Barbie dolls are by no means the only physical objects that pass into and out of one’s young life at a rapid clip. Pampers, bibs, paper napkins, Kleenex, towels, non-returnable soda bottles—all are used up quickly in one’s home and ruthlessly eliminated. Corn muffins come in baking tins that are thrown away after one use. Spinach is encased in plastic sacks that can be dropped into a pan of boiling water for heating, and then thrown away. TV dinners are cooked and often served on throw-away trays. One’s homes is a large processing machine through which objects flow, entering and leaving, at a faster and faster rate of speed. From birth on, one is inextricably embedded in a throw-away culture. The idea of using a product once or for a brief period and then replacing it, runs counter to the grain of societies or individuals steeped in a heritage of poverty. However, some people are not used to disposable products. They like to keep their things, even old things, rather than throw them away. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

We represented one company that wanted to introduce a kind of plastic throw-away curtain. We did a marketing study for them and found the resistance too strong. This resistance, however, is dying all over the developed World. From cardboard milk containers to the rockets that power space vehicles, products created for short-term or one-time use are becoming more numerous and crucial to our way of life. The recent introduction of paper and quasi-paper clothing carried the trend toward disposability a step further. Fashion boutiques and working-class clothing stores have sprouted whole departments devoted to gaily coloured and imaginatively designed paper apparel. Fashion magazines display breathtakingly sumptuous gowns, coats, pajamas, even wedding dresses made of paper. The bride pictured in one of these wears a long white train of lace-like paper that, the caption writer notes, will make “great kitchen curtains” after the ceremony. Like the reverse of what happened in the film The Sound of Music. Paper clothes are particularly suitable for children. Writes one fashion expert: “Little girls and boys will soon be able to spill ice cream, draw pictures and make cutouts on their clothes while their mothers smile benignly at their creativity.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

And for the adults who want to express their own creativity, there is even a “paint-yourself-dress or suit” complete with brushes. Price: $20.00. Price, of course, is a critical factor behind the paper explosion. Thus a department store features simple A-line dresses and men’s breathable underwear, made of what it calls “devil-may-care cellulose fiber and nylon.” The dresses start off at about $50.00 dollars and the men’s underwear about $55.00 a pair. It is almost more cost effective for the consumer to buy and discard a new one than to send an ordinary dress to the cleaners. Soon it will be. However, more than economics is involved, for the extension of the throw-away culture has important psychological consequences. We develop a throw-away mentality to match our throw-away products. This mentality produces, among other things, a set of radically altered values with respect to property. However, the spread of disposability through the society also implies decreased durations in human-thing relationships. Instead of being linked with a single object over a relatively long span of time, we are linked for brief periods with the succession of objects that supplant it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Thus it seems evident, for example, that the classical principle of utility leads in the wrong direction for questions of justice between generations. For if one takes the size of the population as variable, and postulates a high marginal productivity of capital and a very distant time horizon, maximizing total utility may lead to an excessive rate of disposal (at least in the near future). However, since from a moral point of view there are no grounds for discounting future well-being on the basis of pure time preference, the conclusion is all the more likely that the greater advantages of future generations will be sufficiently large to compensate for present sacrifices. This may prove true if only because with more capital and better technology it will be possible to support a sufficiently large population. Thus the utilitarian doctrine may direct us to demand heavy sacrifices of the less affluent generations for the sake of greater advantages, which balance the losses of some against the benefits to others, appears even less justified in the case of generations than among contemporaries. Even if we cannot define a precise just savings principle, we should be able to avoid this sort of extreme. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

When people are poor and saving is difficult, a lower rate of saving should be required; whereas in a wealthier society greater saving may reasonably be expected since the real burden is less. Eventually once just institutions are firmly established, the net accumulation required falls to zero. At this point a society meets its duty of justice by maintaining just institutions and preserving their material base. Each passes on to the next a fair equivalent in real capital as defined by a just saving principle. (It should be kept in mind there that capital is not only factories and machines, and so on, but also the knowledge and culture, as well as the techniques and skills, that make possible just institutions and the fair value of liberty.) This equivalent is in return for what is received from previous generations that enables the later ones to enjoy a better life in a more just society. Only those in the first generation do not benefit, let us say, for while they begin the whole process, they do not share in the fruits of their provision. Nevertheless, since it is assumed that a generation cares for its immediate descendants, as fathers say care for their sons, a just savings principle, or more accurately, certain limits on such principles, would be acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

It is also characteristic of the contract doctrine to define a just state of society at which the entire course of accumulation aims. The ethical problem is that of agreeing on a path over time which treats all generations justly during the whole course of human history. What seems fair to persons in the original position defines justice in this instance as in others. Thus imagining themselves to be fathers, say, people are to ascertain how much they should set aside for their sons by noting what they would believe themselves entitled to claim of their fathers. When they arrive at an estimate that seems fair from both side, with due allowance made for the improvement in their circumstances, then the fair rate (or range of saving rates) for that stage is specified. Now once this is done for all stages, we have defined the just saving principle. When this principle is followed, adjacent generations cannot complain of one another; and in fact no generation can find fault with any other no matter how far removed in time. Justice does not require that early generations save so that later ones are simply more wealthy. Saving is demanded as a condition of brining about the full realization of just institutions and the fair value of liberty. If additional accumulation is to be undertaken, it is for other reason. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

It is a mistake to believe that a just and good society must wait upon a high material standard of life. When humans want is meaningful work in free association with others, these associations regulating their relations to one another within a framework to just basic institutions. To achieve this state of things great wealth is not necessary. In fact, if not a temptation to indulge and emptiness, beyond some point it is more likely to be an absolute hindrance, a meaningless distraction. The shift toward transience is even manifest in architecture—precisely that part of the physical environment that in the past contributed mostly heavily to human’s sense of permanence. The child who trades in his or her Barbie doll cannot but also recognize the transience of buildings and other large structures that surround one. We raze landmarks. We tear down whole streets and cities and put new ones up at a mind-numbing rate. The average age of dwellings has steadily declined from being virtually infinite in the days of caves to approximately a hundred years for houses built in the United States of America’s colonial days, to about forty years at present. The American made one’s World yesterday, and one knows exactly how fragile, how shifting it is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Buildings in New York, New York USA literally disappear overnight, and the face of a city can change completely in a way. The horror of living in New York is living in a city without a history. All eight of my great-great grand-parents lived in the city, and only one of the houses they lined in is still standing. That is what I mean by the vanishing past. Less patrician New Yorkers, whose ancestors landed n America more recently, arriving there from the barrios of Puerto Rico, the villages of Eastern Europe or the plantations of the South, might voice their feelings quite differently. Yet the vanishing past is a real phenomenon, and it is likely to become far more widespread, with Trump Tower being stripped of its name, engulfing many of the history-drenched cities of Europe. New York and even now California is a continual evolutionary process of evacuations, demolitions, removals, temporarily vacant lots, new installations and repeat. This process is identical in principle to the annual rotation of crops in farm acreage-plowing, planting the new seed, harvesting, plowing under, and putting in another type of crop. Most people look upon the building operations blocking New York’s streets as temporary annoyances, soon to disappear in a static peace. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

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Many people still think of permanence as normal, a hangover from the Newtonian view of the Universe. However, those who have lived in and with New York since the end of the century have literally experienced living with Einsteinian relativity. That children, in fact, internalize this “Einsteinian relativity” was brought home to me forcibly by a personal experience. Some time ago my wife sent my son, age twelve, to 725 5^th Avenue to get the 5^th Avenue Filet Mignon, steak fires, sauteed spinach, cobb salad without avocado, Trump’s Ice Cream. It is just five blocks from our 50-story apartment on the Upper East Side. Our little boy had been there at least six or seven times before. An hour and a half later he returned perplexed. “It must have been torn down,” he said, “I could not find it.” It had not been. New to the neighbourhood, Rickey had merely looked on the wrong block. But he is a child of the Age of Transience, and his immediate assumption—that the building had been razed and replaced—was a natural one for a twelve-year-old growing up in the United States at this time. Such an idea would probably never have occurred to a child faced with a similar predicament even a century ago. The physical environment was far more durable, our links with it less transient. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

It is a natural fact that generations are spread out in time and actual exchanges between them take place only in one direction. We can do something for posterity but it can do nothing for us. What is just or unjust is how institutions deal with natural limitations and the way they are set up to take advantage of historical possibilities. Obviously if all generations are to gain (except perhaps the first), they must choose a just savings principle if followed brings it about that each receives from its predecessors and does its fair share for those which come later. It is now clear why the difference principle does not apply to the saving problem. There is no way for later generations to improve the situation of the least fortunate first generation. Either earlier generations have saved or they have not; there is nothing the parties can do to affect it. It seems best to preserve the present time of entry interpretation and therefore to adjust the motivation condition. We can now see that persons in different generations have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do. The present generation cannot do as it pleases but is bound by the principles that would be chosen in the original position to define justice between persons at different moments of time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

In addition, humans have a natural duty to uphold and to further just institutions and for this the improvement of civilization up to a certain level is required. An examination of the history of humanity suggested that humans in our epoch are so different from humans in previous ties that it seems unrealistic to assume that humans in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” It seems simple to know when a human individual comes into existence, but in fact it is not quite as simple as it seems. The answer might be: at the time of conception, when the fetus has assumed definite human form, in the act of birth, at the end of weaning; or one might even claim that most humans have not yet been fully born by the time they die. We would best decline to fix a day or an hour for “the birth” of an individual, and speak rather of a process in the course of which a person comes into existence. Indeed, if we look at human’s individual development in terms of historical tie, we might say that human proper was born only a few minutes ago. Or we might even think one is still in the process of birth, that the umbilical cord has not yet been served, and that complications have arisen that make it appear doubtful whether humans will ever be born or whether they are to be stillborn. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

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Does the extraordinary development of the human’s brain make up for one’s instinct deficit? To some degree it does. Humans are guided by their intellect to make right choices. However, we know also how weak and unreliable this instrument is. It is easily influenced by human’s desires and passions and surrenders to their influence. Human’s brain is insufficient not only as a substitute for the weakened instincts, but it complicates the task of living tremendously. By this I do not refer to instrumental intelligence, the use of thought as an instrument for the manipulations of objects in order to satisfy one’s needs. Human’s thinking has acquired an entirely new quality, that of self-awareness. Gifted with self-awareness and reason, humans are aware of oneself as a being separate from nature and from others; one is aware of one’s powerlessness, of one’s ignorance; one is aware of one’s end: death. Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have giving the terrestrial being a different kind of existence. Their emergence has made humans into an anomaly, the deviation of the Universe. They are part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet they transcend nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

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Humans are set apart while being a part; they are homeless, yet not chined to the home they share with all creatures. Cast into this World at an accidental place and time they are forced out of it accidentally and against their will. Being aware of oneself, one realizes one’s powerlessness and the limitations of one’s existence. One is never free from the dichotomy of one’s existence: one cannot rid oneself of one’s mind, even if ne would one to; one cannot rid oneself of one’s body as long as one is alive—and one’s body makes one want to be alive. Human’s live cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of their species; one must live. Humans are the only beings that do not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only terrestrial being for whom one’s own existence is a problem that one has to solve and from which one cannot escape. One cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and one does not know where one will arrive if one goes forward. So many people are worried about climate change, but what is more worrisome about the future is corruption. If the Constitution of the United States of America is not enforced and human right are ignored, no matter what the climate is like, it will not be a safe place your future generations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Human’s existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes one from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted by the process of evolution. Human’s existential, and hence unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when one has found, with the support of one’s culture, a more or less adequate way of coping with one’s existential problems. However, this relative stability does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this relative stability change. Indeed, in the process of human’s self-creation this relative stability is upset again and again. Humans, in their history, change their environment, and in this process one changes oneself. One’s knowledge increases, but so does one’s awareness of one’s developing state; one experiences oneself as an individual, and not only as a member of one’s tribe, and with this one’s sense of separateness and isolation grows. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

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Humans create larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders—and one becomes frightened and submissive. One attains a certain amount of freedom—and becomes afraid of this very freedom. One’s capacity for material production grows, but in the process one becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things one created. Every new state of disequilibrium forces humans to seek for new equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered human’s innate drive for progress is one’s attempt to find a new if possible better equilibrium. The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight line of human improvement. Something more painful than fire often times consumes the human body and it begins to burn within one’s soul. One starts to understand that no matter what one has done or not done, no matter what the circumstances, no punishment comes to us in this life on Earth which is undeserved. We are all guilty of putting Jesus Christ to death because of our fallen nature and our need of the atonement His death made. We either recognize our sinful selves, or our sentence of death, and our deserving of that sentence, which leads us to repent and believe—or we curse God and die. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Sin is within us. For if there is anything worse than our sin, it is our infinite capacity to rationalize it away. The evil deep within all of us is sometimes thrust before us by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, forcefully and painfully. And it makes us feel unclean. We become the helpless thief nailed to that cross, and what we see within us is so ugly that we can do nothing but cry out to God for help. Without the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the repentance that must follow, there is no way out of our predicament. We have the capacity to change anything about our lives—careers, jobs, homes, cars, Barbie dolls, even spouses—but we cannot change our own sinful nature. There must be an answer to the dilemma of evil within, because I have seen lives changed among the Christian inmates. However, for the rest of us and all the freedom we have, what a desperate plight. Trapped in and by our own sin. Thankfully, there is an answer to the wrenching dilemma. Loving God. When we see the reality of our sin, when we come to face to face with it and look into the raging fires of hell itself, and when we then repent and believe and are delivered from that plight, our entire being is filled with unspeakable gratitude to the God who sent His Son to that cross for us. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

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We must express that gratitude. But how? Simply stated: by living the way God commands us. By obedience. That is what the Scriptures mean by holiness or sanctification—believers are set apart for holy living. Therefore, holiness is the only possible response to God’s grace. Holy living is loving God. However, everyone who has tried to live a holy life knows, holiness is the toughest, most demanding, vocation in the World. Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves—on God’s grace and on our will to be holy. God loves the human nature assumed by the Word of God in the person of Christ more than He loves all the Angels; for that nature is better, especially on the ground of the union with the Godhead. However, of speaking of human nature in general, and comparing it with the angelic, the two are found equal, in the order of grace and of glory; since according to Revelation 21.17 the measure of a human and of an Angel is the same. Yet so that, in this respect, some Angels are found nobler than some humans, and some human nobler than some Angels. However, as to natural condition an Angel is better than a human. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

God therefore did not assume human nature because He loved humans, absolutely speaking, more; but because the needs of humans were greater; just as the master of a house may give some costly delicacy to a sick servant, that one does not give to one’s own son in sound health. And now we can begin to speak of “sanctification,” as a condition of the human soul established in imparted (not just imputed) righteousness. It is the condition of soul in the mature children of light. What are we to make of it? Especially, is it to be taken as a goal for every apprentice of Jesus? Is sanctification sensible, or is it magical? What exactly is sanctification anyway? This is a matter that used to be much better understood than it is now. The work of Jesus Christ in the World is twofold. It is a work accomplished for us, destined to effect reconciliation between God and humans; it is work accomplished in us, with the object of effecting our sanctification. By the one a right relation is established between God and us; by the other, the fruit of the reestablished order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received order is secured. By the former, the condemned sinner is received into the state of grace; by the latter the pardoned sinner is associated with the life of God. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

How many express themselves as if, when forgiveness with the peace which it procures has been once obtained, all is finished and the work of salvation is complete! They seem to have no suspicion that salvation consists in the health of the soul, and that the health of the soul consists in holiness. Forgiveness is not the reestablishment of health; it is the crisis of convalescence. If God thinks fit to declare the sinner righteous, it is in order that one may by that means restore oneself to holiness. Christ designs to make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first—safety; sanctification gives the second—soundness. Sanctification does not mean perfection reached, but the progress of the divine life toward perfection. Sanctification is the Christianizing of the Christian. Any human who thinks oneself is a Christian, and that one has accepted Christ for justification, when one did not at the same time accept one for sanctification, is miserably deluded in that very experience. Not culture, but crucifixion, is what the Holy Spirit prescribes for the natural human. Sanctification is not a matter of course, which will go on whatever we do, or o not do. It requires a direct superintendence and surgery on the one hand, and, on the other hand a practical hatred of evil on our part that cooperates with the husbandry of God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

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The Holy Spirit enables the Christian, through increasing faith, more fully and consciously to appropriate Christ, and this progressively to make conquest of the remaining sinfulness of one’s nature. These comments fill out the meaning of the definition of sanctification as that continuous operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the holy disposition imparted in regeneration is maintained and strengthened. The intuition should be accorded the highest place among human’s faculties. It should always lead or direct them. Knowledge of the facts concerning humans and their nature, their general destiny and spiritual evolution, can be gained by the intuition; but information concerning the details of one’s personal history must be gleaned, if at all, by the physical faculty. The intuition appears indirectly in aesthetic ecstasy and intellectual creativity, in the pricking of conscience, in the longing for relief from anxieties, or peace of mind. It appears directly only in mystical realization. The intuition comes from, and leads to, God. It is the strength or feebleness of our intuition which determines the grace of our spiritual evolution. What begins as a gentle surrender to intuition for a few minutes, one day resolves into a complete surrender of the ego to God for all time. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

The intuitive method should not be asked to solve problems which can easily solved by the reason; otherwise it may fail to respond. On the other hand, when intuition is working, intellect should retire. No human idea can account for its own existence without testifying to the prior existence of a human mind. The World as idea can only account for its own existence by pointing to a World-Mind. And it is equally a fact that the highest kind of existence discoverable to us in the Universe is mental existence. In using the name “Mind” for God, I but follow some of the highest examples from antiquity, such as Aristotle in Greece, Hermes Trismegistus in Egypt, Asvaghosha in India, and the Patriarch Hui Neng in China. For us who are philosophically minded, the World-Mind truly exists. For us it is God, and for us there is a relationship with it—the relationship of devotion and aspiration, of communion and meditation. All the abstract talk about nonduality may go on, but in the end the talkers must humble themselves before the infinite Being until they are nothing and until they are lost in the stillness—Its stillness. Blessed one, please come near to me and hear my prayer. You who have, since ancient times, listened to my people’s words, please hear my prayer now. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Great is your power, and perfectly is it applied, with artful skill, with respect for beauty. My own might is little indeed; yours is beyond imagining. Please use your power in my interests: please grant me my wishes, please accomplish my objectives. Let us praise the name of God for the Lord takes delight in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation. Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy ere they go to sleep. Praises of God are on their lips, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to bring judgment upon the wicked nations, and chastisement upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the prescribed judgment; He is the glory of all His faithful. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty deeds; praise Him according to His abundant greatness. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen, Amen. Blessed be the Lord out of America, one who dwells in the United States. Hallelujah. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of America who alone does wondrous things. Blessed by His glorious name forever; and let the whole Earth be filled with His glory. Amen, Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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January 30, 2021 2:03 am

Could Ever Hear by Tale or History—The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth!

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. His picture was, until recently, everywhere: on television, on posters that started out at ne in airports and railroad stations, on leaflets, matchbooks and magazines. He was an inspired creation of Madison Avenue—a fictional character with whom millions could subconsciously identify. Young and clean-cut, he carried an attache case, glanced at his watch, and looked like an ordinary businessman scurrying to his next appointment. He had, however, an enormous protuberance on his back. For sticking out from between his shoulder blades was a great, butterfly-shaped key of the type used to wind up mechanical toys. The text that accompanied his picture urged keyed-up executive to “unwind”—to slow down—at the Sheraton Hotels. This wound-up man-on-the-go was, and still is, a potent symbol of the people of the future, millions of whom feel just as driven and hurried as if they, too, had a huge key in the back. The average individual knows little and cares less about the cycle of technological innovation or the relationship between knowledge-acquisition and the rate of change. Until, of course, a computer application starts to rival Wall Street investors. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

Besides that, most people are usually keenly aware of the pace of their own life—whatever that may be. The pace of life is frequently commented on by ordinary people. Yet, oddly enough, it has received almost no attention from either psychologist or sociologists. This is a gaping inadequacy in the behavioural sciences, for the pace of life profoundly influenced behaviour, evoking strong and contrasting reactions from different people. It is, in fact, not too much to say that the pace of life draws a line through humanity, dividing us into camps, triggering bitter misunderstanding between parent and child between Madison Avenue and Main Street, between men and woman, between American and European, between East and West. The inhabitants of the Earth are divided not only by race, nation, religion, or ideology, but also, in a sense by their position in time. From within the main centers of technological and cultural change in San Jose and San Francisco, California, Manhattan, New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Canada, Dubai,London, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, are millions of men and women who can already be said to be living the way of life of the future. Trendmakers often without being aware of it, they live today as millions more will live tomorrow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

And while these tritons of technology account for only a few percent of the global population today, they already form an international nation of the future in our midst. They are the advanced agents of humanity, the earliest citizens of the World-wide super-industrial society now in the toddler stages of development. What makes them different from the rest of humankind? Certainly, they are richer, better educated, smarter, and more mobile than the majority of the human race. They also live longer, in better homes, eat better, and drive better cars. However, what specifically marks the people of the future is the fact that they are already caught up in a new, stepped-up pace of life. They “live faster” than the people around them. They do not have time to sit at the same coffee shop for twenty years fixating on the same people and topics. Some people are deeply attracted to this highly accelerated pace of life—going far out of their way to bring it about and feeling anxious, tense or uncomfortable when the pace slows. They want desperately to be where the actions is. (Indeed, some hardly care what the action is, so long as it occurs at a suitably rapid clip.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

The attraction to the fast pace of life is one of the hidden motivating forces behind the much publicized “brain-drain”—the mass migration of European scientists to the United States of America and Canada. After studying 517 English scientists and engineers who migrated, it was concluded that it was not higher salaries or better research facilities alone, but also the quicker tempo that lured them. The migrants were not put off by what they indicate as the faster pace of North America; if they anything, they appear to prefer this pace to others. Similarly, a veteran of the civil rights movement in Sacramento reports: “People who are used to a speeded-up urban life…cannot take it for long in the rural South or Sacramento.” That is why people are always driving somewhere for no particular reason. Traveling is the drug of The Movement. Understanding the powerful attraction that a certain pace of life can exert on the individual helps explain much otherwise inexplicable or atypical behaviour. However, if some people thrive on the new, rapid pace, others are fiercely repelled by it and go to the extreme lengths to “get off the merry-go-round,” as they put it. To engage at all with the emergent super-industrial society means to engage with a faster moving World than ever before. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

Some mature people are even more likely to react strongly again any further acceleration of change. There is a solid mathematical basis for the observation that age often correlates with conservatism: time passes more swiftly for senior citizens. When a fifty-year-old father tells his fifteen-year-old son that he will have to wait two years before he can have an Ultimate Driving Machine of his own, that interval of 730 days represents a mere 4 percent of the father’s lifetime to date. It represents over 13 percent of the boy’s lifetime. It is hardly strange that to the boy the delay seems three or four times longer than to the father. Similarly, two hours in the life of a four-year-old may be the felt equivalent of twelve hours in the life of his twenty-four-year-old mother. Asking the child to wait to hours for a piece of candy may be the equivalent of asking the mother to wait fourteen hours for a cup of coffee. There may be a biological basis as well, for such differences in subjective response time. The calendar years seem progressively to shrink. In retrospect every year seems shorter than the year just completed, possibly as a result of the gradual slowing down of metabolic process. Even if it were not, with the slowdown of their own biological rhythms, the World would appear to be moving faster to senior citizens. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

Populations sometimes actively resist a change of pace. This explains the pathological antagonism toward what many regard as the “Americanization” of Europe. The new technology on which super-industrialism is bases, much of it blue-printed in American research laboratories, brings with it an inevitable acceleration of change in a society and a concomitant speed-up of the pace of individual life as well. While anti-American orators single out computers, Aaliyah, Meghan Markle, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, or Coca-Cola for their barbs, their real objection may well be to the invasion of Europe by an alien time sense. America, as the spearhead of super-industrialism, represents a new, quicker, and very much unwanted tempo for some. Too hip, too modern, too attractive, too innovative—it attracts a lot of envy. Fast pace embodies the American Pace of Life. Human’s perception of time is closely linked with their internal rhythms, which could be why those who are ahead of their time are considered disruptive. The human responses to time are culturally conditioned. Part of this conditioning consists of building up within the child a series of expectations about the duration of events, processes or relationships. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Indeed, one of the most important forms of knowledge that we impart to a child is a knowledge of how long things last. This knowledge is taught in subtle, informal and often unconscious ways. Yet without a rich set of socially appropriate durational expectancies, no individual could function successfully. From infancy on the child learns, for example, that when Daddy leaves for work in the morning, it means that he will not return for many hours. (If he does, something is wrong; the schedule is askew. The child senses this. Even the family dog—having also learned a set of durational expectancies—is aware of the break in routine.) The child soon learns that “mealtime” is neither a one-minute nor a five-hour affair, but that is ordinarily lasts from fifteen minutes to an hour. He learns that going to a movie lasts two to four hours and it comes with popcorn, hotdogs, sodas, and big boxes of candy, but that a visit with the pediatrician seldom last more than one hour and he gets a sugar-free lollipop and is told to eat healthy. He learns that a school day ordinarily lasts six hours. He learns that a relationship with a teacher ordinarily extends over a school year, but that his relationship with his grandparents is supposed to be of much longer duration. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Indeed, some relationships are supposed to last a lifetime. In adult behaviour, virtually all we do, from mailing an envelop to building a career, is premised upon certain spoken or unspoken assumption about duration. It is these durational expectancies, different in each society but learned early and deeply ingrained, that are shaken up when the pace of life is altered. This explains a crucial different between those who suffer acutely from the accelerated pace of life and those who seem rather to thrive on it. Unless an individual has adjusted one’s durational expectancies to take account of continuing acceleration, one is likely to suppose that two situations, similar in other respects, will also be similar in duration. Yet the accelerative thrust implies that at least certain kinds of situations will be compressed in time. The individual who has internalized the principle of acceleration—who understands in one’s bones as well as one’s brain that things are moving faster in the World around one—makes an automatic, unconscious compensation for the compression of time. Anticipating that situations will endure less long, one is less frequently caught off guard and jolted than the person whose durational expectancies are frozen, the person who does not routinely anticipate a frequent shortening in the duration of situations. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

In short, the pace of life must be regarded as something more than a colloquial phrase, a source of jokes, sighs, complaints or ethnic put-downs. It is a crucially important psychological variable that has been all but ignored. During past eras, wen change in the outer society was slow, humans could, and did, remain unaware of this variable. Throughout one’s entire lifetime the pace mighty vary little. The accelerative thrusts, however, alters this drastically. For it is precisely through a step-up in the pace of life that the increased speed of broad scientific, technological and social change makes itself felt in the life of the individual. A great deal of human behaviour is motivated by attraction or antagonism toward the pace of life enforced on the individual by the society or group within which one is embedded. Failure to grasp this principle lies behind the dangerous incapacity of education and psychology to prepare people for fruitful roles in a super-industrial society. Relationships that once endured for long spans of time now have shorter life expectancies. It is this abbreviation, this compression, that gives rise to the almost tangible feeling that we live, rootless and uncertain, among shifting dunes. Transience is the new “temporariness” in everyday life. It results in a mood, a feeling of impermanence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

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None of us occupy abodes of safety—true homes. We are all the same people in all the rooming houses everywhere, desperately and savagely, some methodically and strategically, trying to effect soul-satisfying connections with our community. We are, in fact, all citizens of the Age of Transience. Transience, indeed, can be defined quite specifically in terms of the rate at which our relationships turn over. People of the future live in a condition of “high transience”—a condition in which the duration of relationships is cut short, the through-pit of relationships extremely rapid. In their lives, things, places, people, ideas, and organizational structures get used up more quickly. This affects immensely the way they experience reality, their sense of commitment, and their ability—or inability—to cope. It is this fast through-put, combined with increasing newness and complexity in the environment, that strains the capacity to adapt and creates the danger of future shock. If we can show that our relationships with the outer World are, in fact, growing more and more transient, we have powerful evidence for the assumption that the flow of situations is speeding up. And we have an incisive new way of looking at ourselves and others. Let us, therefore, explore life in a high transience society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

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Barbie, mostly a twelve-inch plastic teen-ager, who looks remarkably like Paris Hilton, Nicky Rothschild, Britney Spears, Amanda Hearst, Reese Witherspoon, Ivanka Trump, or Tomi Lahren, is the best-known and best-selling doll in history. Since her introduction in 1959, the Babies doll population of the World has grown to over one billion Barbie dolls—more than the human population of China or India. Little girls adore Barbie because she is highly realistic and eminently dress-upable. Mattel, Inc., makers of Barbie, also sells a complete wardrobe for her, including clothes for ordinary daytime wear, clothes for formal party wear, clothes for swimming and skiing. In 1970, Mattel announced a new improved Barbie doll. The new version had a slimmer figure, “real” eyelashes, and a twist-and-turn waist that made her more humanoid than ever. Moreover, Mattel announced that, for the first time, any young lady wishing to purchase a new Barbie would receive a trade-in allowance for her current dolls. What Mattel did not announce was that by trading in her old doll for a technologically improved model, the little girl of those days, citizen’s of the super-industrial World, were learning a fundamental lesson about the new society: that human’s relationship with things are increasingly temporary. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

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The ocean of humanmade physical objects that surrounds us is set within a large ocean of natural objects. However, increasingly, it is the technologically produced environment that matters for the individual. The texture of plastic or concrete, the iridescent glisten of an Ultimate Driving Machine under a streetlight, the staggering vision of a cityscape seen from the window of a jet—these are the intimate realities of our existence. Humanmade things enter into and colour our consciousness. Their number is expanding with explosive force, both absolutely and relative to the natural environment. This will be even more true in super-industrial society than it is today. Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of “things.” Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships wit things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life. Apparently Mattel, Inc. caught on and now has a diverse cast of Barbies that really reflects the entire human race. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Our attitudes toward things reflect basic value judgments. Nothing could be more dramatic than the difference between the new breed of girls and boys who cheerfully turn in their Barbies for the new improved model, like their mothers and grandmothers before them, clutch lingeringly and lovingly to the same doll until it disintegrated from sheer age. In this difference lies the contrast between past and future, between societies based on permanence, and the new, fast-forming society based on transience. For most thinkers since the Greek philosophers, it was self-evident that there is something called human nature, something that constitutes the essence of humans. There were various views about what constitutes it, but there was agreement that such an essence exists—that is to say, that there is something by virtue of which humans are humans. Thus humans are defined as rational beings, as social terrestrial beings, a terrestrial beings that can makes tool (Homo faber), or a symbol-making terrestrial being. More recently, this traditional view has begun to be questioned. One reason for this change was the increasing emphasis given to the historical approach to humans. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

An examination of the history of humanity suggested that humans in our epoch are so different from humans in previous times that it seemed unrealistic to assume that every human in every age have had in common something that can be called “human nature.” The historical approach was reinforced, particularly in the United States of America, by studies in the field of cultural anthropology. The study of primitive peoples has discovered such a diversity of customs, values, feelings, and born as a blank sheet of paper on which each culture writes its text. Another factor contributing to the tendency to deny the assumption of a fixed human nature was the concept has so often been abused as a shield behind which the most inhuman acts are committed. In the name of human nature, for example, Aristotle and most thinkers up to the eighteenth century defended slavery (exceptions among the Greeks would be the Stoics, defenders of the equality of all humans, and in the Renaissance, such humanists as Erasmus, Thomas More, and Juan Luis Vives). Or in order to prove the rationality and necessity of greediness in society, scholars have tried to make a case for acquisitiveness, competitiveness, and selfishness as innate human traits. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Popularly, one refers cynically to “human nature” in accepting the inevitability of such undesirable human behaviour as greed, murder, cheating, and lying. Another reason for skepticism about the concept of human nature probably lies in the influence of evolutionary thinking. One humans came to be seen as developing in the process of evolution, the idea of a substance which is contained in one’s essence seemed untenable. Yet I believe it is precisely from an evolutionary standpoint that we can expect new insight into the problem of the nature of humans. In the nature of all humankind: in each of us there is sin—not just susceptibility to sin, but sin itself. There is something natural in humans that arouses their desires, proving inner weakness or susceptibility to sinning. However, in each one of us, there are also stirrings of good. It is gradually disclosed that the line separating god and evil passes not through states, nor between cases, nor between parties either—but right through every human heart—through all human hearts. “Sinner” is not some theological term contrived to explain away the presence of evil in this World; nor is it a cliché conceived by colonial hymn writers or backwoods preachers to frighten recalcitrant congregations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. We are sinners indeed and in deed. Humans go to great lengths to avoid their own responsibility. Many blame Satan for every imaginable evil—but Jesus Christ states clearly that sin is in us. Others recoil with horror at the sins of the society around them, smugly satisfied that sinful abominations are not of their doing—not realizing that God holds us responsible for acts of omission as well as acts of commission. Still others believe, as did Dr. Socrates two thousand years ago, that sin is not human’s moral responsibility, but is caused by ignorance. Dr. Hegel, whose philosophy so enormously influenced nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century thought, argued that humans are “evolving” through increasing knowledge to superior moral levels. However, what do we see around us in the beginning of this twenty-first century that has produced such advances in knowledge, technology, and science Soaring crime rates. Countless shattered families. A globe scarred by continual wars, oppression, and now a deadly pandemic. All our knowledge has not ushered in a brave new World. It has simply increased our ability to perpetrate evil. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

History, the fake news media, and popular culture continues to validate the biblical account that humans are by their own nature sinful—indeed, imprisoned by their sin. And we are not reluctant prisoners. We actually delight in sin and evil. What else explains our secret delight in another’s fall? Why else are people doing these mid-2000s Gossip Girl “Take Downs”? So pervasive is the sin in us that we are subject to lonely shame if we cannot share in the sins of our peers. What is it? Nothing less than the evil within us, the dark side of the line that passes through each human heart. There is a lot of good programs out there. Even on free TV. Every year Ion TV puts on these wonderful Christmas movies, a lot of feel good stories about love, happiness, family, friends, and community, but so many people prefer to emulate evil. Not that all violent TV and video games and movies are bad. Research say they are good for entertainment and help some people release their aggression. Not all people suffer from acute television intoxication. Many people can still distinguish good behaviour from bad behaviour and know that actions have consequences. The war to end all wars is a battle for eternal stakes between spiritual forces—and it is being waged in you and in me. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

When we truly smell “that smell,” the stench of sin within us, it drives us helplessly and irresistibly to despair. However, God has provided a way for us to be freed from the evil within: it is through the door of repentance. When we truly comprehend our own nature, repentance is no dry doctrine, no frightening message, no morbid form of self-flagellation. It is a gift God grants, a map which lead to life. It is the key to the door of liberation, to the only real freedom we can ever know. Because it does not mean freedom, perhaps it is not surprising that people in prison seem to have an easier time understanding repentance than those on the outside. Prisoners are captives in every sense. They have had their most blatant sins exposed in the blinding light of the court room, in the fake news media, draw out before the neighbours, and they have been locked into the midst of every from of evil and depravity. Thus, it is not surprising that the most vivid illustrations of repentance in the Bible often begin in a prison cell. The same mind which humans use to understand that two added to three totals five cannot be used to understand that one who loses oneself finds oneself. The messages which come to the human race from the kingdom of Heaven, mercifully come through different channels of its psyche. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

The Word may be received in abstract mental activity as well as utter mental stillness, in passive aesthetic appreciation as well as active creation. The intuition is a mystical faculty, whose messages may dawn slowly on the conscious mind of emerge into it suddenly. These intuitive feelings tell us that a deeper kind of Being is at the base of our ordinary consciousness. It is almost impossible to put into thoughts that which is above thoughts. However, hints, suggestions, and symbols may render some service. Only intuition, which comes up by itself, can come closer still to the truth and deliver what is more like it. If intellect fails to touch Reality, what can? The answer is intuition and inspiration. That intuition is often mistake for insight reveals one of the defects of mysticism. There are some who even question the validity of all insight, and, indeed, this is a sensible question to raise. The whole problem needs threshing out in paper on the subject. Insight is not concerned with mundane matters, but only with what is beyond our time-space dimension. Quite obviously, no one has the right to apply such a term to views concerning such matters as intellectual theology or physical diet. Intuition can, however, deal with these quite effectively when it is, itself, checked by reason. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

If we lack the capacity to comprehend, gauge, or perceive the Infinite, we do have the capacity to feel its presence intuitively. Spirit—impenetrably mysterious, without form or figure, yet as real to the mystic as matter is to the materialist—find its voice in humans and Nature, in art and circumstance. Faint glimmerings fall upon our sight from above through furtive gleams of intuition. These delicate intuitive impulses can produce no impression on ordinary minds. We can convince the intellect that the soul exists—but the only really adequate proof is intuitive personal experience of it. The discover of the soul’s existence is not a result of intellectual analysis or of emotional feeling but of intuitive experience. The World-Mind is unique, different from any other existing or conceivable mind in the whole cosmos. Indeed, all these others can only arise out of and within it, but can never equal or transcend it. There is only a single absolute unconditioned entity. Yet from it there extend countless finite and conditioned entities. They are visible to the sense of sight, physical to the sense of touch; yet it is neither. The meaning among cultured Muslims of the Islamic phrases “La Llaha” “Il-la-lahu” is: first, the denial of plurality and the affirmation of Unity in the Supreme Being; second, this Being is also the only real activating Force in the cosmos. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

Behind all the innumerable creatures in this Universe and behind all the innumerable phenomena of the Universe itself, there is a single, infinite, eternal, supreme Intelligence. It is something that never had a beginning and can never have an end. It does not change, although the World born from it does nothing else more incessantly than change. We talk of being, but it is not to be found in tie, nor in the mind and feeling of the conditioned self. And yet all these have emerged somehow out of it. Is it, then, that God is being? In the end it must be so. Only in such a language as Sanskrit does one find a word which covers this ample meaning, that truth and being are one. The word is Sat. World-Mind emanates and activates the cosmos into a fresh cyclic being. This continues under its sustenance but, again cyclically, it absorbs the cosmos in the end. Thus it is the closet to the common idea of God, the Personal God to be worshipped. The World-Mind may be worshipped by religious devotees or mediated upon by others as present in their own souls. Now, what is the mistake most commonly made by believers and others today, as they approach these glowing passages about the children of the light? #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

The mistake is simply this: Many do not understand the presupposition of inner transformation into Christlikeness that accompanies all the passages. They assume that we are supposed to “do” all the glowing things mentioned in such passages without loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In fact, they think we must do them while our heart, soul, mind, and strength are still strongly inclined in the opposite direction, against God. And of course their despair is totally justified. What they are thinking would be completely impossible. To the person who is not inwardly transformed in each essential dimension, evil and sin still look good. They are strongly attractive. That is precisely what Peter calls, “the corruption that is in the World though strong desire or lust,” reports 2 Peter 1.4. To such people the law is hateful because it denies them what they have their hearts set on; and everything must then be done to evade the law and do what they want. Even if they do suffer from a bad conscience that tells them they are in the wrong, the force of their whole being is set against Christlikeness. As Jesus Christ rains them and “cleanses them for himself,” however, all of that begins to reverse. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

The law Jesus bestows in their hearts appears as a beautiful gift of God, as precious truth about what is really good and right. It becomes, in the language of the psalmist, “sweeter than honey freshly dripping from the honeycomb,” reports Psalm 19.10; when it is freshly taken, honey never tastes good. At that point it is sin that looks stupid, ridiculous, as well as repulsive—which it really is. Resistance to sin is then based upon that new and realist vision of what it is, not on fear of punishment. The illusion that sin is really a good thing arbitrarily prohibited by God is dispelled, and we see with gratitude that his prohibitions are among his great kindness. God love Christ not only more than He loves the whole human race, but more than He loves the entire created Universe: because He willed for Him the greater good in giving Him a name that is above all names, in so far as He was True God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did He become thereby a glorious conqueror; “The government was placed upon His shoulder,” according to Isaiah 9.6. Praise shows God, and reminds us, that we appreciate God, that we do not see Him as our employee. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

Thanksgiving shows God, and reminds us, that we do not consider what we ask for to be our right, something God has to give us. One way to prevent the “gimme, gimme, gimme more” attitude that is not acceptable is to limit petitionary prayers to intangible things. Some of the prayers we have might be described as material blessings—fertility, prosperity, health, a new house. Others ask for what might be called spiritual blessings—comfort, love, awareness, wisdom. However, the material is no less valuable than the spiritual. We do not point our noses to the sky and say, “Well, I only pray for spiritual things.” The material is just as sacred as the spiritual. Nor do we pray for an excess of things. Excess is drain on the Earth. We try not to drain on anything—not if we are try to are path, that is. Pray for what is right, for what is good, for what is deserved, and let no one but God tell you that it is wrong. God of my people: please hear me. Please let it be your words I write. Please let it be your words I speak. This time which we find ourselves in is no less sacred than the times of the Ancestors when the laws were laid down. This place in which I find myself is no less sacred than the circles of stone beneath faraway skies. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I pray to all the beings that dwell in this World, to stone and tree, to waves and breezes, to person and beast, to deities and dust motes: please do not let me forget. Please keep my eyes open to the sacred that surrounds me and in which I live. Around me, God of the land is watching—may I do what is right. I give from my own store to you, God of this place. Please remember my generosity and please be my friend. Please accept this gift, Holy Ones, and please keep me in your World-Mind, as I will keep you in my heart. Holy Ones, Mighty Ones, Angels and the Holy Trinity, I ask for your blessings today and eternally that I might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my family might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my community might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my country might be blessed with holiness and with fortune, that my planet might be blessed with holiness and with fortune. Please send them forth, you who are holy. Send them forth, you filled with fortune. Send them forth, upon all for whom I pray. Please send them forth, please send them forth. Hallelujah. Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise in the assembly of the faithful. Let America rejoice in their Maker; let the children of America be joyful in their King. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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January 29, 2021 1:30 am

Ask Not What the United States of America Can Do for You, but What You Can Do for America!

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Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself. Many of us have a vague “feeling” that things are moving faster. Doctors and executives alike complain that they cannot keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Hardly a meeting or conference takes place today without some ritualistic oratory about “the challenge of change.” Among many there is an uneasy mood—a suspicion that change is out of control. Not everyone, however, shares this anxiety. As if nothing has changed since the 1930s, millions sleepwalk their way through their lives as if nothing ever will change. As if it were possible to make rapid change go away by ignoring it, living in what is certainly one of the most exciting periods in human history, many people attempt to withdraw from it, to block it out. They seek a “separate peace,” a diplomatic immunity from the rushing river of change. One sees them everywhere: Senior citizens, resigned to living out their years, attempting to avoid, at any cost the intrusion of virtual assistant Artificial Intelligence technology, keyless cars, autonomous transportation, surveillance doorbells, video appointments with the doctor, music streaming service, mobile phones, stores with undergarments behind glass cases, and other intrusions of the new. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Several people who are in their thirties and forties feel like they are already senior citizens, they are nervous about riots in their communities, pleasures of the flesh, women wearing miniskirts, and are feverishly attempting to persuade themselves that, after all, youth was always rebellious, and what is happening today is no different from the past. Even among the high school and traditional college age students we find an incomprehension of change: individuals so unenlightened of the past that they see nothing unusual about the present. The disturbing fact is that the vas majority of people, including educated and otherwise sophisticated people, find the idea of change so threatening that they attempt to deny its existence. Even many people who understand intellectually that change is accelerating have no internalized that knowledge, do no takes this critical fac into account in planning their own personal lives. However, without time, change has no meaning. And without change, time would stop. Time can be conceived as the intervals during which events occur. Just as money permits us to place a value on both houses and cars, time permits us to compare unlike processes. When we say that it takes thee years to build a dam, we are really saying it takes three times as long as it takes the Earth to circle the Sun or 31,000,000 times as long as it takes to sharpen a pencil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

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Time is the currency of exchange that makes it possible to compare the rates at which very different processes play themselves out. With the measurement of change, we are today far more advanced with respect to physical process than social processes. We know far better, for example, how to measure the rate at which blood flows through the body than the rate at which a rumor flows through society. Until this century, social change was so slow that it would pass unnoticed in one person’s lifetime. That is no longer so. The rate of change has increased so much that our imagination cannot keep up. In 1850 only four cities on the face of the Earth had a population of 100,000 or more. By 1900 the number had increased to nineteen. By 1960, there were 141, and today there are 467 cities with populations between 1 and 5 million. The Earth’s population is doubling every 49 years, and is projected to reach 8 billion by 2023. However, barring the unforeseen, the World’s population is expected to level off around 10 to 12 billion by 2100. When I was a kid, I did not understand gravity, I thought we lived inside of the Earth because if we lived on top of it, we would fly off. Many people think Elon Musk is unrealistic to build underground freeways, but it seems his idea and my childhood thought may be more realistic than we think. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

In the World’s increasingly overpopulated cities, planners are building down as well as up. French urban planners have been sketching subterranean cities—stores, museums, warehouses and factories to be built under the Earth. A Japanese architect has blueprinted a city to be built on stilts out over the ocean. Also, architects have developed several plans for deep Earthscrapers. One proposed for Mexico would have a depth of 100 meters, and its inverted-pyramid shape would allow in outdoor light. New York City has approved plans for the World’s first underground park to be built in an abandoned train tunnel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York USA. It will include an innovative system to allow sunlight t maintain a forest. The project will also test out new technologies that ensure high air quality and constant temperature. The one-acre park could become an excellent test cause for sustaining large communities underground. Beijing, China also has a modern subterranean World, though it is largely unused. Built in the 1970s, Dixia Cheng stretched across 30 square miles! It includes classrooms, barber shops, a roller rink, and even hold sites for growing sunless crops. It was originally constructed as a massive bomb shelter. However, underground cities are nothing new. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

In Cappadocia, Turkey the region has underground cities dating back to the 8^th century B.C. The largest, Derinkuyu, meaning “deep well,” is an18-story labyrinth of ventilation shafts, kitchens, wells, a winery, and living space for 20,000 residents. With the World to be thought of as being overpopulated at 5 billion people, we will need new innovations to accommodate the growing populations. That is why a wealth tax would be bad. Wealthy people may be what saves humanity. With rapid change, we have also gone through a massive amount of energy. Roughly speaking, half of all the energy consumed by humans in the past 2,000 years has been consumed in the last one hundred. Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible. New scientific discoveries are made every day. These new ideas are put to work much more quickly than ever before. The delays between idea and application are almost unthinkable in modern times. Look how President Trump got a vaccine produced in less than a year, when it used to take 20 years. It is vital to understand, moreover, that technological innovation does not merely combine and recombine machines and techniques. Important new machines do more than suggest or compel changes in other machines—they suggest novel solutions to social, philosophical, even personal problems. They alter human’s total intellectual environment—the way one thinks and looks at the Word. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

We all learn from our environment, scanning it constantly—though perhaps unconsciously—for models to emulate. These models are not only other people. They are, increasingly machines. By their presence, we are subtly conditioned to think along certain lines. The computer has touched off a storm of fresh ideas about humans as an interacting part of larger systems, about their physiology, the way they learn, the way they remember, the way they make decisions. Virtually every intellectual discipline from political science to family psychology has been hit by a wave of imaginative hypotheses triggered by invention and diffusion of the computer. People cannot live without computers today, they are used for business, education, social, financial, medical, and even leisure activities—and its full impact has not yet struck. And so the innovative cycle, feeding on itself speeds up. Acceleration is one of the most important and least understood of all social forces. We see Discovery, Application, Impact, Discovery. This accelerative thrust has now reached a level which it can no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as “normal.” The normal institutions of industrial society can no longer contain it, and its impact is shaking up all our social institutions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

For the acceleration of change is so rapid that it shortens the duration of many situations. Compared with life in a less rapidly changing society, more situations now follow through the channel in any given interval of time—and this implies profound changes in human psychology. For while we tend to focus on only one situation at a time, the increased rate at which situations flow past us vastly complicates the entire structure of life, multiplying the number of roles we must play and the number of choices we are forced to make. This, in turn, accounts for the strangling sense of complexity about contemporary life. Moreover, the seeded-up flow-through of situations demands much more work from the complex focusing mechanism by which we shift our attention from one situation to another. There is more switching back and forth, less time for extended, peaceful attention to one problem or situation at a time. This is what lies behind the vague feeling that “Things are moving faster.” They are. Around us. And through us. And when things start changing outside, you are going to have a parallel change taking place inside. The nature of these inner changes is so profound, however, that, as the accelerative thrust picks up speed, it will test our ability to live within the parameters that have until now defined humans and society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

In our society at present, the natural course of events is precisely that the rate of change should continue to accelerate up to as-yet-unreached limits of human and institutional adaptability. To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. One must search out total new ways to anchor oneself, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession—are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. Before one can do so, however, one must understand in greater detail how the effects of acceleration penetrate one’s personal life, creep into one’s behaviour and alter the quality of existence. One must, in other words, understand transience. Whether we call an intuition a “thought-feeling” or an “emotive thought,” it is still something that is deeper than thinking, different from ordinary feelings. There is a sacred oracle within, to which the problems of life and living can be carried in our calmer moments. Its laconic answers may or may not need interpretation. In this matter we mistake the common type for the normal type. The mystically minded person is not usually met with, but one is nearer true normality than the materially minded one. For one part of one’s human psyche—the intuitive—is at least functioning, whereas it is “dead” in the other human. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

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When it sees it, there is a faculty in humans which knows truth, which needs no argument, reflection, or cogitation to attest or prove what it knows. There is another way of knowing beside the ordinary way, through the channels of eyes or thoughts, a way which can be found only by quietening the mind and stilling the emotions. Here is this wonderful potency in humans lying largely unused, this faculty of intuition that links one with a higher order of being However arguable one’s theories may be, the scientific facts which Dr. Freud produced are less debatable. And one must be praised for having included among them the important fact that highly complicated mental acts are sometimes performed unconsciously. An immense accumulation of facts and experience is contained within the deeper level of the mind as in a storehouse upon which we may unknowingly draw. When the existence of this deeper level is accepted, the possibility—nay, the certainly—of intuition becomes perfectly explicable. The successful transference of any of these facts or any lessons of these experiences from the hidden to the conscious region constitutes one particular form of what we call an intuition. The need for advancing individual is to go beyond the intellect, to draw from the intuition or to find inspiration. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

How many minds have pondered over life and searched for its meaning only to feel baffled in the end, and held back by their own limitations? For although the active intellect naturally asks such questions, only the intuition can answer them adequately. However, the latter is the least cultivated of all our facilities and the most torpid, and this is why we have no access to the answers, and why the question remain troublesome or even torturing. The same mind which humans use to understand that two added to three totals five cannot be used to understand that one who loses oneself finds oneself. We find spiritual fulfillment in reading the Scriptures, but the holy Word of God is intended to do much more than that: it is to satisfy the believer’s deepest hunger for knowledge about acceptable living and service for one’s sovereign king. The Christian Bible feeds the soul and disciplines lives. We know that obedience to the Scriptures without concern for the consequences is penetrating and painful. It demands that we recognize the sin in our lives and that we acknowledge and repent of that sin. This is the first major intersection on the spiritual pilgrimage. Many prefer to turn off at this point, or think they can live the Christian life on their own terms—that is, without the conversation in attitude and action that must follow the conversion of heart. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any one hears my voice, and opens that door, I will come in,” reports Revelation 3.20. You will live in Heaven forever. You may have lived the high life, but none of us have seen anything like Heaven. The image of Jesus knowing at the door is as compelling to a new Christian as it is to millions through the centuries; and so many people have begun to open that door, only to discover that doing so involves a choice. One must surrender oneself or close the door. However, repentance is much more than self-flagellation, more than regret, more than deep sorrow for past sins; and it applies to everyone. The biblical word for repentance is “metanoia” in the original Greek. Meta means “change” and noia means “mind,” so literally means “a change of mind.” One church scholar describes it as “that mighty change in mind, heart, and life, wrought by the spirit of God.” Thus, repentance is replete with radical implications, for a fundamental change of mind not only turns us from the sinful past, but transforms our life plan, values, ethics, and actions as we begin to see the World though God’s eyes rather than ours. That kind of transformation requires the ultimate surrender to self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Repentance is an inescapable consequence of regeneration, an indispensable part of the conversation process that takes place under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. However, repentance is also continuing state of mind. We are warned, for example, to repent before partaking of communion. Also, believers prove their repentance by their deeds. Without a continuing repentant attitude—a persistent desire to turn away from our own nature and seek God’s nature—Christina growth is impossible. Loving God is impossible. If all this is true, then, some may ask, why is repentance so seldom preached and so little understood? I believe there are three reasons. The appeal of modern evangelism is not for repentance but for enlistment. To be honest, some evangelists see converts as trophies in a big game hunt and measure their success by numbers; thus, they do not want to frighten off their prey. One Christian leader, asked why his pastor never mentioned repentance, and he smiled and replied, “Get ‘em first, let them see what Christianity is, and then they will see their need to repent.” Tragically, this attitude pervades the church not only because we are afraid the truth will scare newcomers, but because it might also drive a number of the nodding regular right out of their comfortable pews. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Repentance can be a threatening message—and rightly so. The Gospel must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the good news of redemption. Because the message is unpalatable for many middle-class congregations preoccupied with protecting their affluent lifestyles, many pastors endowed with a normal sense of self-preservation the Electric Slide and the Flamenco warily round the subject. And the phenomenal growth of the electronic church has only aggravated this trend, for while the Sunday morning pew-dweller is trapped, unable to escape gracefully when a tough subject like repentance comes up, the TV viewer has only to flip a switch or go out to the refrigerator. The result of all this is a watered-down message that, in large part, accounts for today’s epidemic spread of easy believism, Christianity without costs, or “cheap grace” as German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so aptly labeled it a generation ago—grace in which “no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin…a denial of the living God, in fact, a denial of the incarnation. The second reason repentance is so ignored or misunderstood comes much closer to home, as I have discovered: often we are simply unwilling or unable to accept the reality of personal sin and therefore to accept put need for repentance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

We always think we are better than old-style Gangsters like Mickey Harris Cohen, and our sins are not nearly as bad. People think most professors grade on a curve so God probably will, too. Why is it so hard for us to see our own sin? In our fallen state we have an infinite capacity for justifying whatever acts we commit. Psychologists call the “self-serving bias” because everyone thinks they are a good person in a bad World. And this leads us to the third reason for our shallow understanding of repentance: our culture has written sin out of existence. Even Christians who should understand the basic truth that all are heirs of Adam’s fall and thus all are sinners are influenced, often blinded, by humanist values. Humanism began in the Garden when the tempter invited Eve to be “like God.” Ever since it has encouraged us to believe what our sinful nature wants us to believe—that we are good, getting better through science and education, and can through our own efforts become perfect, maters of our own fate. We can be our own god. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

In recent decades popular political opinions and social beliefs have all but erased the reality of personal sin from our national consciousness. Take, for example, the passionately advanced argument that society, not the individual, is responsible for the evil in our midst: individuals commit crimes because they are forced to, not because they choose to. Poverty, racial oppression, slums, hunger—these are the real culprits; the wrong doer is in reality that victim. Many people also think wide spread looting and poverty is the cause of crime. However, a study conducted revealed that 75 percent who were arrested looting had jobs and only 10 percent were on welfare rolls. In most cases people stole things that did not need. That is why President Kennedy said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He wanted people to wake up and take responsibility for “society,” and to help improve our country. It is time to teach people to be proud, God loving Americans again. It is okay to eat ham sandwiches in the cafeteria, it wonderful to salute and love the flag and your country. American cars are nice and cool once again, and McMansions are part of the American Dream and can be obtained through hard work, dedication, and saving. However, the desire to treat people with compassion is commendable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Not all people who are less affluent are criminals, so it is not a value theory to label their environment the main source of the problem. Sometimes it has to do with their upbring and because they are not taught proper values as youths. If carried to the extreme, labeling people incompetent destroys individual accountability and encourages the very behaviour that is so offensive. Most politicians tell people what they want to hear, and people like to be told they are really “good.” So taking away personal accountability is a sure-fire way to get approval. However, good politics can make bad theology; and when we begin to believe our own press releases, we become victims of our own delusions. Whatever became of sin? The answer lies within each of us, but to find it we must come fact to face with who we really are. This is a difficult process. That hidden self is buried deep inside our hearts, and the human heart can be a deceitful thing. Confronting that true self is an excruciating discovery. The basic structure is regulated by a just constitution that secures the liberties of equal citizenship. Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought are taken for granted, and the fair value of political liberty is maintained. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

The political process is conducted, as far as circumstance permit, as a just procedure for choosing between governments and for enacting just legislation. There is also fair (as opposed to formal) equality of opportunity. In addition to maintaining the usual kinds of social overhead capital, the government tries to insure equal chances of education and culture for persons similarly endowed and motivated either by subsidizing private schools or by establishing a public school system. It also enforces and underwrite equality of opportunity in economic activities and in the free choice of occupation. This is achieved by policing the conduct of firms and private associations and by preventing the establishment of monopolistic restrictions and barriers to the more desirable positions Finally, the government guarantees a social minimum either by family allowances and special payments for sickness and employment, or more systematically be such devices as a graded income supplement (a so-called negative income tax). In establishing these background institutions, the government may be thought of as divided into four branches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Each of the four branches of the government consists of various agencies, or activities thereof, charged with preserving certain social and economic conditions. These divisions do not overlap with the usual organization of government but are to be understood as different functions. The allocation branch, for example, is to keep the price system workably competitive and to prevent the formation of unreasonable market power. Such power does not exist as long as market cannot be made more competitive consistent with the requirements of efficiency and the facts of geography and the preferences of households. The allocation branch is also charged with identifying and correcting, say by suitable taxes and subsidies and by changes in the definition of property rights, the more obvious departures from efficiency caused by the failure of prices to measure accurately social benefits and costs. To this end suitable taxes and subsidies may be used, or the scope and definition of property rights may be revised. The stabilization branch, on the other hand, strives to bring about reasonably full employment in the sense that those who want work can find it and the free choice of occupation and the deployment of finance are supported by strong effective demand. These two branches together are to maintain the efficiency of the market economy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

The social minimum is the responsibility of the transfer branch. There must be a division of labour between the parts of the social system in answering to common sense precepts of justice. Different institutions meet different claims. Competitive markets properly regulated secure free choice of occupation and lead to an efficient use of resources and allocation of commodities to households. They set a weight on the conventional precepts associated with wages and earnings, whereas the transfer branch guarantees a certain level of well-being and honours claims of need. It is clear that the justice of distributive shares depends on the background institutions and how they allocate total income, wages and other income plus transfers. There is with reason strong objection to the competitive determination of total income, since this ignores the claims of need and an appropriate standard of life. From the standpoint of the legislative stage it is rational to insure oneself and one’s descendants against these contingencies of the market. Indeed, the difference principle presumably requires this. However, once a suitable minimum is provided by transfers, it may be perfectly fair that the rest of total income be settled by the price system, assuming that it is moderately efficient and free from monopolistic restrictions, and unreasonable externalities have been eliminated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Moreover, this way of dealing with the claims of need would appear to be more effective than trying to regulate income by minimum wage standards, and the like. It is better to assign to each branch only such tasks as are compatible with one another. Since the market is not suited to answer the claims of need, these should be met by a separate arrangement. Whether the principles of justice are satisfied, then, turns on whether the total income of the least advantaged (wage plus transfers) is such as to maximize their long-run expectations (consistent with the constraints of equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity). Finally, there is a distributive branch. Its task is to preserve an approximate justice in distributive shares by means of taxation and the necessary adjustments in the rights of property. Two aspects of this branch may be distinguished. First of all, it imposes a number of inheritance and gift taxes, and sets restrictions on the rights of bequest. The purpose of these levies and regulations is not to raise revenue (release resources to government) but gradually and continually to correct the distribution of wealth and to prevent concentration of power detrimental to the fair value of political liberty and fair opportunity. For example, the progressive principle might be applied at the beneficiary’s end. Doing this would encourage the wide dispersal of property which is a necessary condition, it seems, if the fair value of the equal liberties is to be maintained. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

The second part of the distribution branch is a scheme of taxation to raise the revenues that justice requires. Social resources must be released to the government so that it can provide for the public goods and make the transfer payments necessary to satisfy the difference principle. This problem belongs to the distribution branch since the burden of taxation is to be justly shared and its aims at establishing just arrangements. Sometimes this scheme will include measures and polices that a perfectly just system would reject. Two wrongs can make a right in the sense that the best available arrangement may contain a balance of imperfections, and adjustment of compensating injustices. God’s divine power, that has granted to us precious and magnificent promises, makes it possible for us to become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the World through excessive desire or lust. And how is this escape to come about? By putting forth your very best efforts—applying all diligence, to add to your faith, your confidence in Christ, moral excellence or virtue. That is, you train yourself to simply do what is good and right. Obviously, this is something we are to do, which will not be done for us. And then, in your virtue, add on knowledge of understanding. That is to come to know why the god and right you do is good and right. Operate from insight into the realities of it all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

And then, in your self-control, add on perseverance (endurance, patience). This is the capacity to stick with the course, to stay with it over the long haul, regardless of how you may feel. And then, in your perseverance add on Godliness. Perhaps we can best think of this as dept and thoroughness of all the preceding attainments of grace. God is characterized by his inexhaustible resources of goodness. And then, in your Godliness add on the kindness and gentleness of care which one sees among siblings and true friends. The word here is “philadelphia.” That is, extended family feeling and action to those in your community. Just think of what that would mean to this wounded World. However, it is possible to do this superhuman thing only through the goodness and strength of Godliness. And then, in your humanly kindness add on agape love. This is the kind of love that characterizes God himself, and is spelled out in heart-rending detail on the cross of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 13. It goes far beyond philadelphia and into the very heart of God. We are not just to love as family, but as he loved us (John 13.34). Agape love is always presented, in the biblical descriptions of the children of light, as the ultimate move, which complete solidifies all of the other gains in spiritual progression (see Romans 5.5; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5.14; Ephesians 4.15-16; Colossians 3.14; 1 John 4.16; and so on). #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Saint Peter conclude his great progression by telling us that if we do what he here says, we will “never stumble” and that “entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you,” reports 2 Peter 1.10-11. Go your way to the land of the Ancestors, where they wait for you with open arms, there on the edge between this World and the next. See; there they stand. Ancestral spirit, welcome us to the place where we all must go. Praise ye God, all His Angels; praise ye God, all His hosts. Praise ye God, Sun and Moon; Praise God, all ye stars of light. Praise God, ye Heavens of Heavens, and ye waters that are above the Heavens. Le them praise the name of the Lord; for God commanded, and they were created. God has established them for ever and ever, making a decree which shall not be transgressed. Praise the Lord from the Earth, ye sea-monsters, and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged fowl; Kings of the Earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the Earth; both young men and maidens, senior citizens and children; let them all praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto His people, praise to all His faithful ones, o the children of the United States of America, near unto God. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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January 28, 2021 1:14 am

We Open Our Eyes Like Prehistoric Humans, We See a World Totally New!

Humanity is acquiring the right technology for all the wrong reasons. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people are facing an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the World’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them are finding it increasingly painful to keep up with incessant demands for change that characterize our time. The New World for the past 350 years has been caught up in a typhoon of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change sweeps through the highly industrialized counties with waves f ever accelerating speed and unprecedented impact. It spawns in its wake all sort of curious social flora—from psychedelic churches and “free universities” to fake new and science cities in the Artic. It breeds odd personalities, too: children who at twelve are no longer childlike; adults who at fifty are children of twelve. Our World is filled with self-absorbed, frightened, hollow people. There anarchists who, beneath their dirty denim shirts, are outrageous conformists, and conformists who, beneath their button-down collars, are outrageous anarchists. Popular literature rides the wave with best-selling titles that guarantee success with everything from money making to firming thighs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

This not-so-magnificent obsession to “find ourselves” has spawned a whole set of counterfeit values; we worship fame, success, materialism, and celebrity. We want to “live for success” as we “look out for number one,” and we do not mind “winning through intimidation.” Our culture is being sucked dry, leaving is spiritually empty and economically weakened. A strange new society is apparently erupting in our midst. Is there a way to understand it, to shape its development? How can we come to terms with it? If we took a fresh look at the racing rate of change that makes reality seems, sometimes, like a kaleidoscope run wild, much that now strikes us as incomprehensible would be far less so. For the acceleration of change does not merely buffet industries or nation. It is a concrete force that reaches deep into our personal lives, compels us to act out new roles, and confronts us with the danger of a new and powerfully upsetting psychological disease. This new disease can be called “future shock,” and a knowledge of its sources and symptoms helps explain many things that otherwise defy rational analysis. The parallel term “culture shock” has already begun to creep into the popular vocabulary. Culture shock is the effect that immersion in a strange culture has on the unprepared visitor. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Culture shock is what one experiences when one enters a new land and everything is different. The laws are no always legal and only apply to certain people, where “fixed price” is negotiable, where people put on plays in the street like they are filming a television show, but no one is watching, where laughter signifies anger. It is what happens when the familiar psychological cues that help an individual to function in society are suddenly withdrawn and replaced by new ones that are strange or incomprehensible. The culture shock phenomenon accounts for much of the bewilderment, frustration, and disorientation that plagues Americans in their dealings with other societies. It cases a breakdown in communication, a misreading of reality, an inability to cope. Yet culture shock is relatively mild in comparison with the much more serious malady, future shock. Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. It may well be the most important disease of tomorrow. Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or any listing of psychological abnormalities. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

However, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat future shock, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments. The malaise, mass neurosis, irrationality, and free-floating violence already apparent in contemporary life are merely a forestate of what may lie ahead unless we come to understand and treat this disease. Future shock is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated rate of change in society. It arises from the superimposition of a new culture on an old one. It is culture shock in one’s own society. However, its impact is far worse. For many people who travel, they have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock is not. Take an individual out of one’s own culture and set one down suddenly in an environment sharply different from one’s own, with a different set of cues to react to—different conceptions of tie, space, work, love, religion, pleasures of the flesh, and everything else—then cut one off from any hope of retreat to a more familiar social landscape, and the dislocation one suffers is doubly severe. Moreover, if this new culture is itself in constant turmoil, and if—worse yet—its values are incessantly changing, the sense of disorientation will still be further intensified. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Given few clues as to what kind of behaviour is rational under the radically new circumstances, the victim may well become a hazard to oneself and others. Now imagine not merely an individual but an entire society, and entire generation—including its weakest, least intelligent, and most irrational members—suddenly transported into this new World. The result is mass disorientation, future shock on a grand scale. This is the prospect that humans now face. Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it. Is all this exaggerated? I think not. It has become a cliché to say that what we are now living through is a “second industrial revolution.” This phrase is supposed to impress us with the speed and profundity of the change around us. However, in addition to being platitudinous, it is misleading. For what is occurring now is, in all likelihood, bigger, deeper, and more important than the industrial revolution. Indeed, a growing body of reputable opinion asserts that the present movement represents nothing less than the second great divide in human history, comparable in magnitude only with that first great break in historic continuity, the shift from barbarism to civilization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

This idea crops us with increasing frequency in the writings of scientists and technologist. Sir George Thomson, the British physicist and Nobel prizewinner, suggests in The Foreseeable Future that the nearest historic parallel with today is not the industrial revolution but rather the “invention of agriculture in the Neolithic age.” John Diebold, the American automation expert, warns that “the effects of the technological revolution we are not living through will be deeper than any social change we have ever experienced before.” Sir Leon Bagrit, the British computer manufacturer, insists that automation by itself represents “the greatest change in the World history of mankind.” Nor are the men of science and technology alone in these views. Sir Herbert Read, the philosopher of art, tells us that we are living through “a revolution so fundamental that we must search many past centuries for a parallel. Possibly the only comparable change is the one that took place between the Old and the New Stone Age…” And Kurt W. Marek, who under the name C.W. Ceram is best-known as the author of God, Graves and Scholars, observes that in the twentieth century, we concluded “an era of mankind five thousand years in length…We are not, as Spengler supposed, in the situation of Rome at the beginning of the Christian West, but in that of the year 3000 B.C. We open our eyes like prehistoric man, we see a World totally new.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

One of the most striking statements of this theme has come from Kenneth Boulding, an eminent economist and imaginative social thinker. In justifying his view that the present moment represents a crucial turning point in human history, Boulding observes that “as far as many statistical series related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date the divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory.” In effect, our century represents The Great Median Strip running down the center of human history. Thus he assets, “The World of today…is as different from the World in which I was born as that World was from Julius Caesar’s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.” This startling statement can be illustrated in a number of ways. It has been observed, for example, that if the last 50,000 years of human’s existence were divided int lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another—as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of humans ever see a printed word. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Only during the last four lifetimes has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. Only in this last lifetime have people used the Internet. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800^th, lifetime. The 800^th lifetime marks a sharp break with all past human experience because during this lifetime human’s relationship to resources has reversed itself. This is most evident in the field of economic development. Within a single lifetime, agriculture, the original basis of civilization, has lost its dominance in nation after nation. Today in a dozen major countries agriculture employs fewer than 15 percent of the economically active population. In the United States, whose farms feed 200,000,000 Americans plus the equivalent of another 160,000,000 people around the World, this figure is already blow 6 percent and it is still shrinking rapidly. Moreover, if agriculture is the first stage of economic development and industrialism the second, we can now see that still another stage—the third—has suddenly been reached. In about 1956 the Untied States of American became the first major power in which more than 50 percent of non-farm labour ceased to wear the blue-collar of factory or manual labour. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Blue collars workers were outnumbered by those in the so-called white-collar occupations—in retail trade, administration, communications, research, education, and other service categories. Within the same lifetime a society for the first time in human history not only threw off the yoke of agriculture, but managed within a few brief decades to throw off the yoke of manual labour as well. The World’s first service economy had been born. Since then, one after another of the technologically advanced countries have moved in the same direction. The central stupendous truth about developed economies today is that they can have—in anything but the shortest run—the kind and scale of resources they decide to have. It is no longer resources that limit decisions. It is the decision that makes the resources. This is the fundamental revolutionary change—perhaps the most revolutionary humans have ever known. This monumental reversal has taken place in the 800^th lifetime. This lifetime is so different from all others because of the astonishing expansion of the scale and scope of change. Clearly, there have been other lifetimes in which epochal upheaval occurred. Wars, plagues, earthquakes, and famine rocked many an earlier social order. However, these shocks and upheavals were contained within the borders of one or a group of adjacent societies. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

It took generations, even centuries, for shocks of upheavals of other nations to spread beyond their borders. In our lifetime the boundaries have burst. Today the network of social ties is so tightly woven that the consequences of contemporary events radiate instantaneously around the World. Indeed, not only do contemporary events radiate instantaneously—now we can be said to be feeling the impact of all past events in a new way. For the past is doubling back on us. We are caught in what might be called “time skip.” An event that affected only a handful of people at the time of its occurrence in the past can have a largescale consequence today. Much like globalization in the late 1990s started outsource many high paying management and manufacturing jobs to other countries and was the start of the erosion of the middle-class Americans. From 2001-2018, approximately 4 million jobs were lost as a result. We have also started outsourcing farming and meat production to other countries and that is hurting many America famers today. America has lost 100,000 farms and only 25 percent of the 1.9 million remaining farms are making a profit. Whatever happened to some people in the past affects virtually all humans today. This was not always true. In short, all history is catching up with us, and this very difference, paradoxically, underscores our break with the past. Thus the scope of change is fundamentally altered. Across space and through tie, change has a power and reach in this, the 800^th lifetime, that it never did before. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

We have not merely extended the scope and scale of change; we have radically altered its pace. We have in our time released a totally new social force—a stream of change so accelerated that it influences our sense of time, revolutionizes the tempo of daily life, and affects the very way we “feel” the World around us. We no longer “feel” life as humans did in the past. And this is the ultimate difference, the distinction that separates the truly contemporary humans from all others. For this acceleration lies behind the impermanence—the transience—that penetrates and tinctures our consciousness, radically affecting the way we relate to other people, to things, to the entire Universe of ideas, art and values. To understand what is happening to us as we move into the age of super-industrialism, we must analyze the process of acceleration and confront the concept of transience. If acceleration is a new social force, transience is its psychosocial counterpart, and without an understanding of the role it plays in contemporary human behaviour, all our theories of personality, all our psychology, must remain pre-modern. Psychology without the concept of transience cannot take account of precisely those phenomena that are peculiarly contemporary. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

By changing our relationship to the resources that surround us, by violently expanding the scope of change, and, most crucially, by accelerating its pace, we have broken irretrievably with the past. We have cut ourselves off from the old ways of thinking, of feeling, of adapting. We have set the stage for a completely new society and we are now racing toward it. This is the crux of the 800^th lifetime. And it is this that calls into question human’s capacity for adaptation—how will they fare in this new society? Can humans adapt to its imperatives? And if not, can they alter these imperatives? Before even attempting to answer such questions, we must focus on the twin forces of acceleration and transience. We must learn how they alter the texture of existence, hammering our lives and psyches into new and unfamiliar shapes. We must understand how—and why—they confront us, for the first time, with the explosive potential of future shock. The establishment of a system that guarantees the provision of basic necessities for all means the disappearance of dominant classes. Humans will have to cease to live under “zoo” conditions—id est, their full freedom will have t be restored and all forms of exploitative control will have to disappear. That humans are incapable of dispensing with controlling leaders is a myth disproved by all those societies that function well without hierarchies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Such a dramatic change would, of course, involve radical political and social changes that would alter all human relations, including the family structure, the structure of education, or religion, and relations between individuals in work and leisure. It would basically take the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to manifest to make this possible. In the meantime, Christianity is recognized as a rational and realistic solution which serves the basic biological program of humans: the preservation and growth of both the individual and the human species. The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself…they only sustaining love involvement is with yourself. When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you have been and where you are going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriage, your children, your pain, your happiness—when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself. The only thing you have is working to the consummation of your own identity. And that is what many have been trying to do all their life. The greatest commandment of all, Jesus said, is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Find the true person God wants you to be and the true purpose of your life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

It is not what we do that matter, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God does not want our success; He wants us. God does not demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self. The Christian Bible promised that a new kingdom of peace would come. God does not want us living in future shock where the experience of life is like a strange twilight World where any moment might be our last. When we accept God, we will realize that the anger and hatred and violence in our own soul has vanished. The meaning of Earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul. The Holy Spirit has communicated one fact to us: what God demands of us is obedience, no matter what. Single-minded obedience in faith. What God wants from His people is obedience, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how unknown the outcome. It has always been this way. God calling His people to obedience and giving them at best a glimpse of the outcome of their effort. Most of the great figures of the Old Testament died without ever seeing the fulfillment of the promises they relied upon. Saint Paul expended himself building the early church, but as his drew to a close he could see only a sting of tiny outposts along the Mediterranean, many weakened by fleshly indulgence or divided over doctrinal disputes. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Some might think this divine pattern cruel, but I am convinced there is a sovereign wisdom to it. Knowing how susceptible we are to success’s siren call, God does not allow us to see, and therefore glory in, what is done through us. The very nature of the obedience He demands is that it be given without regard to circumstances. Unquestioning acceptance of and obedience to Jesus’ authority is the foundation of the Christian life. Everything else rests upon this. It also provides the key to understanding what is for many the great mystery of Christianity: Faith. Saving faith—that by which we are justified, made right with God—is a gift of God; and yes, it involved a rational process as well since it comes from hearing the Word of God. For maturing faith—faith which deepens and grows as we live our Christian life—is not just knowledge, but knowledge acted upon. It is not just belief, but belief lived out—practiced. Only one who believes if obedient; only one who is obedient believes. Realizing it is possible, we remember our instructions and begin to follow them. They work. Like learning to drive an Ultimate Driving Machine at age 16 or mastering another language, faith is a state of mind that grows out of our actions, just as it also governs them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

So obedience is the key to real faith—the unshakable kind of faith so powerfully illustrated by Job’s life. Job lost his home, his family (expect for a nagging wife), his health, even his hope. The advice from friends was no help. No matter where he turned, he could find no answers to his plight. Eventually he stood alone. However, though it appeared God had abandoned him, Job clung to the assurance that God is who He is. Job confirmed his obedience with those classic words of faith: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” This is real faith: believing and acting obediently regardless of circumstances or contrary evidence. After all, if faith depended on visible evidence, it would not be faith “We walk by faith, not by sight,” the apostle Paul wrote. It is absurd for Christians to constantly seek new demonstrations of God’s power, to expect a miraculous answer to every need, from curing ingrown toenails to finding parking spaces; this only leads to faith in miracles rather than the Maker. Truth faith depends not upon mysterious signs, celestial fireworks, or grandiose dispensations from a God who is seen as a rich, benevolent uncle; true faith, as Job understood, rests on the assurance that God is who He is. Indeed, on that we must be willing to stake our very lives. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The spiritual nature can only be discovered spiritually—not intellectually, not emotionally, and certainly not physically. Such a spiritual discovery can only be attained intuitively. Christianity must evoke from the believer the same response it drew from the first disciples: a passionate desire to obey and please God—a willingly entered-int discipline. That is the beginning of true discipleship. That is the beginning of loving God. The power of God’s Word is all by itself, life-changing. What power those Scriptures hold! People of great intellect and compelling personality have been utterly transformed by the Word of God. The Christian Bible—banned, burned, beloved. More widely read, more frequently attacked than any other book in history. Generations of intellectuals have attempted to discredit it; dictators of every age have outlawed it and executed those who read it. Yet soldiers carry it into battle believing it more powerful than their weapons. Fragments of it smuggled into solitary prison cells have transformed ruthless killers into gentle saints. Yearly, the Christian Bible outsells every best-seller. Five hundred million copies were published last year alone. Portions have been translated into more than 1800 languages and even carried to the moon. We own to the Scriptures the same reverence which we own to God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

The mystery into which we have been born is not penetrable by weaving fancy or logical intellect. However, intuition, if we are patient enough and willing enough to follow it, can lead us into an overwhelming experience where we discover that God is there, always there. It is not through any intellectual process of reasoning from premise to conclusion that we come to know we exist, but through an immediate and spontaneous intuition. Intuition moves thought and penetrates feeling, so that it is often mistaken for them. Yet its true nature is something other than both theirs. Intuition is the mind’s inner light. Where ego merely believes, intuition definitely knows. There is an intermediate entity, compounded of the ego’s best part and the point of contact with God. If you wish, call it the higher mind, the conscience, or the intellectual intuition. The discovery of its presence makes possible a form of communication between person and God which is passive, not active. That is, one is directed guided or corrected in and through one’s human faculties, intuitively. As if one were doing so completely alone, the person acts, does, thinks, speaks, and decides. However, one is not: one id responding to God, to the effects of His presence, now unhindered by one’s ego. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

When we first face the mystery, which is at the heart’s core and in the mind’s essence, we know nothing about it other than that it is the source of our being and that it possesses a power and intelligence utterly transcending our own. Yet we feel that it draws our love, and in our best moments, inspires our character. We feel the Presence of something higher than ourselves, wise, noble, beautiful, and worthy of all reverence. Yet it is really ourselves—the best part come at last into unfoldment and expression. So there is no mystery in this. When people live in evil it is because of what is wrong on their “insides.” Similarly, the way to a life filled and fruitful with goodness is transformation of every dimension of the inner or “spiritual” side of the self. If life is to be transformed, you cannot bypass any of those dimensions. Each one must of necessity be a source either of weakness or of strength. The renovation of the heart simply requires that each inner dimension of the human self be rectified and established in righteousness by effectively and thoroughly receiving into it—specifically into it, each particular dimension of the self—”the grace of God that brings salvation.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The “grace of God that brings salvation”—Saint Paul’s words, once again—“trains us (paideuousa) in denying ungodliness and Worldly desires and living sensibly, righteously and Godly in the present age,” expecting the glorious return of the one who saves us, Christ Jesus, “who gave himself for us, that he might buy us back from every lawless deed and cleanse for himself a people peculiarly his own, sold out to good works,” reports Titus 2.12-15. What is in itself and at once assembled as the highest concept of human beings, the greatest power ruling existence, the supreme Mind before which all other minds must bow, the primal consciousness which outlives every form of existence because God alone is, was and shall be? There is no name attached to God, this ineffable silent mystery of mysteries. Yet it is there. Everything tells us the spirit of God is there, from the vast Universe itself to those seers and sages of ancient Greece, India, and China who have broke through and away from human limitations. Can we wonder that with one God there came one energy and once substance? Mind, Life, and Power are in that being. God holds the Universe in His Mind: therefore we creatures of the Universe are held too. If this incomparable Being were not here, too, we would not live for a moment. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

It must needs be, according to what has been said before, that God loves more the better things. “The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence,” reports Psalm 11.5. For it has been shown, that God’s loving one thing more than another is nothing else than His willing for that thing a greater good: because God’s will is the cause of goodness in things; and the reason why some things are better than others, is that God wills for them a greater good. Hence it follows that He loves more the better things. “Make room in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have exploited no one. I do not say this to condemn you; I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.2-4. Lord of the enclosed land, ruler of the flowery plain, Almighty who first took this path: bring your kingdom to Earth and restore peace, sanity, and prosperity. May your blessings flourish in the land beyond. May we be happy in your land of joy. May we find rest and salvation. God sends out His commandment to the Earth; His word goes speedily forth. Praise ye the Lord from the Heavens; praise ye Him in the heights. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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January 27, 2021 1:31 am

In All this Quiet Luxury Hath Set Us Young Immortal without Any to Watch Our Slumber!

Television is a superficial medium made so by the short attention span of a peripatetic audience. One reaction to painful early experiences leads to an easily depressed personality. An individual may find it more tolerable to organize its misery in terms of one’s own badness rather than in terms of the badness of the World around. The individual then experiences the frustration of one’s need as one’s own fault for having those needs. One organizes one’s experiences in terms of one’s own demandingness, unreasonableness, lack of merit, unlovability, and so on. This is a sad cast of mind for, besides the disappointment, the individual now also feels guilt and constant self-belitting. The Anti-Libidinal Ego—the Internal Savotuer—is constantly attacking the Libidinal Ego. It may be that inner conflict and trouble will eventually arise when the individual can no longer resist very strong evidence that not oneself but the actual guardian or the actual environment is at fault, uncaring, or hostile—a very depressing discovery full of further guilt. However, when the evidence can no longer be ignored (that is selectively perceived and disowned), a person may be forced to make a more realistic assessment of what is happening. Such a depressed reaction leads to a more integrated personality-structure than does the schizoid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The schizoid reaction to painful early experiences is simply not to integrate. People who have left much experience unintegrated will experience both bad moments and good moments, but the connection between moments or experiences or events is only tenuous, and is not integrated with their total experience of themselves and of life. Their wanting something is not strongly connected either to getting it or to not getting it. No experience of wants, needs, or wishes is strongly associated with other experiences of the self; neither is the experience of being frustrated or angry or hurt strongly associated with any other self-structures. Nor is the experience of wants, needs, wishes strongly associated with experiences of attachment figures or other people of tings. There are dynamic organizations, but they are fragments: Libidinal, Anti-Libidinal, central. Having the separate and not much in communication with each other enables a person not to be constantly in touch with misery and frustration and rage. There is a sense of futility and emptiness which goes with the schizoid structure, and this is associated with the environment’s lack of appropriate response to the individual’s expression of oneself: lack of appropriate response does give a sense of futility to one’s doing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Much of what used to be diagnosed as hysteric behaviour in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the empty-feeling person, looking for a relationship to fil that emptiness, may in fact have been schizoid, the personality-structure being tragically such that no ordinary responsive and loving relationship could heal the split which maintained the empty feeling. The schizophrenic reaction would take these splits a stage further. There has been drastic depersonalizing. Fear of, love for, hate toward, bliss from, are experienced with no coherent connection to either self or other. “My” enjoyment is not mine, I do not feel it is “I” who is enjoying. “My” relationships—of fear, love, hate, and so on—are not “mine”; I do not feel that it is “I” who is fearing, loving, or hating. Objects float around without any constant handles of “enjoyable,” “hateful,” terrifying.” Yet there is enjoyment, fear, hate. Is it yours? Or yours? Or theirs? Or mine? It is hard to know for sure. In aggression, we are emotionally hardened, and aggression is a choice. A biologically adaptive type of aggression is instrumental aggression, which has the aim of obtaining that which is necessary or desirable. The aim of instrumental aggression is not destruction as such; this serves only as an instrument for attaining the real aim. #RandolphHarri 3 of 21

In this respect it is similar to defensive aggression, but in other important aspects it is different. It does not seem to have a phylogenetically programed neuronal basis such as that which programs defensive aggression; among mammals, only animals of prey, whose aggression is instrumental to obtaining food, are endowed with an innate neuronal pattern that impels them to attack their prey. The hunting behaviour of hominids and Homo is based on learning and experience, and does not seem to be phylogenetically programed. The most important case of instrumental aggression is war. It has become fashionable to consider war as caused by the power of human’s destructive instinct. Instinctivists and psychoanalysts have given this explanation of war. To reason with great skill and peaceful cooperation is as natural and fundamental a tendency in human relations as fight. Yet war is essentially a psychological problem. The riddle of war lies…deep in the unconscious, and we consider war an inexpedient form of instinct adaptation. War is not caused by human destructiveness, but its cause is realistic conflicts between groups which always have been solved by violence, since there was no international enforceable law according to which—as in civil law—the conflicts could have been solved peacefully. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

There is only an auxiliary role attributed to the factor of human destructiveness, which facilitates the readiness of people to go to war once the government had decided to wage war. The thesis that war is caused by innate human destructiveness is plainly absurd for anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of history. The Babylonians, the Greeks (for a very telling example see Thucydides’ description of the Peloponnesian War), up to the statesmen of our time, have planned war for they thought were very realistic reasons and weighed the pros and cons very thoroughly, even though, naturally their calculations were often erroneous. Their motives were manifold: land for cultivation, riches, slaves, raw materials, markets, expansion—and defense. Under special circumstances, a wish for revenge or in a small tribe the passion for destruction has been among the factors that motivated wars, but such cases are atypical. This view that war is caused by human’s aggression is not only unrealistic but harmful. It detracts attention from the real causes and thus weakens the opposition to them. The thesis about the innate tendency for war is not only repudiated by the historical record but also, and very importantly, by the history of primitive warfare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

We have shown previously that in the contact of aggression among primitive peoples that they—particularly the hunters and food gatherers—are the least warlike, and that their fighting is characterized by its relative lack of destructiveness and bloodthirstiness. We have furthermore seen that with the growth of civilization the frequency and bloodiness of wars have increased. If war were caused by innate destructive impulses, the reverse would have to be true. The humanitarian tendencies in the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries brought about reductions of destructiveness and cruelty in war which were codified—and respected, up to and including the first World War—in carious international treaties. From this progressive perspective it seemed that civilized humans are less aggressive than primitive humans, and the still-existing occurrence of war was explained as caused by stubbornness of the aggressive instincts, which refuse to give in to the beneficial influence of civilization. However, in fact, the destructiveness of civilized humans was projected into human’s nature, and thus history was confused with biology. The first World War was motivated by the economic interests and ambitions of the political, military, and industrial leaders on both sides, and not by a need of the various nations involved to give vent to their dammed-up aggression. These motivations are well known, and need not be described here in detail. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

By and large, it can be said that the Germans ais in the 1914-1918 war were also its main motivations: economic hegemony in Western and Central Europe and territory in the East. (There were, in fact, also the aims of Adolf Hitler, whose foreign policy was essentially the continuation of the Imperial government.) The aims and motivations of the Western Allies were similar. France wanted Alsace-Lorraine; Russia, the Dardanelles; England, parts of the Germany colonies, and Italy, at least a small part of the booty. Had it not been for these aims, some of which were stipulated in secret treaties, peace would have been concluded years earlier and the lives of many millions of people on both sides would have been spared. Both sides in the First World War had to appeal to the sense of self0defense and freedom. The Germans claimed they were encircled and threatened, and furthermore, that they were fighting for freedom by fighting the czar; their enemies claimed that they were threatened by the aggressive militarism of the German Junkers, and they were fighting for freedom by fighting the Kaiser. To think that war owe it origin to the wish of the French, the German, the British, and the Russian populations to discharge their aggressiveness is untrue and serves only one function, that of detracting attention from those persons and social conditions responsible for one of the greatest slaughters in history. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

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However, a small number of people do like to engage in wars as a mixture of group narcissism, instrumental aggression, and the wish to make a career and to gain power within and through this nationalistic movement. In fact, the Germany population definitely did not want war (the generals were also reluctant), the went into the war without resistance and fought bravely until the end. The psychological problem lies here, not in the causation of the war but in the question: What psychological factors make war possible even thought they do not cause it? There are a number of relevant factors to consider in answering this question. In the first World War (also, with some modifications, in the second World Warr) once it had started, the German (or French, Russian, British) soldiers went on fighting because they felt that losing the war would mean disaster for the nation. The individual soldiers were motivated by the feeling that they were fighting for their lives, and that it was a matter of killing or being killed. However, even these feelings would not have been sufficient to sustain the willingness to go on. They also knew that if they ran away, they would be shot, although even these motivations did not prevent large-scale munities from occurring in all armies; in Russian and Germany they le eventually to revolutions in in 1917 and 1918. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

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Another important factor for the possibility of war is the deeply engrained feeling of respect for and awe of authority. The soldier had traditional been made to feel that to obey one’s leaders was a mortal and religious obligation for the fulfillment of which one should be ready to pay with one’s life. It took about three to four years of the horror of life in the trenches and growing insight into the fact that they were being used by their leaders for aims of war that had nothing to so with defense, to break down this attitude of obedience, at least in a considerable part of the army and the population at home. Even if it entails risks for one’s life and much physical suffering, here are other, there are other more subtle motivations that make war possible and have nothing to do with aggression. Even if it entails risks for one’s life and much physical suffering, war is exciting. Considering that the life of the average persons is boring, routinized, and lacking in adventure, the readiness to go to war must be understood as a desire to put an end to the boring routine of daily life—and to throw oneself into an adventure, the only adventure, in fact, the average person may expect in one’s life. War also removes the free-rider problem. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Where the public is large and includes many individuals, there is a temptation for each person to try to avoid doing one’s shared. This is because whatever one person does one’s action will not significantly affect the amount produced. One regard the collective action of others as already given one way or the other. If the public good is produced, one’s enjoyment of it is not decreased by one’s not making a contribution. If it is not produced, one’s action would not have changed the situation any way. A citizen receives the same protection from foreign invasion regardless of whether one paid one’s taxes. Therefore in the polar case trade and voluntary agreements cannot be expected to develop. It follows that arranging for and financing public goods must be taken over by the state and some binging rule requiring payment must be enforced. Even if all citizens were willing to pay their share, they would presumably do so only when they are assured that others will pay theirs as well. Thus once citizens have agreed to act collectively and not as isolated individuals taking the actions of others as given, there is still the task of tying down the agreement. The sense of justice leads us to promote just schemes and to do our share in them when we believe that others, or sufficiently many of them, will do theirs. However, in normal circumstances a reasonable assurance in this regard can only be given if there is a binding rule effectively enforces. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Assuming that the public good is to everyone’s advantage, and one that all would agree to arrange for, the use of coercion is perfectly rational from each person’s point of view. Many of the traditional activities of government, insofar as they can be justified, can be accounted for in this way. The need for the enforcement of rules by the state will still exist even when everyone is moved by the same sense of justice. The characteristic features of essential public good necessitates collective agreements, and firm assurance must be given to all that they will be honoured. War, to some extent, reverses all values. War encourages deep-seated human impulses, such as altruism and solidarity, to be expressed—impulses that are stunted by the principles of egotism and competition that peacetime life engenders in modern humans. Class differences, if not absent, disappear to a considerable extent. In war, humans are humans again, and have a chance to distinguish oneself, regardless of privileges that one’s social status confers upon one as a citizen. To put it in a very accentuated form: war is an indirect rebellion against the injustice, inequality and boredom governing social life in peacetime, and the fact must not be underestimated that while a soldier fights the enemy for one’s life, one does not have to fight the member of one’s own group for food, medical care, shelter, clothing; these are all provided in a kind of perversely social system. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

The fact that was has these beneficial features reduces the free rider problem. If civilian life provided the elements of adventurousness, solidarity, equality, and idealism that can be found in war, it may be very difficult, we may conclude, to get people to fight way. However, many people are very proud of America, and even if they are wealthy or well taken care of, they love their country so much, and as said before, see it as a religious and moral duty to defend its honour. However, when the country is doing relatively well, the stock market is breaking record high, unemployment is at all time lows, and Americans are involved in far less wars in the recent past, that is what causes division. People start fighting their own people, become divided politically, religiously, and you even see a break down in the family and community because there is no bonding national moment. After September 11, 2001, many American sat back in horror and watched the events unfold, but they, for the most part, did bond as a nation and becoming more humanitarian and prouder. Now, that they have had it so good, people are fighting each other because they do not have an enemy to stand up against. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The problem for governments in war is to make use of this rebellion by harnessing it for the purpose of war; simultaneously it must be prevented from becoming a threat to the government by enforcing strict discipline and the spirit of obedience to the leaders who are depicted as the unselfish, wise, courageous humans protecting their country from destruction. Major wars in modern times and most wars between that states of antiquity were not caused by dammed-up aggression, but by instrumental aggression of the military and political elites. This has been shown in the data about the difference in the incidence of war from the most primitive to the higher developed cultures. The more primitive a civilization, the less was do we find. The same trend can be seen in the fact that the number and intensity of wars has risen with the development of technical civilization; it is highest among the powerful states with a strong government and lowest among primitive humans without permanent chieftainship. For instance, the number of battles engaged in by the principal European powers in modern times shows the same trend. From the year 1480 to 1499 there were 9 battles, from 1500 to 1599 there were 87 battles, from 1600 to 1699 there were 239 battles, from 1700 to 1799 there were 781 battles, from 1800 to 1899 there were 651 battles, from 1900 to 1940 there were 892 battles. #RandolphhHarris 13 of 21

What the authors who explain that war is caused by human’s innate aggression have done is to consider modern war as normal, assuming that I must be caused by human’s “destructive” nature. They have tried to find the confirmation for this assumption in the data on animals and on our prehistoric ancestors, which have had to be distorted in order to serve this purpose. This position resulted for the unshakable conviction of the superiority of present-day civilization over pretechnical cultures. The logic was: if civilized humans are plagued by so many wars and so much destructiveness, how much worse primitive humans have been, who is far behind in the development toward “progress.” Since destructiveness must not be blamed on our civilization, it must be explained as the result of our instincts. However, the facts speak otherwise. Depictions of violence often glamorize vicious behaviour. They offend the Spirit and make you less able to respond to others in a sensitive, caring way. They contradict the Saviour’s message of love for one another. When we pollute our minds with harmful, violent materials, whether or not such material causes us to commit violent acts, the Spirit is offended. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

I believe the entertainment industry, who the TV news media is now trying to compete with for ratings, cannot portray on film people gunned down or ran over in cold blood, in living colour, and not have it affect the attitudes and thoughts of some of the people who see it. I believe that the desensitizing effect of such media abuses on the hearts and souls of those who are exposed to them results in a partial fulfillment of the Saviour’s statement that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” So, it is not only that the American people are doing relatively well and living in peace, but the media has also become far, far more violent and it has an impact on people. Now, the children of light, a Biblical term to say that they have the basic nature of light: that light is their parent and has passed on to them its nature, as any parent does, are not perfect people and do not live in a perfect World—yet. However, they are remarkably different. The difference is not one of a pose they strike, either from time to time or constantly, or of things they do or do not do—though their behaviour too is very different and distinctive. Where the children of light differ is primarily and most importantly on the “inside” of their life. It lies in what they are in their depths. Thought life: When we get to know their inner life is wat they think about, and what is on their mind that is perhaps the first thing that comes to our attention. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Simply stated, children of the light think about God. He is never out of their mind. They love to dwell upon God and upon his greatness and loveliness, as brought to light in Jesus Christ. They adore him in nature, in history, in his Son and in his saints. One could even day they are “God-intoxicated” (Acts 2.13; Ephesians 5.18, though no one has a stronger sense of reality and practicality than they do. Their mind if filled with biblical expressions of God’s nature, his actions, and his plans for them in his World. They do not dwell upon evil. It is not a big thing in their thoughts. They are sure of its defeat, but they still deal with it appropriately in specific situations. Because their mind is centered upon God and oriented with reference to him, all other good things are also welcome there: Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,” their minds pinder those things (Philippians 4.8). Thy are absolutely, realistically so, based upon the nature of God as they understand it. Feelings: And then perhaps we notice—and small wonder given what has already been observed—that the emotional life of these children of light is deeply characterized by love. That is how they invest the emotional life of their being. They love lots of good things and they love people. They love their life and who they are. They are thankful for their life—even though it may contain many difficulties, even persecution and martyrdom (Matthew 5.10-12). #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The children of light receive all of it as God’s gift, or at least as his allowance, where they will know his goodness and greatness and go on to live with him forever. And so joy and peace are with the even in the hardest of times—even when suffering unjustly. Because of what they have learned about God, they are confident and hopeful and do not indulge thoughts of rejection, failure, and hopelessness, because they know better. Will (spirit, heart): Looking a little deeper we find that these children of the light really are devoted to doing what is good and right. Their will is habitually attuned to it, just as their mind and emotions are habitually homing in on God. They are attentive to rightness, to kindness, to helpfulness, and they are purposefully knowledgeable about life, about what people need, and about how to do what is right and good in appropriate ways. These are people who do not think of themselves and what they want, and they really care very little, if at all, about getting their own way. “Let each of you regard one another as more important than oneself; do not look for your own personal interests, but for the interest of others,” reports Philippians 2.3-4. These are easy and good words to them. They are abandoned to God’s will and do not struggle and deliberate as to whether they will do what they know to be wrong. They do not hesitate to do what they know to be right. It is the obvious thing to do. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Body: That, of course, involves their body. They body has come over to the side of their will to do good. It is constantly poised to do what is right and good without thinking. And that also means that it does not automatically move into what is wrong, even contrary to their resolves and intentions, before they can think to not do it. It is no longer true of them that their “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” reports Matthew 26.41. They know by experience that these words of Jesus are not a declaration about the inevitable condition of humans, but a diagnosis of a condition to be corrected. The Spirit has substantially taken over their “members.” Consequently, we do not see them always being trapped by what their tongue, facial expressions, eyes, hands, and so on have already done before they can think. For their body and its parts are consecrated to serve God and are habituated to be his holy instruments. They instinctively avoid the paths of temptation. The bodies of these people look different. There is a freshness about them, a kind of quiet strength, and a transparency. They are rested and playful in a bodily strength that is from God. He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead has given life to the bodies through his Spirit that dwells in them. Social relations: In their social relations to others, they are completely transparent. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Because they walk in goodness the children of the light do not have use for darkness, and they achieve real contact of fellowship with others—especially other apprentices of Jesus. “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin,” reports 1 John 1.7. And “The one who loves one’s brothers and sisters abides in the light and there is no cause of offence in him,” reports 1 John 2.10. They do not conceal their thoughts and feelings (nor do they impose them upon everyone). Because of their confidence in God, they do not try to manipulate and manage others. Needless to say, in their social contexts they do not go on the attack or on the hunt, intending to use or other others. Moreover, the children of the light are completely noncondemning, while at the same time they will not participate in evil. They pay it only attention absolutely required in social setting, and beyond that, patient and joyful nonparticipation is the rule. They know how to really “be there” (wherever “there” is) without sharing in evil, as was true of Jesus himself. (Of course, as with him, others may disapprove of the “being there, and there are always some occasions where one should just step away). However, the children of light do not reject or distance themselves from the people who may be involved in such situations. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The children of the light know how to “love the sinner and hate the sin” gracefully and effectively. Soul: Furthermore, as you come to know these people—though those who know only the human powers of the flesh will never be able to understand them (1 Corinthians 2.14)—you see that all of the above is not just at the surface. It is deep, and in a certain obvious sense, it is effortless. It flows. That is, the things we have been describing are not things the children of light are constantly trying hard to do, gritting their teeth an carrying on. Instead, these are features of life that well up out of a soul that is at home in God. This is the outcome of spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Again, it does not mean perfect, but it does mean we have here a person whose soul is whole: a person who, though the internalized integrity of the law of God and the administrations of the gospel and the Spirit, has a restored soul. Such a soul effectively interfaces God and the full person and enables every aspect of the self to function as God intended. God, you have given all peoples on common origin. It is your will that they be gathered together as one family in yourself. Fill the hearts of humankind with fire of your love and with the desire to ensure justice for all. By sharing the good things you give us, may we secure an equality for all our brothers and sisters throughout the World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

May there be an end to division, strife and war. May there be a dawning of a truly human society built on love and peace. We ask this in your name. Lord, please bring us safely and without detour to your Kingdom, to the landing place before the great city where the Lord of Love rules. Bring us before one who sits on his throne. Make our names known to You and your angels. Please make smooth the way, please open the doors, please clear the path, unlock the gates. We are on a great journey. Stand by us until we are safely home! Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving, sing praises upon the hard unto our God. God covers the Heavens with clouds, He prepares rain for the Earth, He makes grass to grow on the hills. God gives to the beast its food, and to the young ravens when they cry. God delights not in the strength of the horse; nor takes pleasure in the vigour of humans. The Lord takes pleasure in them that revere Him, in them that hope for His mercy. Glorify the Lord, O America; praise thy God, O America. For He has made strong the bars of thy gates; He has blessed thy children within thee. God makes peace within they borders; God gives thee abundantly of the fat of wheat. God sends out His commandment to the Earth; His word goes speedily forth. For redemption of our souls, Lord hear our prayers. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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January 26, 2021 1:54 am

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus, Deus Aderit!

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The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. The Sanskrit word mandala means “circle” in the ordinary sense of the word. In the sphere of religious practices and in psychology it denotes circular images, which are drawn, painted, modelled, or danced. Plastic structures of this kind are to be found, for instance, in Tibetan Buddhism, and as dance figures these circular pattern occur also in Dervish monasteries. As psychological phenomena they appear spontaneously in dreams, in certain states of conflict, and in cases of schizophrenia. Very frequently they contain a quaternity of multiple of four, in the form of a cross, a star, a square, an octagon, et cetera. In alchemy we encounter this motif in the form of the quadratura circuli. In Tibetan Buddhism the figure has the significance of a ritual instrument (yantra), whose purpose is to assist meditation and concentration. Its meaning in alchemy is somewhat similar, inasmuch as it represents the synthesis of four elements which are forever tending to fall apart. It is at the same tie an image of God and is designated as such. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

The innermost divine essence of humans, is characterized by symbols which can just as well express a God-image, namely the image of Deity unfolding in the World, nature, and in humans. When God is not acknowledged, egomania develops, and out of this mania comes sickness. The fact that images of this kind have under certain circumstances a considerable therapeutic effect on their authors is empirically proved and also readily understandable, in that they often represent very bold attempts to see and put together apparently irreconcilable opposites and bridge over apparently hopeless spirts. Even the mere attempt in this direction usually has a healing effect, but only when it is done spontaneously. Nothing can be expected from an artificial repetition or a deliberate imitation of such images. Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit (invoked or not invoked, the God will be present). It is not a matter of indifference whether one calls something “mania” or a “god.” To serve a mania is detestable and undignified, but to serve a god is full of meaning and promise because it is an act of submission to a higher, invisible, and spiritual being. Religion seizes control of the human subject, who is always rather its victim than its creator. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The numinosum, that is, a dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will, whatever its cause may be, is an experience of the subject independent of one’s will. At all events, religious teaching as well as the consensus gentium always and everywhere explain this experience as being due to a cause external to the individual. The numinosum is either a quality belonging to a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. This is, at any rate, the general rule. There are, however, certain exceptions when it comes to the question of religious practice or ritual. A great many ritualistic performances are carried out for the sole purpose of producing at will the effect of the numinosum by means of certain devices of a magical nature, such as invocation, incantation, sacrifice, meditation and other yoga practices, self-inflicted tortures of various descriptions, and so forth. However, a religious belief in an external and objective divine cause is always prior to any such performance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The Catholic Church, for instance, administers the sacraments for the purpose of bestowing their spiritual blessings upon the believer; but since this act would amount to enforcing the presence of divine grace by an indubitably magical procedure, it is logically argued that nobody can compel divine grace to be present in the sacramental act, but that it is nevertheless inevitably present since the sacrament is a divine institution which God would not have to be if he had not intended to lend it his support. Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, that are conceived as “powers”: spirits, daemons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals, or whatever name humans have given to such a factors in their World as one has found powerful, dangerous, or help enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough to be devoutly worshipped and loved. In colloquial speech one often says of somebody who is enthusiastically interested in a certain pursuit that one is almost “religiously devoted” to one’s cause. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

I want to make it clear that by the term “religion” I do not mean creed. Religion is that which gives reverence and worship to some higher nature [which is called divine]. It is, however, true that every creed is originally based on the one hand upon trust, or loyalty, the experience of the numinosum and on the other hand upon faith and confidence in a certain experience of a numinous nature and in the change of consciousness that ensures. The conversation of Paul is a striking example of this. We might say, than, that the term “religion” designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinsum. If we allow ourselves to draw conclusions from modern mandalas we should ask people, first, whether they worship stars, suns, flowers, and snakes. They will deny this, and at the same time they will asset that the globes, stars, crosses, and the like are symbols for a center in themselves. And if asked what they mean by this center, they will begin to stammer and to refer to this or that experience which may turn out to be something very similar to the confession of my patient, who found that the vision of one’s World clock had left one with a wonderful feeling of perfect harmony. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Others will confess that a similar vision came to them in a moment of extreme pain or profound despair. To others again it is the memory of a sublime dream or of a moment when long and fruitless struggles came to an end and a reign of peace began. If you sum up what people tell you about their experiences, you can formulate it this way: They came to themselves, they could accept themselves, they were able to become reconciled to themselves, and thus were reconciled to adverse circumstances and event. This is almost like what used to be expressed by saying: He has made his peace with God, he has sacrificed his own will, he has submitted himself to the will of God. A modern mandala is an involuntary confession of a peculiar mental condition. There is no deity in the mandala, nor is there any submission or reconciliation to a deity. The place of the deity seems to be taken by the wholeness of human beings. When one speaks of humans, everybody means one’s own ego—and when one speaks of others one assumes that they have a very similar personality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

However, since modern research has acquainted us with the fact that individual consciousness is based on and surrounded by an indefinitely extended unconscious psyche, we must needs revise our somewhat old-fashioned prejudice that humans are nothing but their consciousness. This naïve assumption must be confronted at once with the critical question: Whose consciousness? The fact is, it would be a difficult task to reconcile the picture I have of myself with the one which other people have of me. Who is right? And who is the real individual? If we go further and consider the fact that humans are also what neither one oneself nor other people know of one—and unknown something which can yet be proved to exist—the problem of identity becomes more difficult still. Indeed, it is quite impossible to define the extent and the ultimate character of psychic existence. When we speak of humans we mean the indefinable whole of one, an ineffable totality, which can only be formulated symbolically. I have chosen the term “self” to designate the totality of human, the sum total of their conscious and unconscious contents. I have chosen this term in accordance with Easter philosophy, which for centuries as occupied itself with the problems that arise when even the gods cases to incarnate. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The World is as it ever has been, but our consciousness undergoes peculiar changes. First, in remote times (which can still be observed among primitives living today), the main body of psychic life was apparently in human and in nonhuman objects: it was projected, as we should say now. Consciousness can hardly exist in a state of complete projection. At most it would be a heap of emotions. Through the withdrawal of projections, conscious knowledge slowly developed. Science, curiously enough, began with the withdrawal, so to speak, of the most distant projections. This was the first stage in the despiritualization of the World. Once stop followed another: already in antiquity the gods were withdrawn from mountains and rivers, from trees and animals. Modern science has subtilized its projections to an almost unrecognizable degree, but our ordinary life still swarms with them. You can find them spread out in the newspapers, in books, on social media, rumours, and ordinary social gossip. All gaps in our actual knowledge are still filled out with projections. We are still so sure we know wat other people think or what their true character is. We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves or that they practise all those vices which could, of course, never be our own. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

We must still be exceedingly careful not to project our own shadows too shamelessly; we are still swamped with projected illusions. If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all these projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a considerable shadow. Such an individual has saddled oneself with new problems and conflict. One has become a serious problem to oneself, as one is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. One lives in the “House of Gathering.” Such a human knows that whatever is wrong in the World is in oneself, and if one only learns to deal with one’s own shadow one has done something real for the World. One has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day. These problems are mostly so difficult because they are poisoned by mutual projections. When one does not even see oneself and the darkness one unconsciously carries with one into all dealings how can anyone see straight? #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Modern psychological development leads to a much better understanding as to what humans really consist of. The gods at first lived in superhuman power and beauty on top of snow-clad mountains or in the darkness of caves, woods, and seas. Later on they drew together into one god, and then that god became man. However, in our day even the God-man seems to have descended from his throne and to be dissolving himself in the common man. That is probably why his seat is empty. Instead, the common man suffers from a hybris of consciousness that borders on the pathological. This psychic condition in the individual corresponds by and large to the hypertrophy and totalitarian pretensions of the idealized State. In the same way that the Sate has caught the individual, the individual imagines that one has caught the psyche and holds her in the hollow of his hand. He is even making a science of her in the absurd supposition that the intellect, which is but a part and a function of the psyche, is sufficient to comprehend the much greater whole. In reality the psyche is the mother and the maker, the subject and even the possibility of consciousness itself. It reaches so far beyond the boundaries of consciousness that the latter could easily be compared to an island in the ocean. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

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Whereas the island is small and narrow, the ocean is immensely wide and deep and contains a life infinitely surpassing, in kind and degree, anything known on the island—so that if it is a question of space, it does not matter whether the gods are “inside” or “outside.” It might be objected that there is no proof that consciousness is nothing more than an island in the ocean. Certainly it is impossible to prove this, since the known range of consciousness is confronted with the unknown extension of the unconscious, of which we only know that it exists and by the very fact of its existence exerts a limiting influence on consciousness and is freedom. Wherever unconsciousness reigns, there is bondage and possession. The immensity of the ocean is simply a comparison; it expresses in allegorical form the capacity of the unconscious to limit and threaten consciousness. Empirical psychology loved, until recently, to explain the “unconscious” as mere absence of consciousness—the term itself indicated as much—just as shadow is an absence of light. Today accurate observation of unconscious processes has recognized, with all other ages before us, that the unconscious possesses a creative autonomy such as a mere shadow could never be endowed with. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

When Dr. Carus, Dr. von Hartmann and, in a sense, Dr. Schopenhauer equated the unconscious with the World-creating principle, they were only summing up all those teachings of the past which, grounded in inner experience, saw the mysterious agent personified as the gods. The Universe’s first principle, be it called God with the religionists or energy with the scientists, is beyond the power of human understanding. At its very best it can know only its own reaction to the Principle. The Biblical announcement “I Am That I Am” is easier understood as “I Am As I Am.” It can have no other meaning that the uniqueness and incomprehensibility of God. For every attempt to being God within the range of the intellectual always fails, and every attempt to being God within the range of the imagination merely symbolizes. If, then, the original sentence is to be understood still more easily, let us read it as: “I am THAT which knows all and sees all, but can be known and seen by none.” The atheist says, “God is nowhere!” The mystic says, “God is here!” The philosopher says, “God is!” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Human’s mental apparatus being so limited, the truths one conceives through it must be limited too. One cannot possibly know what God is like but only that God—some sort of higher power—is. The Bible’s phrase wherein God is self-described to Moses as “I am that I am” is more philosophically correct and more linguistically right, in the original Hebrew sense, if Englished as “I am what I shall be.” It was one’s consciousness of being untied with this timeless pre-existent as well as ever-existence Life that enabled Jesus to announce: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was I am.” “I am that I am,” was the revelation of God to the Hebrew Master, Moses. “That I am,” was the revelation of God to the anonymous Hindu Master of the Upanishads. All verbal definitions of the World-Mind are inevitably limited and inadequate. If the statements here made seem to be of the nature of strict and rigid doctrines it is because of the inadequacy of language to convey more subtle meaning. They who read these lines with intuitive insight allied to clear thinking will see that the concepts are flexible verbal frames for holding thought steady in that borderland of human consciousness where thinking verges on wordless knowing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

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The first great truth is that a Supreme Mind minds the Universe. All scientific evidence indicates that there is a single power which presides over the entire Universe, and all religious mystic experience and philosophic insight confirms it. Not only is this so, but this power also maintains the Universe; its intelligence is unique, matchless, incredible. This power is what I call the World-Mind, the Mind of God. “You were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), verifying what is pleasing to the Lord,” Ephesians 5.8-11. The simple program of Christ for winning the whole World is to make each person one touches magnetic enough with love to draw others. The significance of human life upon the Earth must either be very small or very great. Very small from the strictly natural point of view. If we represent Earth’s history on a twenty-four-hour clock, from midnight to midnight, then according to the evolutionary story, our remotest human ancestors appeared at 11.59 P.M., and what we call the “civilization” of the last several thousand years is represented as the pop of a flashbulb at midnight. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

By any account, if the future of the Earth’s surface resembles its astonishing past, and from the merely scientific point of view, the Earth will not support human society for any long period of time (in cosmic terms). God’s purposes for human history, as set forth in the Bible, are of course quite another matter. According to the biblical picture, the function of human history is to bring forth an immense community of people, from “every nation and tribe and tongue and people,” reports Revelation 14.6, who will be a kingdom of persists under God (Revelation 1.6, 5.10; Exodus 19.6), and who for some period of time in the future will actually govern the Earth under him (Revelation 5.10). They will also, beyond that, reign with him in the eternal future of the cosmos, forever and ever (Revelation 22.5). These people will, together as a living community, form a special dwelling place for God. It will be one that allows one’s magnificence to be known and gratefully accepted by all of creation through all of the ages (Ephesians 2.7; 3.10; Philippians 2.9-11). What the human heart now vaguely senses should be, eventually will be, in the cosmic triumph of Christ and his people. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

And those who have fully taken on the character of Christ—those “children of light” in Saint Paul’s language—will in eternity be empowered by God to do what they want, as free creative agents. And it will always harmonize perfectly with God’s own purposes. Spiritual formation in Christlikeness during our life here on Earth is a constant movement toward this eternal appointment God placed upon each of us in our creation—the “kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the World” (Matthew 25.34; see also Luke 19.17). This movement forward is now carried on through our apprenticeship to Jesus Christ. It is a process of character transformation toward complete trustworthiness before God. God loves all things that He has made, and amongst them rational creatures more, and of these especially those who are members of His only—begotten Son Himself. Since to love a thing is to will it good, in a twofold way anything may be loved more, or less. In one way on the part of the act of the will itself, which is more or less intense. In this way God does not love some things more than others, because He loves all things by an act of the will that is one, simple, and always the same. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

In another way on the part of the good itself that a person wills for the beloved. In this way we are said to love that one more than another, for whom we will greater good, though our will is not more intense. In the ways we must needs say that God loves some things more than others. For since God’s love is the cause of goodness in things, as has been said, no one thing would be better than another, if God did not will greater good for one than for another. God is said to have equally care of all, not because by His care He deals out equal good to all, but because He administers all things with a like wisdom and goodness. The good that God wills for his creatures, is not the divine essence. Therefore there is no reason why it may not vary in degree. To understand and to will denote the act alone, and do not include in their meaning objects from the diversity of which God may be said to know or will more or less, as has been said with respect to God’s love. Father of All, please absorb our spirits back into your essence. There, please reshape us in your place of molding, preparing us for the Kingdom of Heaven. “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed,” reports Revelation 15.3-4. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

We are preparing the kingdom to be delivered to the Saviour when he comes in the clouds of Heaven. When the kingdom has been adequately prepared, Jesus will come again. It has always been my feeling that when the trump of God shall sound and the righteous dead shall sound and the righteous dead shall come forth, it will be the lifters and not the leaners that the Saviour will call forth to help one in preparing his kingdom. Salvation in its true and full meaning is synonymous with exaltation or eternal life and consists in gaining an inheritance in the highest of the three Heavens within the celestial kingdom. With few exceptions this is the salvation of which the scriptures speak. It is the salvation which the saints seek. Hallelujah. It is good to sing praises unto our God; it is pleasant and befitting to praise Him. The Lord restores America, He gathers together the dispersed of America; He heals the broken in heart, binding up their wounds. He calls them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite. The Lord upholds the humble; He brings low the wicked to the very ground. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Winchester Mystery House

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Mystery is a well-earned middle name for Sarah Winchester’s labyrinth mansion. Last year, a 90-year-old riddle was solved thanks to a combination of research and serendipity.

Inner Affinity Between Law and Soul–Greed is a Motive to which Hardly Anyone Dare to Confess!

All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human want directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth. If we are honest we have to admit that we will never fully know what happened to our ancestors in their journey towards modern humanity. To be governed by appetite … Continue reading →

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January 23, 2021 3:58 am

Ever as if Just Rising from a Sleep the Art of Making Happier Relationships Has Still to be Achieved!

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words….It can shout the truth where words lie. Occasionally we should allow the trite to tease us into thought, for such old friends, the cliches in our life, are the only strangers we know. Conformist aggression comprises various acts of aggression that are performed not because the aggressor is driven by the desire to destroy, but because one is told to do so and considers it one’s duty to obey orders. In all hierarchically structed societies obedience is perhaps the most deeply ingrained trait. Obedience is equated with virtue, disobedience with sin. To be disobedient is the arch crime from which all other crimes follow. Abraham was willing to kill his son out of obedience. Antigone is killed by Creon for her disobedience to the laws of the state. Armies, especially, cultivate obedience, since their very essence is built on an absolute reflex like acceptance of commands that precludes any questioning. The soldier who kills and maims, the bomber pilot who destroys thousands of lives in one moment, are not necessarily driven by a destructive or cruel impulse, but by the principle of unquestioning obedience. Conformist aggression is sufficiently widespread to deserve serious attention. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

I From the behaviour of boys and girls in a juvenile gang to that of soldiers in an army, many destructive acts are committed in order not to appear a coward, and out of obedience to orders. It is these motivations, and not human destructiveness, that are at the rot of this type of aggressive behaviour, which is often wrongly interpreted as indicating the power of innate aggressive impulses. Conformist aggression might as well have been classified as pseudoaggression; the reason for not doing so is that obedience as a consequence of the need to conform will in many cases mobilize aggressive impulse not to obey or not to conform constitutes for many a real threat, against which they defend themselves by performing the required aggressive act. People who are dependent on others may find themselves at the disposal of an exciting but often frustrating or rejecting person. What are the consequences for an individual locked into relationships with Frustrating Exciting or Rejecting Objects? The individual feels that the person they are dependent on does not care about them, not even about one’s love for the attachment person, and the individual somehow has to come to terms with this situation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

The individual may be angry. However, how can a dependent person dare to let its life depend on someone with whom it is angry, someone who appears to be already in a mod to be annoyed, frustrating and rejecting—someone who already sees the individual as in the wrong and deserving punishment? (Most caregivers feel like this toward the people they care for at times, so there is likely to become some ground for the individual’s worries to grow in—enough for them to be maintained once they have sprung up.) The individual who feels that its caregivers find its needs insufferable, will expect its anger to be even more interoperable to them. This will be a very worried and fearful individual. The process is an escalating one, for when fear becomes associated with the steps that lead to anger, signal anxiety sets in. When it wants what it knows it will not get, the individual will now be worried and frightened because this will make it feel disappointed and rejected, and that often makes it angry, and that will make the caregivers more rejecting. We are deeply concerned with the extent to which life can be frustrating, painful, and frightening for the dependent personality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

For people who are dependent, their daily lives may be a hell of terror and rage. Dependent people can be anyone from infants, children, women, men, senior citizens, the disabled, and even pets. A World of frequent arousal and disappointment is a painful World to live in; painful too is the accompanying experience of the self. It is a devastating experience to be in a relationship where you are mostly expressing your feelings to someone who does not care what they are, or is angry about them. There are distinguishable gradations in this misery. For start, there is the humiliation of having your feelings so depreciated. At a deeper level the shame, at having feelings which are not valued but rejected, can reduce an individual to a constant sense of worthlessness and destitution. One feel wicked, inferior, inadequate, and altogether wrong to be expecting so unjustifiably much, to be so demanding a nuisance. One may come to regard one’s own loving feelings as somehow shameful and bad, and may keep them to oneself so as not to lose altogether the sense of being loving (even if not lovable). At a deeper level still, the individual feels quite emptied—and experience of disintegration and imminent death. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

How can the individual find some protection against such feeling? By various splits in the imagery of itself and others. To disown your feelings is a kind of protection. A mature individual, with more firmly established self-structures, might perhaps be able to do this by distancing oneself from the memory that it had been excited and frustrated. However, in the very early stages of development, a worried individual may keep even the imagery of itself-capable-of-excitement split off and separate from other self-imagery—this knowledge of oneself as excitable is never integrated; those partial maps are not available. To protect oneself and individual may disown the knowledge of its own excitement, and of its own excitability, its own capacity to get excited and have hopes, needs, and wishes. The individual may disown the memory of having ever wanted what it could not get. One may cease to acknowledge any image of oneself as capable of wanting what one cannot get. That part of the map may be unavailable to the everyday World of the working models. Or, having kept away from the imagery which goes with itself wanting nice things, the individual may conclude that there is something wrong with what appears nice and satisfying. Like how many people say they do not like McMansions in the suburbs or Germany cars, for example, when what is wrong is, they cannot afford them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

Because some people cannot have things they want, it becomes a belief to them that everyone is wrong to want nice things. One may even conclude that satisfaction is bad. The individual may take another course to protect oneself from the idea that the World is a bad place. One may disown not just aspects of one’s own feelings, but aspects of the World of other people and things. One may make splits in the World of others. Where frustrating, exciting, and rejecting relationships predominate, the individual develops that idea that the way people relate to each other is arousing and exciting but not satisfying, or that people are at heart angry with themselves and each other, and that what happens to wishes and hopes is that they get disappointed and denied. These discoveries may be too painful to hold on to, and so the individual may keep them apart from other aspects of one’s experience of the World. Also kept apart may be the information (potentially there, because it registered when it happened) that there are satisfying things and people; acknowledging this would bring with it the knowledge that good things are being withheld, that good people have gone away. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Anger augments these processes. For when an individual experiences its grown-ups as unloving and rejecting, one may feel anger. This one will fear to express lest one’s anger makes them more rejecting than ever and thus increases their “badness” (by making them more real in the individual’s eyes as “bad objects”). Or the individual may fear that one’s anger will make them less loving and thus less capable of being “good objects.” The individual, perhaps already angry in one’s hurt frustration, may fear that one’s very recognition of one’s attachment figure’s lack of love and care is the hostile act which will destroy their goodness. (This incidentally provides a good example of the fear of anger acting as a signal anxiety, warning us to keep something that is there in front of our eyes.) By controlling its imagery, the individual tries to control its World. If such an individual is tempted to transfer one’s lovingness to the World of “inner objects,” small wonder. An inner object is an image or representation of a person, something that is significant to the individual such as a person who is an object of attachment, and is experiences as an embodied presence within the mind. Having made the transfer, the individual feels love, and phantasizes about it, and about the people one loves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Perhaps one even feels oneself loved—or, rather, perhaps one maintains a phantasy of oneself as loved by a phantasy attachment figure. However, none of this is given expression in a way another person can know about. There may be a vivid life of remembering, thinking, imagining, planning, even suffering—but in phantasy, not now, not here, involving only phantasy objects in a phantasy World. The individual has withdrawn from the World which id mediated through the senses. There is a state of mind in which life is so grim that the sense are dulled and messages from the World of other people and things do not penetrate: nothing sensory is processed into the state of organized clarity which lets the World and other people and things do not penetrate: nothing sensory is processed into the state of organized clarity which lets the World of other people and things break through. Instead, the person experiences life in terms of a set of selectively organized phantasies: “Exciting Objects,” “Rejecting Objects,” “Ideal Objects.” One might suppose this phantasy World to be a haven of reciprocal love and care. To some extent this may be so, but when children or adults come to psychotherapy because of the straits in which they find themselves, it is usually discovered that this inner World is not a happy one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Phantasies are not necessarily agreeable. They can be very nasty and unsustaining. However, they have one use for the damaged individual (in us all): they are familiar and they set us more manageable problems than we think real life will set us. If we ever had a dream in which we went through some events, thought “Oh I do not like that,” and redreamt the events with differences which made the story more acceptable to us, many of us have had experience of managing our phantasies. When we feel very powerless and vulnerable, for most of us, phantasy objects are probably more controllable than everyday people, and this feels good at times. Concepts and images are more amenable—or so it would seem from a disadvantaged position—than parents, teachers, bosses, spouses. The schizoid reaction is one in which the cowed personality withdraws as far as possible, from actual relationships with uncontrollable people and events to phantasied relationships with rather more abstract figures. The schizoid state is not an aspect of an inevitable developmental position, but a fear-dictated flight from object-relations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

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A person’s inner World may be full of tension, dominated by daydreams about self-sacrifice, unrequited love, underserved blame, and punishment. Small wonder, if these were the main relationships which the individual could make: the individual needs attachments, and will make painful relationships rather than none at all. Even when, later, a person learns that relationships can be happier relationships has still to be achieved, the pain of having had bad relationships has still to be lived with: tolerated and integrated, not disowned or flinched from. And alas, happier experiences subsequent to the initial damage sometimes have relatively little effect on long-established structures—the very understanding of what they are, or should be, and of what relationships other people enjoy, can be highly distorted. The phantasy World gives us an opportunity to disown to some extent both the World of other people and things, and our own unwelcome thoughts, memories, and feelings. Hence it is very hard to renounce phantasy-relationships with phantasy-objects, and to risk making relationships with real people again, who are unknow, who may be very rewarding but also may be very hateful, whose possibilities have to be discovered, not invented. Moral principles are the object of relation choice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Moral principle defines the moral law that humans can rationally will to govern their conduct in an ethical commonwealth. More philosophy becomes the study of the conception and outcome of a suitably defined rational decision. This idea has immediate consequences. For once we think of moral principles as legislation for a kingdom of ends, it is clear that these principles must not only be acceptable to all but public as well. This moral legislation is to be agreed to under conditions that characterize humans as free and equal rational beings. An attempt to interpret this conception is the description of the original position which states: that first guarantee is the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. The second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and positions of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

When the principles of one’s actions are chosen by one as the most adequate possible expression of one’s nature as a free and equal rational being, that person is acting autonomously. The principles one acts upon are not adopted because of one’s social position or natural endowments, or in view of the particular kind of society in which one lives or the specific things that one happens to want. To act on such principles is to act heteronomously (subject to a law or standard external to itself). Now veil of ignorance (a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision making by denying those who make verdicts about a situation or person or group access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options) deprives the person in the original position of knowledge that would enable them to choose heteronomous principles. The parties arrive at their choice together as free and equal rational persons knowing only that those circumstances obtain which give rise to the need for principles of justice. This is also what God wanted. God’s most precious gifts to humans is the principle of free agency—the privilege of choice which was introduced by God the Eternal Father to all his spirit children in the premortal state. This occurred in the great council in Heaven before the peopling of this Earth. The children of God were endowed with freedom of choice while yet but spirit beings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

The divine plan provided that humans be freeborn in the flesh and become heirs to the inalienable birthright of liberty to choose and act for themselves in mortality. It was essential for their eternal progression that they be subjected to the influences of both good and evil. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so…righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad,” reports 2 Nephi 2.11. To see if we will choose the right and do all things whatsoever the Lord our God shall command us, as sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we have this gift of free agency to use in our mortal lives. We must be tried, tested, and proved. As spirit children of God, we have built-in powers of conscience sufficient to develop our free agency in right choices and to acquire in right choices and to acquire qualities of goodness, humility, and integrity of purpose. When persons act on these principles they are acting in accordance with principles that they would chose as rational and independent persons in an original position of equality. The principles of their actions do not depend upon social or natural contingencies, nor do they reflect the bias of the particulars of their plan of life or the aspirations that motivate them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

By acting from these principles of justice, persons express their nature as free and equal rational beings subject to the general condition of human life. If this nature were the decisive determining element, for one to express one’s nature as a being of a particular kind is to act on the principles that would be chosen. Of course, the choice of parties in the original position is subject to the restrictions of that situation. However, when knowingly acting on the principles of justice in the ordinary course of events, we deliberately assume the limitations of the original position. One reason for doing this, for persons who can do so and want to, is to give expression to one’s nature. The two principles of justice are the principle of equal liberty and the difference principle. Principle of equal liberty states that each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. Difference principle states that social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity. The argument for the two principles of justice does not assume that the parties have particular ends, but only that they desire certain primary goods. These are things that it is rational to want whatever else one wants. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Thus given human nature, wanting certain primary goods is part of being rational; and while each is presumed to have some conception of the good, nothing is known about one’s final ends. The preference for primary goods is derived, then, from only the most general assumptions about rationality and the conditions of human life. To act from the principles of justice is to act from categorical imperatives in the sense that they apply to us whatever in particular our aims are. This simply reflects the fact that no such contingencies appear as premises in the derivation. When they act from the moral law, humans realize their true selves, whereas if they permit their actions to be determined by sensuous desires or contingent aims, they become subject to law of nature. The lives of the saint and the scoundrel are equally the outcome of free choice (on the part of the noumenal self) and equally the subject of causal laws (as a phenomenal self). Thus is a person realizes one’s true self by expressing it in one’s actions, and if one desires above all else to realize this self, then one will choose to act from principles that manifest one’s nature as a free and equal rational being. The moral law expresses our nature in indefinable ways that acting from contrary principles does not. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

The parties qua noumenal selves have complete freedom to choose whatever principles they wish; but they also have a desire to express their nature as rational and equal members of the intelligible realm with precisely this liberty to choose, that is, as beings who can look at the World in this way and express this perspective in their life as members of society. They must decide, then, which principles when consciously followed and acted upon in everyday life will best manifest this freedom in their community, most fully reveal their independence from natural contingencies and social accident. Now if the argument of the contract doctrine is correct, which provides that a contract cannot confer rights or impose obligations upon any person who is not a part to the contract, then these principles are indeed those defining the moral law, or more exactly, the principles of justice for institutions and individuals. The description of the original position interprets the point of view of noumenal selves, of what it means to be a free and equal rational being. Our nature as such beings is displayed when we act from the principles we would choose when this nature is reflected in the conditions determining the choice. Thus humans exhibit their freedom, their independence from the contingencies of nature and society, by acting in ways they would acknowledge the original position. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with a liberty to choose. It is for this reason that the failure to act on the moral law gives rise to shame and not to feelings of guilt. And this is appropriate, since acting unjustly is acting in a manner that fails to express our nature as free and equal rational beings. Such actions therefore strike at our self-respect, our sense of our own worth, and the experience of this loss is shame. We have acted as though we belong to a lower order, as though we were a creature whose first principles are decided by natural contingencies. Liberty is acting in accordance with a law that we give reason to ourselves. And this leads not to a morality of austere command but to an ethic of mutual respect and self-esteem. I have assumed that all along, parties know that they are subject to the conditions of human lie. Being in the circumstances of justice, they are situated in the World with other humans who likewise face limitations of moderate scarcity and competing claims. Human freedom is to be regulated by the principles chosen in the light of these natural restrictions. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Thus justice as fairness is a theory of human justice and among its premises are the elementary facts about persons and their place in nature. The freedom of pure intelligences not subject to these constraints, and freedom of God, are outside the scope of the theory. However, it might appear that this doctrine was meant to be applied to all rational beings as such and therefore to God and the angels as well. If, when we say that God is good, we really mean it in the circumscribed sense of the word, we would thereby imply that God could be better also—in which case Gid would no longer be God, being a changeable being, an improvable being. It was Dr. Spinoza’s defect that he failed to perceive that the ultimate principle baffles such positive description and transcends such nameable attributes as “good.” He fell into it through allowing his overly mathematical intellect to unduly tip the balance against his mystical intuition. His God had different qualities, even though their number was infinite. This made it a limited God. There is no way of describing the mysterious principle behind all existence that will be a correct way. Words drawn from the language of finite human creatures are inapplicable to the infinite principle that transcends those creatures. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

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If we do use words here, it is only for the sake of literary convince and with a presupposed understanding of their relativity, not for their literalness. Sometimes we think so small. We limit our possibilities and potential. When God sees you, He sees all your potential. God knows what you are capable of. His grace and favour in your life enable you to become what He sees. However, first you have to take the limits off of God and your life. “He raised us up together with Him…that He might clearly demonstrate through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless surpassing) riches of His free grace (His unmerited favour),” reports Ephesians 2.6-7. When we choose thought of faith and expectancy, we are opening the gates for God t work in extraordinary ways. We are taking the limits off. This gives God the opportunity to multiply what we have in our hands. We must choose God’s thoughts of victory. Choose thoughts of increase and blessings. As we do this, our lives we receive an abundance of blessings. On behalf of the truth we must make bold to say even this, that God, the cause of all things, by His abounding love and goodness, is placed outside Himself by His providence for all existing things. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

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Although creatures have not existed from eternity, expect in God, yet because they have been in Him from eternity, God has known them eternally in their proper natures; and for that reason has loved them, even as we, by the images of things within us, know things existing in themselves. Now, everything in the Scriptures goes against spurning the law. Jesus himself identified those who love him as the ones who keep his commandments (John 14.23-24). John said bluntly, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3.4). Paul, equally bluntly, “Abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5.22). And Jesus again, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6.46). Paul made a major point of explaining that “what the law could not do [namely, secure human conformity to itself by its own power] because of the weakness of human abilities, God brought about by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by condemning sin in the flesh [showing it up for the imposter it is, on its own turf], in order that what the law requires might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk in terms of the flesh, but in terms of the spirit,” reports Romans 8.3-4. The presence of the Spirit of grace is not meant to set the law aside, but to enable conformity to it from an inwardly transformed personality. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

We walk in the spirit of the law and the letter naturally follows as is appropriate. You cannot separate spirit from law, though you must separate spirit and law from legalism—righteousness in terms of actions. The law by itself kills off any hope of rightness and righteousness through human ability and effort, but it kindles hope in God ever brighter as we walk in the law through Christ in us the hope of glory (Colossians 1.27). Grace does not set law aside except on the one point of justification, of acceptance before God. To the contrary, law is itself a primary manifestation of grace and is raised above legalism to a primary instrument of spiritual transformation in union with “the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” Law comes with grace into the renewed soul. There is no such thing as grace without law. Even in human relationships, if it is to be graciousness, graciousness must have an order. It is not some formless blob of ecstatic indulgence. Grace has to do with life, not just forgiveness, and life requires order. The order of redeemed life is expressed in the Word of God in the fullest sense of the phrase, including the moral law. You are journeying across the divining water that lies between this World and the next carried away by the ferryman on your way. Look ahead of you, do not look behind. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

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Look ahead of you, where your destiny lies. Do you see them? They are there, ahead of you on the other shore. Slowly, the become visible to you; the shining ones appear slowly out of the concealing mists. Clearly they appear to you, though hidden from our eyes. Got to them, they welcome you. Go to them, not stopping for farewells. Holy Ones in the World beyond, please open wide your arms to receive this one who is journeying to you. Make one a home, bring one to rest. Farewell. We who have loved you wish you a good journey. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfil the desires of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserves all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all humans bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord, O my soul. I will praise the Lord as long a I live; I will sing praises unto my God while yet I have breath. Put not trust in princes, in a mere man in whom there is no help. When his breath departs, he returns to dust, in that every day his thoughts perish. Happy is one whose help is God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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January 22, 2021 1:44 am

The Earthquakelike Sense of Bewilderment and Confusion that Occurs as a Result!

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Do not despise hypocrites too much. See them through. They are sometimes a sign of what we should like to be. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the World. Incidentally, while a person’s conscious experience may be whole-object experience, a split may be maintained at less conscious and more primitive levels. Original individuality has been lost through a process called “identification,” a process which does indeed exist. However, what we must allow for is that there are people whose individuality and selfhood have never been established. False Selves present an appearance of individuality, with those who have an individual self but on occasion regress back to a state of mind in which they are still merged with another being, under their guidance, control, and influence. This is because people have an original wholeness which is split into parts—also known as ego-splitting. They are seeking to merge with another being, physically and mentally, not necessarily sexually, and take on characteristics of those they bond with. The excitement, the frustration, the hostility, the lack of hope are there, so is the bad self-imagery and the bad object-imagery. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The individual may well feel self-reproach on one day, blame the World on another occasion, and just feel mopey or angry at yet another times. Many people live in a life in which self, other, and relationship have not been tidily separated. To distinguish between them is hard work. The reason is that originally the experiences come in basic units, basic units in which self and other have not yet differentiated. We, the observers, see something of the excited individual and the exciting but frustrating World around one, but the individual’s experience is one of alternating excitement and disappointment, in which there is as yet little or no consciousness, let alone self-consciousness and perception of the other person in a mutual relationship. We are not nearly as good at keeping self, other, and situation conceptually and verbally distinct as we like to think. At a more primitive level, we may entertain the possibility that such frustrating, exciting relationships come about when separation-anxiety has gone past some critical point of tolerance, when the attachment figure was needed and not available. This makes a person experience a black hole, an agonizing place where an attachment should have been. And the individual can make no distinction about where the distress is coming from. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

One is thinking with a state of mind which is not yet sufficiently structure or has been damaged by injury or substance abuse to the point the individual is not capable of the questions “Is this me or is it another?” “Am I wrong to expect help or is one wrong to withhold?” “From whom does this excitement come, me or the other?” This is why some people fall prey to manipulative individuals, cults, and group think or pack mentality. Whereas normal adults would be able to see that a person is clearly not a good leader or is in some way deranged, people with a false sense of self are looking to bond, be loved, be accepted, and be coddled by someone. The feeling is in the basic unit, in self and other relationship. That self and others should be so easily confused, and so hard to tell apart, may seem amazing at first glance. An important source of defensive aggression is aggression as a reaction to any attempt to being repressed strivings and phantasies into awareness. This type of reaction is one of the aspects of what Dr. Freud called “resistance,” and it has been explored systematically by the psychoanalytic method. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Dr. Freud found if the analyst touched upon repressed material that individual would “resist” one’s therapeutic approach. This is not a matter of conscious unwillingness on the part of the individual or of dishonesty or of secretiveness; one is defending oneself against the discovery of the unconscious material without being away either of the material or of one’s resistance. There are many reasons why a person may repress certain strivings, often throughout one’s life. If one’s repressed impulses were known to others (or to oneself, in so far as self-respect and self-love are concerned), one might be afraid of being punished, of not being loved, or of being humiliated. Psychoanalytic therapy has shown the many different reactions resistance can generate. The individual can turn away from the sensitive topic and talk about something else; one can feel sleepy and tired; one can find a reason not to come to the interview—or one can become very angry against the analyst and find some reason to quite the analysis. Here is a brief example: a writer I was analyzing, who was proud of his lack of opportunism, told me during a session that he had changed a manuscript because he thought by this change, he would make a better case for his message. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

He thought he had made the right decision and was surprised that afterwards he felt somewhat depressed and had a headache. I suggested that his real motive probably was that he expected the changed version to be more popular and to result in more fame and money for him than the original one; furthermore, that his depressed mod and his headache probably had something to do with this act of self-betrayal. I hard hardly finished saying this when he jumped up shouting at me with intense rage that I was a sadist trying to cook his brain, that I enjoyed spoiling his anticipated pleasures, an envious man begrudging his future success, an ignorant man who knew nothing about his field of writing, and many more invectives. (It mut be noted that the individual was normally a very courteous man who, both before and after this outburst, treated me with respect.) He could hardly have done more to confirm my interpretation. The mention of his unconscious motivation was to him a threat to his self-image and to his sense of identity. He reacted to this threat with intense aggression, as if it were a threat to his body or property. The aggression in such cases has one aim: to destroy the witness who has the evidence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In psychoanalytic therapy one can observe with great regularity that resistance is being built up when repressed martial is touched. However, we are by no means restricted to the psychoanalytic situation in order to observe this phenomenon. Examples from daily life abound. Who has not seen the mother who reacts with fury when someone tells her she wants to keep her children close to her because she wants to possess and control them—and not because she loves them so much? Or a certain type of patriot who is reminded of the profit interest behind one’s political convictions? Or a certain type of revolutionary who is reminded of the personal destructive impulses being one’s ideology? In fact, questioning another’s motivation violates one of the most respected taboos of courtesy—and a very necessary one, inasmuch as courtesy has the function of minimizing arousal of aggression. Historically, the same thing happens. Those who told the truth about a particular regime have been exiled, jailed, or killed by those in power whose fury had been aroused. To be sure, the obvious explanation is that they were dangerous to their respective establishments, and that killing them seemed the best way to protect the status quo. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

This is true enough, but it does not explain the fact that the truth-sayers are so deeply hated even when they do not constitute a real threat to the established order. The reason lies, I believe, in that by speaking the truth they mobilize the resistance of those who repress it. To the latter, the truth is dangerous not only because it can threaten their power but because it shakes their whole conscious system of orientation, deprives them of their rationalizations, and might even force them to act differently. Only those who have experienced the process of becoming aware of important impulses that were repressed know the earthquakelike sense of bewilderment and confusion that occurs as a result. Not all people are willing to risk this adventure, least of all those who profit, at least for the moment, from being blind. The problem of paternalism deserves some discussion here, since it has been mentioned in the argument for equal liberty, and concerns a lesser freedom. In the original position (guarantees each citizens a robust package of liberal rights to such things as freedom of conscience, freedom to vote, and stand in elections, and rights to due process, and also ensures fair equality of economic opportunity as well as shares of income and wealth that are maximally beneficial to people with the least amount of income and wealth) the parties assume that in a free society they are rational and able to manage their own affairs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Therefore they do not acknowledge any duties to self, since this is unnecessary to further their good. However, once the ideal conception is chosen, they will want to insure themselves against the possibility that their powers are undeveloped and they cannot rationally advance their interests, as in the case of children; or that through some misfortune or accident they are unable to make decisions for their good, as in the cause of those seriously injured or mentally disturbed. It is also rational for them to protect themselves against their own irrational inclinations by consenting to a scheme of penalties that may give them a sufficient motive to avoid foolish actions and by accepting certain impositions designed to undo the unfortunate consequences of their imprudent behaviour. For these cases the parties adopt principles stipulating when others are authorized to act in their behalf and to override their present wishes if necessary; and this they do recognizing that sometimes their capacity to act rationally for their good may fail, or be lacking altogether. Thus the principles of paternalism are those that the parties would acknowledge in the original position to protect themselves against the weakness and infirmities of their reason and will in society. Others are authorized and sometimes required to act on our behalf and to do what we would do for ourselves if we were not rational, this authorization coming into effect only when we cannot look after our own good. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Paternalistic decisions are to be guided by the individual’s own settled preferences and interests insofar as they are not irrational, or failing a knowledge of these, by the theory or primary goods. The theory of primary goods are goods that are supposed to be desirable for every human being, just as they are also useful for them. Natural primary goods: this category includes intelligence, imagination, health, speed, et cetera. Social primary goods: this category includes rights (civil rights and political rights), liberties, income and wealth, the social basis of self-respect, et cetera. As we know less and less about a person, we act for one as we would act for ourselves from the standpoint of the original position. We try to get for one the things ne presumably wants whatever else one wants. We must be able to argue that with the development or the recovery of one’s rational powers the individual in question will accept our decision on one’s behalf and agree with us that we did the best thing for one. The requirement that the other person in due course accepts one’s condition is not, however, by any means sufficient, even if this condition is not one to rational criticism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Thus imagine two persons in full possession of their reason and will who affirm different religious or philosophical beliefs; and suppose that there is some psychological process that will convert each to the other’s view, despite the fact that the process is imposed on them against their wishes In due course, let us suppose, both will come to accept conscientiously their new beliefs. We are still not permitted to submit them to this treatment. Two further stipulations are necessary: paternalistic intervention must be the fact that the process is imposed on them against their wishes. In due course, let us suppose, both will come to accept conscientiously their new beliefs. We are still not permitted to submit them to this treatment. Two further stipulations are necessary: paternalistic intervention must be justified by the evident failure or absence of reason and will; and it must be guided by the principles of justice and what is known about the subject’s more permanent aims and preferences, or by the account of primary goods. These restrictions on the initiation and direction of paternalistic measures follow from the assumptions of the original position. The parties want to guarantee the integrity of their person and their final ends and beliefs whatever these are. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Paternalistic principles are a protection against our own irrationality, and must not be interpreted to license assaults on one’s convictions and character by any means so long as these offer the prospect of securing consent later on. More generally, methods of education must likewise honour these constraints. The force of justice as fairness would appear to arise from two things: the requirement that all inequalities be justified to the least advantaged, and the priority of liberty. This pair of constraints distinguishes it from intuitionism and teleological theories. Taking the preceding discussion into account, we can reformulate the first principle of justice and conjoin to it the appropriate priority rule. The changes and additions are, I believe, self-explanatory. The principle now reads as follow. First Principle—each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Priority Rule—the principles of justice are to be ranked in lexical order and therefore liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty. These are two cases: (a) a less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberty shared by all, and (b) a less than equal liberty must be accepted to those citizens with the lesser liberty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

It perhaps bears repeating that I have yet to give a systematic argument for the priority rule, although I have checked it out in a number of important cases. It appears to fit our considered convictions fairly well. However, an argument from the standpoint of the original position I postpone until the full force of the contract doctrine can be brought into play. Now, you have only to think for a moment to glance and see the behaviour of professing Christians currently to realize the practical outcome of holding the law and obedience to the law to be irrelevant to the life of faith in Christ. The basic practice in the New World of Christianity today is, I fear, strongly antinomian. Here is a true story from the current Christian scene. Test our theology on it: A human—a long-tie, faith church member—comes to his pastor and says, “I am going to divorce my wide and marry someone else.” The pastor, aghast, says, “You cannot do that! You are a devoted Christian, and so is your wife. Divorce in these circumstances is clearly wrong.” “Yes,” the man replies, “I know that, but I am going to do it anyway. I just cannot stand her any longer. I know it is wrong, but after it is all over I will ask God for forgiveness and he will forgive me. He must, because I believe that Christ died for me. That is what you teach.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

You can extend this to imaginary cases: murdering someone who “deserves it,” a once-in-a-lifetime, career-making, crooked deal, and so forth. How, precisely, does our version of salvation rule out a judicious use of sin? And, if one can hold such a use in reverse, what does growth in Christlikeness mean? Just something to think about. The cognitive faculty does not move except through the medium of the appetitive: and just as in ourselves the universal reason moves through the medium of the particular reason, so in ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it is called, moves through the medium of the sensitive appetite. Hence, in us the sensitive appetite is the proximate motive-force of our bodies. Some bodily change therefore always accompanies an act of the sensitive appetite, and this change affects especially the heart, which is the first principle of movement in terrestrial beings. Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. It is in this latter sense that they are in God. Hence, God rejoices by an operation that is one simple and for the same reason He loves without passions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

In the passions of the sensitive appetite there may be distinguished a certain material element—namely, the bodily change—and a certain formal element, which is on the part of the appetite. Thus in anger, the material element is the kindling of blood about the heart; but the formal, the appetite for revenge. Again, as regards the formal element of certain passions a certain imperfection is implied, as in desire, which is of the good we have not, and in sorrow, which is about the evil we have. This applies also to anger, which supposes sorrow. Certain other passions, however, as love and joy, imply no imperfection. Since therefore none of these can be attributed to God on their material side, as have been said; neither can those that even on their formal side imply imperfection be attributed to God; except metaphorically, and likeness of effect, as already show. Whereas, those that do not imply imperfection, such as love and joy, can be properly predicated of God, though without attributing passion to Him, as said before. An act of love always tends towards two things; to the good that one will and to the person for whom one wills it: since to love a person is to wish that person good. Hence, inasmuch as we love ourselves, we wish ourselves good; and, so far as possible, union with that good. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

So love is called the unitive force, even in God, yet without implying composition; for the good that God wills for Himself, is no other than Himself, Who is good by His essence, as above shown. And by the fact that anyone loves another, one wills good to that other. This one puts the other, as it were, in the place of oneself; and regards the good done to one as done to oneself. So far love is a binding force, since it aggregates another to ourselves, and refers one’s good to our own. And then again the divine love is a binding force, inasmuch as God wills good to others; yet it implies no composition in God. God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above that God’s will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God will some good. Hence since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will goo to anything, is not the cause of its goodness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

However, conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness. We are not to believe that the World-Mind deliberately directs the Universe consciously attends to every detail of its operation. That would be to turn it into a Big Human—and to minimize the powers of Mind. According to the simpler unintellectual religious views, the universe requires a Being to create it, then to maintain it, and lastly to guide it along a certain orderly way. This is the mistake all too often made by those who ask the age-old questions: they see that every creature’s life has a beginning, so they assume God must have had one to. However, the Life-Force which appears anew in every babe comes from God, its source, has always been and never began. Any other assumptions make Him like the creatures—finite—and is a false one that contradicts the very idea of God—the Infinite. Humans get no such treatment from life that one could believe it takes heed of one’s personal feelings. It treats one quite impersonally, as if it were itself quite impersonal. Thus the test of experience contradicts the belief in a person governor of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

If you discuss the concept of God as a creator, you discuss a personality. However, such must have a beginning and an end. If you discuss the concept of God as Impersonal, however, these limitations are n longer necessary part of it. We arrogantly superimpose our merely human ideas upon the Universal Mind and impertinently expect it to display anthropomorphic attributes, under the delusion that they are divine ones merely because they are displayed on a gigantic scale. It is inevitable that we believe that the Infinite Power works as we humans work but it is also fallacious. To think of God as a person is to think of a finite and imperfect being. God is a principle being. The Deity cannot be limited like a finite human being, using a personal will to achieve a particular end, or thinking a series of successive ideas that move through time. A less erroneous picture is that of the electronic computing machine, which performs millions of different operations in a single second. It is impossible for a rational mind to believe that the Infinite and Eternal Deity is subject to momentary changes of mind or suffers occasional lapses from continuance of the cosmic laws. The Greek conception of the World being directed by Intelligence is surely higher than the Hebrew belief in a capricious, jealous, and angry despot of a personal God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

God is Love and Justice, Wisdom and Truth and Law, attributes which have been worshipped by humans from ancient times. The God who magically creates and personally manages the Word, as separate from one, is the first simple concept of humans. The God of out of whose being the World beginningly and endlessly comes into birth is the next developed concept of more cultured humans. The notions of Deity which popular religion provides for its followers are well suited to the early stages of mental development but not to the more advanced ones. A child needs the comfort of living with its father and mother, but an adult becomes self-reliant enough to live on one’s own. The popular notions of God as a Father or as a Mother belong to the early stage and objectify God as some kind of glorified human being. They are human ideas picturing a human Deity. To this stage, too, belong not only the notions of a jealous, wrathful, or capricious God, but even those of a sentimental, kindly, emotional, elderly gentleman who is constantly hovering around listening to the prayers of his devotees—and then running off to fulfill their wishes or, according to his mood, refusing to do so. The maturer notion provided by philosophy will naturally seem cold, and cheerless to those who need the popular one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Dear Lord in Heaven, to you I pray, to you I call, as you sit between this World and the next: God of the in-between, to you my words go out. I ask for your help. Please grant me the courage to do what I must do. Please grant me the wisdom to understand its necessity. Please grant me the peace that you have found, the peace that is found in the land between the Worlds. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy might acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendor, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts; and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in Thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy faithful ones hall bless Thee. They shall declare the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of humans His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee, and thou gives them their food in due season. Thou opens Thy hand, and satisfies every living thing with favour. Salvation in its true and full meaning is synonymous with exaltation or eternal life and consists in gaining an inheritance in the highest of the three Heavens within the celestial kingdom. With few exceptions this is the salvation of which the scriptures speak. It is the salvation which the saints seek. “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” reports 2 Nephi 25.25. Justice demands that a penalty be paid for ever violation of the Lord’s laws. If these punsihments and rewards were not consistent throughout the Universe and in all of eternity, justice would be violated. Briefly stated, then, the law of justice is that for every violation of the law there is a punishment (ultimately suffering and misery), and for every obedience to the law there is a reward (ultimately joy and peace). Also embodies in the concept of justice is the idea that humans are punished only for those things of which they themselves are guilty. This would make it unjust to punish one human for another’s sin; likewise, if though ignorance or lack of accountability there is no guilt, it would be unjust to mete out punishment. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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January 20, 2021 11:02 pm

I am a Member of the Most Wonderful Group in the World!

Mind is like an ocean. The surface layers of the mind function actively while the deeper levels remain silent. When, in group narcissism, the object is not the individual but the group to which one belongs, the individual can be fully aware of it, and express it without any restrictions. The assertion that “my country” (or nation, or religion) is the most wonderful, the most cultured, the most powerful, the most cultured, the most powerful, the most peace-loving, et cetera, does not sound crazy at all; on the contrary, it sounds like the expression of patriotism, faith, and loyalty. It also appears to be a realistic and rational value judgment because it is shared by many members of the same group. This consensus succeeds in transforming the phantasy into reality, since for most people reality is constituted by general consensus and not based on reason or critical examination. Sometimes the consensus even of a small group suffices to create reality—in the most extreme cases even the consensus of two (folie a deux). Group narcissism has important functions. In the first place, it furthers the solidarity and cohesion of the group, and makes manipulation easier by appealing to narcissistic prejudices. Secondly, it is extremely important as an element giving satisfaction to the members of the group and particularly to those who have few other reasons to feel proud and worthwhile. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Even if one is the most miserable, the least affluent, the least respected member of a group, there is compensation for one’s miserable condition in feeling “I am a part of the most wonderful group in the World. I, who in reality am a worm, become a giant through belonging to the group.” Consequently, the degree of group narcissism is commensurate with the lack of real satisfaction in life. Those social classes which enjoy life more are less fanatical (fanaticism is a characteristic quality of group narcissism) than those which, like the lower middle classes, suffer from scarcity in all material and cultural areas and lead a life of unmitigated boredom. At the same time, fostering group narcissism is very inexpensive from the standpoint of the social budget; in fact, it costs practically nothing compared with the social expense required to raise the standard of living. Society has only to pay ideologists who formulate the slogans that generate social narcissism; indeed, many social functionaries, like school teachers, journalists, ministers, and professors, participate even without being paid, at least with money. They receive their reward from feeling proud and satisfied to be serving such a worthy cause—and through enhanced prestige and promotion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Those whose narcissism refers to their group rather than to themselves as individuals are as sensitive as the individual narcissists, and they react with rage to any wound, real or imaginary, inflicted upon their group. If anything, they react more intensely and certainly more consciously. An individual, unless one is mentally very sick, may have at least some doubts about one’s personal narcissistic image. The member of the group has none, since one’s narcissism is shared by the majority. In case of conflict between groups that challenge each other’s collective narcissism, this very challenge arouses intense hostility in each of them. The narcissistic image of one’s own group is raised to its highest point, while the devaluation of the opposing group sinks to the lowest. One’s own group becomes a defender of human dignity, decency, morality, and right. Devilish qualities are ascribed to the other group; it is treacherous, ruthless, cruel, and basically inhuman. The violation of one of the symbols of group narcissism—such as the flag, or the person of the emperor, the president, or an ambassador—is reacted to with intense fury and aggression by the people that they are even willing to support their leaders in a policy of war. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

Group narcissism is one of the most important sources of human aggression, and yet this, like all other forms of defensive aggression, is a reaction to an attack on vital interests. It differs from other forms of defensive aggression in that intense narcissism in itself is a semipathological phenomenon. In considering the causes and the functions of Moslems at the time of the partition of India or recently between Bengali Moslems and their Pakistani rulers, group narcissism certainly plays a considerable role; if we appreciate the fact that we are dealing here with virtually the most least affluent and most miserable populations anywhere in the World, this is not surprising. However, certainly narcissism is not the only cause of these phenomena. Aristotle remarks that it is a peculiarity of humans that they possess a sense of the just and the unjust and that their sharing a common understand of justice makes a polis. Analogously one might say, in view of our discussion, that a common understanding of justice as fairness makes a constitutional democracy. The basic liberties of a democratic regime, the idea that citizens are free and equal and that society should be fair, are most firmly secured by this conception of justice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

The principles of justice, the moral obligation to act on the basis of fair adjudication between competing claims, which are linked to fairness, entitlement and equality, fit our considered judgments and they also provide the strongest arguments for freedom. By contrast teleological principles permit at best uncertain grounds for liberty, or at least for equal liberty. And liberty of conscience and freedom of thought should not be founded on philosophical or ethical skepticism, nor on indifference to religious and moral interests. And since the theory of justice relies upon weak and widely held presumptions, it may win quite general acceptance. If they can agree to anything at all, surely our liberties are most firmly based when they are derived from principles that persons fairly situated with respect to one another can agree to. Yet, there are several priorities to be distinguished. By the priority of liberty, I mean the precedence of the principle of equal liberty over the second principle of justice. The principle of equal liberty states that each person has a congruent right to the most extensive freedoms compatible with similar authorizations for all. The second principle of justice states that social and economic positions are to be to everyone’s advantage and open to all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

The two principles are in lexical order, and therefore the claims of liberty are to be satisfied first. Until this is achieved no other principle comes into play. The priority of the right over the good, or of fair opportunity over the difference principle, is not presently our concern. As all the previous examples illustrate, the precedence of liberty means that liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty itself. These are two sorts of cases. The basic liberties may either be less extensive though still equal, or they may be unequal. If liberty is less extensive, the representative citizen must find this a gain for one’s freedom on balance; and if liberty is unequal, the freedom of those with the lesser liberty must be better secured. In both instances the justification proceeds by reference to the whole system of the equal liberties. These priority rules have already been noted on a number of occasions. There is, however, a further distinction that must be made between two kinds of circumstances that justify or excuse a restriction of liberty. First a restriction can derive from the natural limitations and accidents of human life, or from historical and social contingences. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

The question of the justice of these constraints does no raise. For example, even in a well-ordered society under favourable circumstances, liberty of thought and conscience is subject to reasonable regulations and the principle of participation is restricted in extent. These constraints issue from the more or less permanent conditions of political life; others are adjustments to the natural features of the human situation, as with the lesser liberty of children. In these cases, the problem is to discover the just way to meet certain given limitations. In the second kind of case, injustice already exists, either in social arrangements or in the conduct of individuals. The question here is what is the just way to answer injustice. This injustice may, of course, have many explanations, and those who act unjustly often do so with the conviction that they purse a higher cause. The examples of intolerant and of rival sects illustrate this possibility. However, human’s propensity to injustice is not a permanent aspect of community life; it is greater or less depending in large part on social institutions, and in particular on whether these are just or unjust. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

A well-ordered society tends to eliminate or at least to control human’s inclinations to injustice, and therefore warring and intolerant sects, say, are must less likely to exist, or to be a danger, once such a society is established. How justice requires us to meet injustice is a very different problem from how best to cope with the inevitable limitations and contingencies of human life. These two cases, the case of basic liberties and the case of injustice, raise several questions It will be recalled that strict compliance is one of the stipulations of the original position (that guarantees each citizen a robust package of liberal rights to such things as freedom of conscience, freedom to vote and stand in elections, and rights to due process in law, and the original position ensures fair equality of economic opportunity as well as shares of income and wealth that are maximally beneficial to people with the least amount of income and wealth); the principals of justice (the moral obligation to act on the basis of fair adjudication between competing claims, which is linked to fairness, entitlement, and equality) are chosen on the supposition that they will be generally complied with. Any failures are discounted as exceptions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

By putting these principles in lexical order, the parties are choosing a conception of justice suitable for favourable conditions and assuming that a just society can in due course be achieved. Arranged in this order, the principles define then a perfectly just scheme; they belong to ideal theory and set up an aim to guide the course of social reform. However, even granting the soundness of these principles for this purpose, we must still ask how well they apply to institutions under less than favourable conditions, and whether they provide any guidance for instances of justice. The principles and their lexical order were not acknowledged with these situations in mind and so it is possible that they no longer hold. The intuitive idea is to split the theory of justice into two parts. The first or ideal part assumes strict compliance and works out the principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favourable circumstances. It develops the conception of a perfectly just basic structure and the corresponding duties and obligations of persons under the fixed constraints of human life. My main concern is with this part of the theory. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Nonideal theory, the second part, is worked out after an ideal conception of justice has been chosen; only then do the parties ask which principles to adopt under less happy conditions. This division of theory has, as I have indicated, two rather different subparts. One consists of the principles for governing adjustments to natural limitations and historical contingencies, and the other of principles for meeting injustice. If we can, viewing the theory of justice as a whole, the ideal part presents a conception of a just society that we are to achieve. Existing institutions are to be judged in the light of this conception and held to be unjust to the extent that they depart from it without sufficient reason. The lexical ranking of the principles specifies which elements ordering suggest are to be applied to nonideal cases as well. Thus as far as circumstances permit, we have a natural duty to remove any injustices, beginning with the most grievous as identified by the extent of the deviation from perfect justice. Of course, this idea is left importantly to institution. Still our judgement is guided by the priority indicated by the lexical ordering where the principle of equal liberty over the second principle of justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

As you recall, the principle of equal liberty states that each person has a congruent right to the most extensive freedoms compatible with similar authorizations for all. The second principle of justice states that social and economic positions are to be to everyone’s advantage and open to all. And so that is the lexical ordering we want to follow. If we have a reasonably clear picture of what is just, our considered convictions of justice may fall more closely into line even though we cannot formulate precisely how this greater convergence comes about. Thus while the principles of justice belong to the theory of an ideal state of affairs, they are generally relevant. The several parts of the nonideal theory may be illustrated by various examples, some of which we have discussed. One type of situation is that involving a less extensive liberty. Since there are no inequalities, but all are to have a narrower rather than a wider freedom, the question can be assessed from the perspective of the representative equal to each citizen. To appeal to the interests of the representative human in applying the principles of justice is to invoke the principle of the common interest. (The common good I think of as certain general conditions that are in an appropriate sense equally to everyone’s advantage.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Several of the preceding examples involve a less extensive liberty: the regulation of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought in ways consistent with public order, and the limitation on the scope of majority rule belong to this category. These constraints arise from the permanent conditions of human life and therefore these cases belong to that part of nonideal theory which deals with natural limitations. The two examples of curbing the liberties of the intolerant and of restraining the violence of contending sects, since they involve injustice, belong to the partial compliance part of nonideal theory. In each of these four cases, however, the argument proceeds from the viewpoint of the representative citizen. Following the idea of the lexical ordering, the limitations upon the extent of liberty are for the sake of liberty itself and result in a lesser but still equal freedom. The second kind of case is that of an unequal liberty. If some have more votes than others, political liberty is unequal; and if the votes of some are weighted much more heavily, or if a segment of society is without the franchise altogether, the same is true. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

Edmund Burke’s account for representation states that political representation is the representation of interest, and interest has an objective, impersonal, unattached relation, and that the entire nation should be represented by Parliament, or derivatively by each member of Parliament, and members are an elite group, discovering and enacting what is best for the nation; that activity is what representation means. Dr. Burke also hold that inequalities are natural and unavoidable in any society, that some descriptions of citizens must always be uppermost because in a well ordered society, a ruling elite group, which is a natural aristocracy is an essential integral part of any large body rightly constituted, as the mass of people are incapable of governing themselves, and were not made to think or act without guidance and direction. Furthermore, he thought that power in the bans of the multitude admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever. Edmund Burke’s account of representation had an element of validity in the context of eighteenth-century society. If so, it reflects that fact that the various liberties are not all on par, for while at that time unequal political liberty might conceivably have been a permissible adjustment to historical limitations, serfdom and slavery, and religious intolerance, certainly were not. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

These constraints do not justify the loss of liberty of conscience and the rights defining the integrity of the person. The case for certain political liberties and the rights of fair equality of opportunity is less compelling. When the long-run benefits are great enough to transform a less fortunate society into one where the equal liberties can be fully enjoyed, it may be reasonable to forgo part of these freedoms. When circumstances are not conducive to the exercise of thee rights in any case, this is especially true. Under certain conditions that cannot be at present removed, the value of some liberties may not be so high as to rule out the possibility of compensation to those less fortunate. To accept the lexical ordering of the two principles we are not required to deny that the value of liberty depends upon circumstance. However, it does have to be shown that as the general conception of justice is followed social conditions are eventually brought about under which a lesser than equal liberty would no longer be accepted. Unequal liberty is then no longer justified. The lexical order is, so to speak, the inherent long-run equilibrium of a just system. If not long before, once the tendency to equality has worked itself out, the two principles are to be serially ranked. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Just for reference, here are the principals again. The principle of equal liberty states that each person has a congruent right to the most extensive freedoms compatible with similar authorizations for all. The second principle of justice states that social and economic positions are to be to everyone’s advantage and open to all. In these remarks I have assumed that it is always those with the lesser liberty who must be compensated. We are always to appraise the situation from their point of view (as seen from the constitutional convention or the legislature). Now it is this restriction that makes it practically certain that slavery and serfdom, in their familiar forms anyway, are tolerable only when they relieve even worse injustices. There may be transition cases where enslavement is better than current practice. For example, suppose that city-states that previously have not take prisoners of war but have always put captives to death agree by treaty to hold prisoners as slaves instead. Although we cannot allow the institution of slavery on the grounds that the greater gains of some outweigh the losses to others, it may be that under these conditions, since all run the risk of capture in war, this form of slavery is less unjust than present custom. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

At least the servitude envisaged is not hereditary (let us suppose) and it is accepted by the free citizens of more or less equal city-states. If slaves are not treated too severely, the arrangement seems defensible as an advance on established institutions. In time it will presumably be abandoned altogether since the exchange of prisoners of war is still a more desirable arrangement, the return of the captured members of the community being preferable to the services of slaves. But none of these considerations, however fanciful, tend in any way to justify hereditary slavery or serfdom by citing natural or historical limitations. Moreover, one cannot at this point appeal to the necessity or at least to the great advantage of these servile arrangements for the higher forms of culture. And on this point, we are in the greatest of dangers today. There are many who in effect, if not in intent, do just what Jesus said not to do. They annul the law and teach others to do the same. That ends all prospects of spiritual formation. “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of Heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of Heaven,” reports 5.19. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

We in the New World live today in an antinomian culture. This culture in part derives from our religious and secular history, but it in turn reinforces antinomianism among professing Christians. “Antinomian” means “against the law.” It was a term coined by Martin Luther to designate some in his day (Johann Agricola and his followers) who held that God’s law was not a factor in conversation to Christ. However, the antinomian tendency is much older than Luther and possibly as old as some reactions to Paul’s gospel. It is based upon the mistaken conclusion—strongly rejected by Paul—that because we are not justified by keeping the law, but through our personal relationship of confidence in Jesus, in his death and his life, we have no essential use for the law and can simply disregard it. Does not faith in the saving merits of Christ abolish any obligation to keep the moral law, including the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ in the Gospels? We are free to hate the law, or “oppressor,” ore despise it, or regard it as at best a good thing that failed. These are common attitudes among professing Christians today—more often that not, one must admit, based on simple ignorance of Scriptures rather than on a carefully worked out understanding. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Detail vary from group to group down through history, but the essential point of antinomianism is that sinning or not sinning—obeying or not obeying the law—has nothing to do with being “saved” or not. Some groups have advocated extreme license, others not. God’s law is irrelevant to one’s standing before God in either case. During the Commonwealth period in England (1649-1660), antinomianism was present among high Calvinists who maintained that an elect person, being predestined to salvation, need not keep the moral law and does not even need to repent. No one should be urged to repent, therefore. Others have said “that good works hinger salvation, and that a child of God cannot sin; that the moral law is altogether abrogated as a rule of life; that no Christian believes or works any good, but that Christ only believes and works good.” Is it so unimportant to form an idea of God which shall be as near the truth as possible through containing so little error as possible? The Spirit which inspired and instructed Moses did not think so. “Thou shalt have no other God before me,” it said. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

That is, we must not label the wrong thing with the name of God, or hold the wrong idea about Him as if it were the correct one. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images” was the next commandment. However, an idol does not necessarily have to be made of stone or metal. It can be made of an idea. If anyone wished to call World-Mind the Lord of the Universe, one will not be wrong; but then if someone else wishes to asset that the World-Mind cannot be a Personal God, neither will ne be wrong. Is there any possible reconciliation of these two views? Yes, for both cases these are only mental formulations, and it is impossible to describe God absolutely, accurately in intellectual terms. All mental concepts of God have to be discarded in the end. No strict and rigid doctrines can hold the truth as it is: we merely get from the statement something to satisfy the intellect. For the Real is ineffable, that is, undescribable and untouchable by the ordinary finite capacity of humans. However, because there is something Godlike, somewhere, in humans, intuition may reveal it. We must differentiate between the invented God of religion and the imagined God of mysticism, on the one hand, and the real God of philosophical truth, on the other. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

The creator-God of religion is a more erroneous conception than the immanent God of mysticism, but both are alien to truth. Both have failed to fathom the Unconditioned, Nondual, and Illimitable God. There is a Universal principle of Eternal Intelligence behind all existence. If the follies of superstition and the bigotries of religion caricature it, the verities of philosophy and the insights of wisdom restore a true picture. We are not atheists. We do hold that a reality higher than the crudely material one exists. If the name of God is given to this reality, then we accept God; but we do not and will not accept the erroneous and degrading notion of Gd which most humans have. This higher concept of Gd is much more respectful and much more reverential than the old traditional one. Most of the current ideas about God are hazy, uncertain, unsettled, and even absurd. If by God you mean something higher than mere material existence, then we do not deny God. It is the false notion of God that we deny, the grotesque caricatures that appear in churches and temples and sermons and books. We look on this higher Reality as something not afar off from the essence of our own selves. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

We have discovered that the common everyday life does not exhaust the alphabet of existence, that there is something sublime beyond it and yet akin to us. If you wish to call It such, we do honour and revere such a God, because we believe It t be the true God. God—a term which signifies a certain mathematical formula to some moderns and a certain mental figure to some primitives—exist all the same. We must assert that in God there is love: because love is the first movement of the will and of every appetitive faculty. For since the acts of the will and every appetitive faculty tend towards good and evil, as to their proper objects: and since good is essentially and especially the object of the will and the appetite, whereas evil is only the object secondarily and indirectly, as opposed to good; it follows that the acts of the will and appetite that regard good must naturally be prior to what is less so. Hence the intellect is first directed to universal truths; and in the second place to particular and special truth. Now there are certain acts of the will and appetite that regard good under some special condition, as joy and delight regard good present and possessed; whereas desire and hope regard good not as yet possessed. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

Love, however, regards good universally, whether possessed or not. Hence love naturally the first act of the will and appetite; for which reason all the other appetite movements presuppose love, as their root and origin. For nobody desires anything nor rejoices in anything, except as a good that is loved: nor is anything an object of hate except as opposed to the object of love. Similarly, it is clear that sorrow, and other things like it, must be referred to love as heir first principle. Hence, in whomsoever there is will and appetite, there must also be love: since if the first is wanting, all that follows is also wanting. Now it has been shown that the will is in God and hence we must attribute love to Him. “The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Humans gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent for what they had done,” reports Revelation 16.10-11. Humans of inferior intelligence quite naturally want a God who will be attentive to their requirements, interested in their personal lives, and helpful during times of distress. That is to say, they want a human God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Humans of superior intelligence come in time to consider God as an impersonal essence that is everywhere present, and consequently embodied in themselves and to be communed with interiorly too. That is to say, they recognize only a mystical God. Humans of the highest intelligence perceive that the “I” is illusory, that it is only ignorance of this fac that causes humans to regard themselves as a separate embodiment of the divine essence, and that in reality there is only this nondual nameless being. How impossible it is to get humans of inferior intelligence to worship or even to credit such an Existence which has no shape, no individuality, no thinking even! Hence such humans are given a figure after the own image a God, a deity that is a personal, human, five-sensed being. World-Mind, Lord and Creator, Maker and Ruler of all things, is not glorified aggrandized human being. Lord, when I see your face, may it be without fear, may it be without terror, may it be without panic. God, when I see your face, may it be with understanding, may it be with courage, may it be with peace. Almighty, when I see your face, may I be brought to wisdom through your loving kindness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

For the Lord will not cast off His people nor will He forsake His inheritance. However, God, being full of compassion, forgives iniquity, and destroys not; yea, often God turns His anger away, and does not stir up all Hi wrath. Please save us, O Lord; O King please answer us on the day that we call. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. Sometimes the starlight mist of tapestry interlaced with silver glow is nothing more than tinsel hung upon the arms of passing stars that glimmer as they god. Sometimes the wind-blown bands of emerald light that grace the northern sky are nothing more than sun-filled clouds left to linger in the night. However, when I see the diamonds of the arctic night, I know God granted me a peek through Heaven’s parted veil to a glimpse of Worlds to be. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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January 20, 2021 3:09 am

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