It is Not What Paris Gives You; it is What She Does Not Take Away!

What the World needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left. It is better to wear out than to rust out. One popular view of human nature stems from a religious perspective. This view of human nature uses the terms good and evil as representations of a religious philosophy. The idea that human nature can be inherently good assumes, essentially, that an individual’s action, based on an instinctual, inherent nature from a God, is appropriate and correct. In contrast, the idea that human nature can be inherently evil entails the belief that an individual’s actions, rooted in instinct and one’s human nature, will be self-serving, inappropriate, and outside the will of God. The idea that one’s inherent actions can be evil is a religious perspective and is rooted in the idea that humankind, apart from the direction of a higher power, acts within its evil nature. As stated in the Bible, in Romans 8.7, the “mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” A libertarian theory of justice is based in the understanding that human nature is inherently neutral and equal. Libertarian justice maintains that individuals should be free of constraint over their life, liberty, and property, all of which are equally essential to a system of justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

All people are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature. Likewise, a contractarian theory of justice has some notions that human nature is inherently neutral. Contractarian theories hold that the primary principles in society are built upon the common will of the people in constructing a social contract, which promotes humankind’s equality, independence, and freedom. It is a feeling common to all humankind that they cannot bear to see others suffer. Humans are born free; and everywhere one is in chains, and the first law in the nature of humankind is to provide for one’s own preservation, one is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving oneself. Human nature is inherently self-interested. Egalitarianism holds that as human nature acts in its own self-preserving way, regulations are essential in guiding individuals and society. Egalitarianism views justice as common restrictions and investments in order to produce fairness and equity amongst the citizenry. It is the hope that shared responsibility and regulation will yield not only material liberty (as with the libertarians), but will also create psychological and spiritual liberty, because of the shared moral code that the community follows. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The soul is produced by God and the self-interested person in nature is that of the brutes and is produced by some power of the body. Some philosophers believe that human nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short and the condition of humans is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. And that may be true about some individuals, but certainly not everyone. This view that human nature is inherently self-interested sets the foundation for a collective will to order and control the selfish behaviour of humans to protect the good of all. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal. This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.” reports President Abraham Lincoln. People should be allowed to have liberty and sovereignty and act in accordance with the rightness of their own nature. Humaneness and humanity are traits inherent in all and guiding all rational beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The abilities of humans which are not acquired by study are part of their endowment of good. However, it seems society is growing selfish and cutthroat. Can it be that as time goes on, the minds of humans are being produced to lack Humanity and Justice? If beings lose their sense of good, then they lose it as the mountain lost its trees. It has been hacked away at—day after day—what of its beauty then? Humankind must be granted their freedoms and liberties in order to act appropriately without certain constraints; however, society must be governed by a social contract, where humans may lose their natural liberty but will instead gain their civil liberty. This new sense of liberty, one that is embedded in a strong civility and citizenship, is influenced by Aristotle. The aspect of human nature that is so selfish must be regulated and controlled so as to not destroy humanity. Many people fear the brutish and warning nature of humans and want laws to protect them from disorder. Yet, they do not want absolutism in government as a means to regulate society for its optimal success because no one really knows what that means or if their lives will be consider worthy of the air they breathe. People do not want to be used by the government as soldiers, placeholders and taxpayers, and then disposed of so someone else can take their place. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The human body is of the World, and if led by the World is corruptible; however, the human soul is of God and is based in the actions of love. When the nature of humanity as flesh and body is in opposition to God, thus humankind must be led by their soul, which is not corruptible. Church is in society to protect and empower individuals into Godly actions of their soul. Many men and women who are walking softly through life—and creating a revolution as they do so. Homemakers, teachers, interfaces between races and cultures, all of which have been drastically changed by persons who trust their own power, do not feel a need to have power over, and who are willing to foster and facilitate the latent strength in the other person are finding success. Power rests not in your mind but in your organism. You may think you are a slow leaner, but you are not. It could be that you are just now starting to realize your political impact. It is partly that a new concept has been in the process of construction in our language. It is not just a new label. It brings together a cluster of meanings into a powerful new concept. Politics, in present-day psychological and social usage, has to do with power and control: with the extent to which persons desire, attempt to obtain, possess, share, or surrender power and control over others and/or themselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Politics has to do with the maneuvers, the strategies and tactics, witting or unwitting, by which such power and control over one’s own life and others’ lives is sought and gained—or shared or relinquished. It has to do with the locus of decision-making power: who makes the decisions which, consciously or unconsciously, regulate or control the thoughts, feelings or behaviour of others or oneself. It has to do with the effects of these decisions and these strategies, whether proceeding from an individual or a group, whether aimed at gaining or relinquishing control upon the person oneself, upon others, and upon the various systems of society and its institutions. In sum it is the process of gaining, using, sharing or relinquishing power, control, decision-making. It is the process of the highly complex interactions and effects of these elements as they exist in relationships between persons, between a person and a group, or between groups. This new construct has had a powerful influence on me. It has caused me to take a fresh look at my professional life work. I have had a role in initiating the person-centered approach. This view developed first in counseling and psychotherapy, where it was known as client-centered, meaning a person seeking help was not treated as a dependent patient but as a responsible client. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Extended to education, client-centered therapy was called student-centered teaching. As it has move into a wide variety of fields, far from its point of origin—intensive groups, marriage, family relationships, administration, underrepresented groups, interracial, intercultural, and even international relationships—it seems best to adopt as broad a term as possible; person-centered. It is the psychological dynamics of this approach that has interested me—how it is seen by and how it affects the individual. I have been interested in observing this approach from a scientific and empirical point of view; what conditions make it possible for a person to change and develop, and what are the specific effects or outcomes of these conditions. However, I have never given careful consideration to the interpersonal politics set in motion by such an approach. Now I begin to see the revolutionary nature of those political forces. I have found myself compelled to reassess and reevaluate all my work. I wish to ask what are the political effects (in the new sense of political) of all that I, and my many colleagues throughout the World, have done and are doing. What is the impact of client-centered point of view on the issues of power and control in individual psychotherapy? We shall explore the politics of various approaches to helping people, whether through one-to-one therapy, or through encounter or other intensive groups. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

We shall confront openly a subject not often discussed: the issue of power and control in the so-called helping professions. This new approach in the politics of therapy differs from the older one in that it has a genuinely different goal. It aims directly toward the greater independence and integration of the individual rather than hoping that such results will accrue if the counselor assists in solving the problem. The individual and not the problem is the focus. The aim is not to solve one particular problem but to assist the individual to grow, so that one can cope with the present problem and with later problems in a better integrated fashion. If one can gain enough integration to handle one problem in more independent, more responsible, less confused, better organized ways, then one will also handle new problems in that manner. If this seems a little vague, it may be made more specific. It relies much more heavily on the individual drive toward growth, health, and adjustment. Therapy is not a matter of doing something to the individual, or of inducing one to do something about oneself. It is instead a matter of freeing one for normal growth and development, of removing obstacles so that one can again move forward. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

I have described various counseling techniques much in use—such as suggestions, advice, persuasion, and interpretation—and have pointed out that these rest on two basic assumptions: that the counselor knows best, and that one can find techniques by which to move one’s client most efficiently to the counselor-chosen goal. I see not that I have dealt a double-edged political blow. I have said that most counselors saw themselves as competent to control the lives of their clients. And I have advanced the view that it was preferable simply to free the client to become an independent, self-directing person. I am making it clear that is they agree with me, it would mean the complete disruption and reversal of their personal control in their counseling relationship. From the perspective of politics, power, and control, person-centered therapy is based on a premise which at first seemed risky and uncertain: a view of humans at their core a trustworthy organism. This base has over the years been strengthened by experience with troubled individuals, psychotic persons, small intensive groups, students in classes, and staff groups. It has become more and more firmly established as a basic stance, though each person must learn it step by step for oneself, to be convinced of its soundness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

I have recently described it as the gradually formed and tested hypothesis that the individual has within oneself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering one’s self-concept, one’s attitudes, and one’s self-directed behaviour—and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided. Is there any basis for this premise other than wishful thinking and the experience of a few people? I believe so. Biologists, neurophysiologists, and other scientists, including psychologists, have evidence that adds up to one conclusion. There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities. There is a natural tendency toward complete development in a human. The term that has most often been used for this is the actualizing tendency, and it is present in all living organisms. It is the foundation on which the person-centered approach is built. The actualizing tendency can of course be thwarted, but it cannot be destroyed without destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood the potato bin in which we stored our Winter supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small basement window. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout—pale white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the Spring. However, these sad, spindly sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the Spring. However, these sad, spindly sprouts would grow two or three feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. They were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become a plant, never mature, never fulfill their real potentiality. However, under the most adverse circumstances they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with women and men on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of these potato sprouts. So unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet the directional tendency in them is to be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

To us the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself. It is this potent tendency which is the underlying bass of client-centered therapy and all that has grown out of it. I t is obvious that even this premise of client-centered therapy, without going further, has enormous political implications. Our educational system, our industrial and military organizations, and many other aspects of our culture take the view that the nature of the individual is such that one cannot be trusted—that one must be guided, instructed, rewarded, punished, and controlled by those who are wiser or higher in status. To be sure, we give lip service to a democratic philosophy in which all power is vested in the people, but this philosophy is honored more in the breach than in the observance. Hence simply describing the fundamental premise of client-centered therapy is to make a challenging political statement. What psychological climate makes possible is the release of the individual’s capacity for understanding and managing one’s life? There are three conditions for this growth-promoting climate, whether it is in the therapist and client relationship or parent and child, leader and group, teacher and students, administrator and staff—in fact, in any situation in which the development of the person is a goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Th first has to do with genuineness, realness—congruence. The more the therapist is oneself in the relationship, putting up no professional front or personal façade, the greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a constructive manner. It means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. The term transparent catches the flavor of this element—the therapist makes oneself transparent to the client; the client can see right through what the therapist is in the relationship; the client experiences no holding back on the part of the therapist. As for the therapist, what one is experiencing is available to awareness can be lived in the relationship, and can be communicated if appropriate. Thus there is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to the client. What does this mean in practical terms? It means that when the client is in pain or distress, the therapist is likely to be experiencing warmth or compassion or understanding. However, at other times in the relationship one may be experiencing boredom or anger or even fear of a destructive client. The more the therapist can be aware of—and can become and express these feelings, whether beneficial or negative—the more likely one is to be helpful to the client. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

It is the feelings and attitudes that are helpful when expressed, not opinions or judgments about the other. Thus the therapist cannot know that the client is a boring conversationalist or a demanding pig head or a beautiful person. All these are debatable point. The therapist can only be congruent and helpful in expressing the feelings one owns. To the extent that the therapist experiences, owns, knows, expresses what is going on within—to that extent one is likely to facilitate growth in the client. When Jesus says we must lose our lives if we are to find them, he is teaching, on the negative side, that we must not make ourselves and our survival the ultimate point of reference in our World—must not, in effect, treat ourselves as God should be treated, or treat ourselves as God. Thus Paul shockingly said, “Covetousness is idolatry,” reports Colossians 3.5. Is not that somewhat exaggerated? No. Covetousness is self-idolatry, for it makes my desires paramount. It means I would take what I want if I could. To defeat covetousness we learn to rejoice that others enjoy the benefits they do. To make my desires paramount is what Paul again described as having a flesh mind or mind of the flesh, which is a state of death (Romans 8.6). #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Such a mind “sows to one’s own flesh”—invests only in one’s natural self—and “out of that flesh reaps corruption,” reports Galatians 6.8. “Corruption” or “coming apart: is the natural end of the flesh. “Flesh” can only be preserved by being caught up within the higher life of the kingdom of God and thus of “losing” the life peculiar to it. In other worse, when Jesus says tat those who find their life or soul shall lose it, he is pointing out that those who think they are in control of their life—“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul,” as the poet William Ernest Henley said—will find that they definitely are not in control: they are totally at the mercy of forces beyond them, and even within them. They are on a sure course to disintegration and powerlessness, of lostness both to themselves and to God. They must surrender. By contrast, if they give up the project of being ultimate point of reference in their life—of doing only what they want, of “sowing to the flesh” or to the natural aims and abilities of a human being—there can be hope. If they in that sense lose their life in favour of God’s life, or for the sake of Jesus and what he is doing on Earth—remember the ongoing World revolution he is now conducting—then their soul (life) will be preserved and thus given back to them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

There is still another valuable lesson to be learned from the parable of the generous landowner. God is not only generous, He is also sovereign. That is, God has the right to dispense His blessings as He chooses. Jesus asserts this prerogative of God very clearly with the landowner’s question: Do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money?” reports Matthew 2015. We constantly see believers around us who seem more blessed of God than we are. Some are more gifted in spiritual abilities, others always succeed with little effort, still others seem to have few problems or concerns, and on and on. Probably none of us is exempt from the temptation to envy someone else’s blessings and to secretly grumble at God, or even to charge Him with rank injustice, for giving that person more in some way then He has given us. Yet God in His sovereignty has the right to bless each of us as He chooses. Consider these words from the apostle Paul: But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? reports Romans 9.20-21. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Regardless of how we understand the particular application of Paul’s teaching, we cannot escape the basic principle in the passage: God is sovereign. And He is sovereign in every area of life. God as our Creator has the right to endow each of us at birth with different physical and mental abilities, with different temperament characteristics, and with different natural talents. He also has the right to give each of us different spiritual gifts. Not only does God have the right, it is obvious He exercises it. We are not created equal, nor are we given equal opportunities throughout life. Each of us has his or her own unique set of circumstances; those of some people being much more favourable than others. Since God is under no obligation to any of us, He is free to bless some more than others as He chooses. He has the right to do what he wants with His blessings. “For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must parish because one hath no baptism. Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what humans can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear,” reports Moroni 8.15-16. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

O God, by Whose will all things were made, and by Whose truth they continue in being; we beseech Thee to keep us under Thy shelter, lest we be cast down from our chief happiness by the swellings of pride; grant us ever to ascend into Heaven by the steps of humility; and because Thou art the Fountain of life, from Thee may we drink what by faith we thirst for; in Thy light may we shine with the light of knowledge, and reap the fruit of righteousness in an everlasting exaltation. O God, Who art rich in forgiveness, and for this cause willedst to assume our lowly flesh, that Thou mightiest leave to us an example of humility, and make us steadfast in all manner of sufferings; grant that we may always hold fast the good things which we receive from Thee, and as often as we fall into sins, may be raised up by repentance; through Thy mercy. O God, I bless thee for the happy moment when I first saw thy law fulfilled in Christ, wrath appeased, death destroyed, sin forgiven, my soul saved. Ever since, thou hast been faithful to me; daily have I proved the power of Jesus’ blood, daily have I known the strength of the Spirit, my teacher, director, sanctifier. I want no other rock to build upon than that I have, desire no other hope than that of gospel truth, need no other look than that which gazes on the cross. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Forgive me if I have tried to add anything to the one foundation, if I have unconsciously relied upon my knowledge, experience, deeds, and not seen them as filthy rags, if I have attempted to complete what is perfect in Christ; may my cry be always, Only Jesus! Only Jesus! In him is freedom from condemnation, fullness in his righteousness, eternal vitality in his given life, indissoluble union in fellowship with him; in him I have all that I can hold; enlarge me to take in more. If I backslide, let me like Peter weep bitterly and return to him; give me strength enough to trust in him; if I am weak, may I faint upon his heart of eternal love; if in extremity, let me feel that he can deliver me; if driven to the verge of hope and to the pit of despair, grant me grace to fall into his arms. O God, hear me, do for me more than I ask, think, or dream. “And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation. For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity,” reports Moroni 8.17-18. The World is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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February 12, 2020 2:20 am

What Would You Trade Your Very Soul for?

A good sense of humor helps to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable. In giving freedom to those enslaved, we assure freedom to the free—honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve. With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in. Some people work harder, some are stronger, some have more talent and skill, hence things are naturally unequal. People need to work together, to make and gather the fruits of uneven talents, and so society by its nature is a necessary and willing agreement to share unequally among unequals. If inequalities are greater in modern times, well, so are the fruits which most people can enjoy; greater, too, are the differences in skill, and so forth. If we shudder at the thought of total determinism of modern tyranny, we must admit that the conservative case has weight, especially since we today know fairly accurately how historical inequality came about—at least in a theoretical way. And we know that this process started long before the rise of the state: in fact, it was inherent in primitive societies themselves—even in the most eqalitarian ones, in hunting and gathering societies, the simplest known. These societies knew no distinctions of rank, little or no authority of one individual or the other. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Primitive societies had very simple possessions and so there was no real difference in wealth; property was distributed equally. Yet even on this level individual differences were recognized and already formed the germ of social differentiation which would gradually lead to distinctions of rank, accumulated wealth, hereditary privilege, and the eventual rise and entrenchment of the exploitative state. It would seem that the largest factor in inequality among humans discourse. Two crucial factors are worth pointing out here. First, the basic fallacy: that there was a time in early social evolution when people were not influenced by differences in personal qualities. Some are able to maintain this because of a truly fantastic sketch of social evolution, in which one see a person at first as an isolated being, not even living in a family group. Gradually family life evolved, and then tribal life, and it was that time that each one began to look at the others and to want to be looked at oneself, and public esteem had value. This famous idea on the state of nature beings, then, with the epoch of the savage who lives within oneself. It ends when humans came out of this state into that of society; they became sociable beings, always outside oneself, who knew how to live only in the opinion of others. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

And so some believe that human’s downfall does not begin in the original state of humans, but it is the spirit of society alone, and the inequality it engenders, which thus changes and alters all our natural inclinations—that is, our natural solitariness, our natural immunity to the personal qualities of others. The second point of this fantasy is easier to understand because it is based on fact: one saw no accumulation of goods in the primitive societies of one’s time, and so one thought that primitive beings wanted only to live and remain idle and refused to work to build up an accumulation of goods. Accumulated goods in civilized society were a visible burden on those who slaved for them, and they were a direct cause of social injustice; and the primitive state was one of delightful laziness and freedom. However, we know this is the wrong conclusion: rather, hunters and gatherers cannot accumulate a surplus because of the primitive technology and subsistence economy, not because they do not want surplus. They are already eager to accumulate a surplus of wives and to gain special privileges for hunting lands, and so forth. The drive for self-expansion is there, but there are neither opportunities nor the World picture into which to fit it. Or, the state of nature is not idle, it is temperamental, orderly, and compulsive like all other human states. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

However, we have recently learned something from the vast collections of data on primitive beings: that if one was not in bondage to the authority of living persons, one was at the utter mercy of the power of spirits. Because of human’s fear of life and death, the tribe was in hock to the spirit of the dead. Or, if in some tribes humans did not seem to fear death, it was because they had transmuted this fear by immersing themselves in the group ideology, whatever it may have been. Now this lead us to a completely opposite position from what some anthropologists believed in the past, even on the fanciful sketch of social evolution: that is, in the state of nature the solitary individual is already unfree, even before one gets to society; one carries within oneself the bondage that one needs in order to live. We know today that this antiquated idea of the state of nature as an exploratory hypothesis to be able to imagine how life might be in a state of freedom from social coercion. We know too what a powerful critical tool this idea has been, and how it has helped us to highlight the state as a structure of domination from Marx all the way up to Mumford. However, the fact is that humans never were free and cannot be from their own nature as the starting point. Rare individuals may achieve freedom at the end of years of experience and effort; and they can do this best under conditions of advanced civilization. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

As we have seen, if it had the power to do so, each human type seeks to perpetuate itself; it tries to expand and aggrandize itself in the ways open to it. However, on primitive levels the power figures are always suspect precisely because of their dangerous power; hence the constant anxiety about witches and so forth. “Almost no mortal on Earth knows one’s lineage before the so called Dark Ages (500 to 1500 AD), and only the great families can penetrate the deep players of time to extract from them a series of examples that might inspire. But in every family there are bad people, and weak people, and some people who cannot or will not withstand the trials of life, and who fail spectacularly. Their guardian Angels weep; demons beholding them dance for joy,” Pages 62 and 61 of Angel Time by Anne Rice. The early tribal embodiments of magical power were ready scapegoats for the people—not only witches but priest-kings too. No wonder that when kings later got real power to work their will on the helpless masses, they used that power ruthlessly; in this perspective the divine king of the great slave state of the Mediterranean basin is the earlier shaman come of age and of unlimited power. We might say that instead of themselves being scapegoats, they used the entire people as their own sacrificial animals, marching them off to military holocaust at will. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The logic of this kind of turning of the tables is almost inevitable. What each person wants is to be a survivor, to cheat death and to remain standing no matter how many others have fallen around one. In tribal society, if they can be, even at the expense of an occasional power figure who detaches oneself too much from the general level of safe mutuality and symbiosis, the people are the survivors. In the later tyrannical state, it was only natural that the king reverse this procedure—that he prove himself to be the survivor no matter how many of his people died, or even because they died. Seen in this way, history is the saga of working out of one’s problems on others—harmlessly when one has no power (or when the weapon is art), viciously when one has the power and when the weapons are the arsenals of the total state. This saga continues in modern times but in forms which disguise the same: individuals skilled in focusing power, and masses hungry for it and fearful of it. Each society elevates and rewards leaders who are talented at giving the masses heroic victory, expiation for guilt, relief of personal conflicts. It does not matter how these are achieved: magical religious ritual, magical booming stock markets, magical heroic fulfillment of five-year plans, or mana-charged military mega-machines—or all together. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

What counts is to give the people the self-expansion in righteousness that they need. The people who have power can exercise it through many different kinds of social and economic structures, but a universal psychological hunger underpins them all; it is this that locks people and power figure together in a life-and-death contract. This raises questions about the legal foundations of American society, abut what constitutes a threat to national security, and who should make that decision. “The War on Terrorism” has lead to the highest level of surveillance of our citizens. Many issues have been raised about social and economic justice, about the principles for the distribution of wealth, equal access to material goods. The 9.0 Earthquake in Japan in 2011, which led to the disasters at the nuclear power plants, and the Novel Coronavirus, which broke out in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 and has killed more than 900 people and infected about 40,000 globally, Oroville Dam crisis of 2017, and the fire in Paradise, California which destroyed the entire town has led many raising issues about environmental justice, potential life-threatening issues concerning our relationship to the planet and our physical environment. What are the short term and long term consequences of our current practices, and who should make these determinations? How much power should they have? Should all countries have an equal voice? An equal vote? Who should make and enforce these rules? #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

The United States of America is one of the World leaders in disturbing statistics; rates of incarceration, rates of mass murder, serial murder, homicide and violent crimes, rates of divorce, child maltreatment and exploitation of pleasures of the flesh, rates of death by state executions, auto accidents, gun accidents, diabetes, heart problems, and number of people killed by medical interventions. We spend more of our money on defense than all of the rest of the nations of the World combined, and we have more guns overall and more hand guns in particular than anyone else, and yet research since 1956 shows a consistent decline in our sense of security. The Untied States leads the World in rates of mental disorders, mental illness, and chronic diseases, while at the same time seeing educational performance plummet over several decades. Behind each one of these statistics is a justice issue, a question about the fairness of our legal and cultural institutions, a question about how the relative wealth and poverty is distributed. Age-old questions of racial justice, economic justice, and gender justice are still with us today. Questions about justice originate from our religions. Experts estimate that there may have been as many as 2,000-4,000 religions in the past, but almost all of these were primal, tribal, and confined to small areas. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Today we tend to think of religions as the so-called “World Religions,” those local and tribal perspectives which expanded beyond their native tribes and local areas, and in the more recent 6,000 years left some kind of historical record. Western civilization has been greatly influenced by the monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic traditions, those that trace their Worldly history back to the prophet Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Their holy and sacred texts (the Talmud, Bible, and Koran) contain many commentaries about mortality and justice, about how individuals should treat each other, and how rulers should act. These ancient texts have much to say about retribution and revenge, but relatively little to say about the complex social issues of our contemporary everyday life and globalized World. An ideal society should be a peaceful and harmonious social order, where the diverse interests and social classes would do their best to achieve a certain kind of functional interdependence, based upon their respective skills and roles. All institutions and all practices should be based on “Reason,” which means, a studied deliberation of the right thing to do in order to achieve the overarching goal of social harmony. The guardians, or leaders, should be selected, at a very early age, from among the aristocracy, separated from their parents, and trained for many years at the best schools, with the best teachers, before undergoing a lengthy apprenticeship of military and then political leadership. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The guardians should be motivated by the highest ideals, and should not take any pay or compensation for their leadership. The political unit would ideally be the relatively small city-state, much less complex than contemporary nation-states throughout the World. Certain key ideas about human nature, which are asserted by theorist, commonly refer to assertions about what is universal or invariant among all peoples. Some theorists have a very dismal or negative view of human nature. Perhaps British philosopher Thomas Hobbes is the best exemplar of this negative view. Hobbes thought that human beings were very competitive, aggressive, and potentially violent with all of their fellow human beings, and with this reading of human nature he proposed a strong central state to control the potentially aggressive and unruly behaviours of its citizens. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau expresses a much different view of human nature, one founded on self-love and thus potential love for others, so he envisioned a more cooperative and less repressive state power to regulate the activities of citizens. So these highly abstract, or philosophical, ideas about human nature are embedded in the theorist’s concepts of the ideal, or just, society. Do human beings even have a nature? It is a loving and cooperative nature or a selfish, aggressive, and potentially violent one? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Do men and women share the same “human nature”? Do people from different cultures have the same human nature? Do individuals have the same nature through the life cycle, or does one’s nature change from infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to parenthood to old age? What are the implications of human nature? Does it mean that a society or culture should be founded upon these ideas in such a manner so as to be consistent with them? Or does it mean that human nature is something to be changed by the society? Can all or part of human nature be changed by education? Many philosophers believe that education and political leadership are institutions that can lead all citizens to accept their proper role in a peaceful and harmonious social order. What do we owe other persons in our life, including friends, siblings, spouses, children, other family members, strangers, international visitors, and other community members? How are we to act toward these other individuals, and how should we regard them? Do we have an obligation to accept the values and moral norms of our own family-of-origin, which in some cultures might include killing a family member who challenged the “honor” of the family? Are we obligated to follow our own cultural laws and norms, even when these differ from more universal ideas about human rights? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Should our behaviour be different in public settings (where people of different values, cultures, sexual preferences, religions, ethnicities come to do their common business) as opposed to private settings or situations? How should men act toward other men, women, and vice versa? How as should we act toward individuals who are members of historically oppressed or stigmatized groups? How should we express or regulate our emotions and the complex personhood with so many diverse and cross-cutting boundaries? These issues may not involve the larger issues of state and legal institutions, but they influence how we will experience our daily lives, and thus how we routinely experience justice or its opposite. What is the best type of government? Is democracy the best? Why? Should citizens have absolute rights which have to be legally protected by the states? If so, what right? What should happen to the state when they fail to protect the rights of the citizens? What are the prerogatives and limitations of government? What should be the laws, and how should these be decided? How should they be protected? How can they be changed? Who should be the leaders, and what should be their qualifications? What should be the appropriate span of the government for the national, state, regional, and local levels? #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Should the state protect the rights of underrepresented groups, or should there be rule by the majority? How much power should be given to regulate authorities? How should the government be involved in the promotion or regulation of private business activities? These re only a few of the many important questions and issues about governance, and we can see many others raised in the run-up to the 202 national elections. How can the origins of human nature be deconstructed in order to make sense of the World we live in? The most common debate around human nature is structured between two principles: first, that human nature is equal and neutral, without moral judgments; and second, that human nature is inherently self-interested. Human nature is a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal and each human has the liberty to dispose of one’s person or possessions; however, all of humankind is equal and independent, no one ought to hard life, healthy, liberty or possession because we are all the property of God. Humans have these for innate feelings, the feeling of distress (at the suffering of others) is the first sign of Humanity. This feeling of shame and disgrace is the first sign of Justice. This feeling of deference to others is the first sign of propriety. This sense of right and wrong is just the first sign of wisdom. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

There is a common liberty (which) results from the nature of humans…and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. For such a thing is nature of human, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: for they see their own wit at hand, and other human’s at a distance. Human nature is a is humankind’s soul whereas the intellect apprehends existence absolutely, and for all time; so that everything that has an intellect naturally desires always to exist. However, natural desire cannot be in vain. Therefore, every intellectual substance is incorruptible. Self-denial is a term used to summarize the entire Christian life. Self-denial must never be confused with self-rejection; nor is it to be thought of as a painful and strenuous act, perhaps repeated from time to time against great internal resistance. It is, rather, an overall, settled condition of life in the kingdom of God, better described as “death to self.” In this and in this alone is possessed the key to the soul’s restoration. Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

However, what is this self-denial or death to self, which goes hand in hard with restoration of the soul and eventually the whole person? At first it sounds like some dreadfully negative thing that aims to annihilate us. And frankly, from the point of view of the ruined soul, self-denial is and will always been every bit as brutal as it seems to most people on first approach. The ruined life about which most people complain so much anyway. “Those who have found their life (soul) shall lose it,” Jesus said, “while those who have lost their life (soul) for my sake shall find it,” reports Matthew 10.39. And again, “Whoever aims to save their life shall lose it, but whoever loses their life for my shake shall find it. For what have you gained by possessing the entire World if in the process you forfeit your life (soul)—lose yourself. What would you trade your very soul for?” reports Matthew 16.25-26, also Mark 8.35-36; Luke 9.24-25. We must always remember, in hearing these words of Jesus about the worth of the soul, that the art of the great teacher is to put things in ways you will remember even if you do not yet understand them. In that way you can keep working on them (and they on you) until you do understand them. Jesus is the master teacher of the human race, and he teaches accordingly. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

As we have, I think, an intuitive sense that he is right about the worth of the soul. A German soldier fighting in the trenches along France’s Marne river in World War I, where one million soldiers died on the Western front in 1914, wrote home: “What is the good of escaping all the bullet and shells if my soul is injured.” Some losses are so great that nothing on Earth can make recompense for them. “And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God, that ye should baptize little children. Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children. And their little children need no repentance, neither baptism. Behold, baptism is unto repentance to fulfilling the commandments unto the remission of sins. However, little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the World; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism!” reports Moroni 8.9-12. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Thou hast healed our wounds, O Lord, by the wounds of Thine Only-begotten Son. What then shall we do now that we have been bought with so great a price? how shall we serve such a Lord, by Whom liberty is promised and an inheritance is offered to us? Work in us, O Lord, what may please Thee; that we may possess Thee, do Thou possess us. We will not go back from Thee; Thou wilt let us live, and we will call upon Thy Name. My Father, I could never have sought my happiness in thy love, unless thou had’st first loved me. Thy Spirit has encouraged me by grace to seek thee, has made known to me thy reconciliation in Jesus, has taught me to believe it, has helped me to take thee for my God and portion. May he grant me to grow in the knowledge and experience of thy love, and walk in it all the way to glory. Blessed for ever be thy fatherly affection, which chose me to be one of thy children by faith in Jesus: I thank thee for giving me the desire to live as such. In Jesus, my brother, I have my new birth, every restraining power, every renewing grace. It is by thy Spirit I call thee Father, believe in thee, love thee; strengthen me inwardly for every purpose of my Christian life; let the Spirit continually reveal to me my interest in Christ, and open to me the riches of they love in him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

By thy Spirit may I daily live to thee, rejoice in thy love, find it the same to me as to thy Son, and become rooted and grounded in it as a house on rock; I know but little—increase my knowledge of thy love in Jesus, keep me pressing forward for clearer discoveries of it, so that I may find its eternal fullness; magnify thy love to me according to its greatness, and not according to my deserts or prayers, and whatever increase thou givest, et it draw out greater love to thee. Deliver us from evil, and confirm us in Thy fear and in good works, O Trinity, our God, Who art blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, World without end. O God, Who by the prophet’s voice doest pronounce those blessed that fear Thee; grant us to render an acceptable obedience in Thy fear, and make us hence forth to walk in Thy ways; and let our work under Thy direction be pleasing in Thy sight, and its fruit be sweet in the day of reward. Almighty and everlasting God, Who resistest the proud, and givest grace to the humble; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may not exalt ourselves and provoke Thine indignation, but bow down and receive the gifts of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of people that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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February 11, 2020 2:43 am

Believe Me, if All those Endearing Young Charms, which I Gaze on so Fondly To-day!

There is not a soul in the World whom Heaven does not regard in particular fashion. There is not a signor a word that Heaven fails to hear. People create these extravagant habitats because they have vision, love of beauty, hopes and dreams. If the line of reasoning I have been presenting is valid, then it opens new doors to us. If we frankly face the fact that science takes off from subjectively chose set of values, then we are free to select the values we wish to pursue. We are not limited to such stultifying goals as producing a controlled state of happiness, productivity, and the like. I would like to suggest a radically different alternative. Suppose we start with a set of ends, values, purposes, quite different from the type of goals we have been considering. Suppose we do this quite openly, setting them forth as a possible value choice to be accepted or rejected. Suppose we select a set of values which focuses on fluid elements of process, rather than static attributes. We might then value: Humans as a process of becoming; as a process of achieving worth and dignity through the development of one’s potentialities; the individual human being as a self-actualizing process, moving on to more challenging and enriching experiences; the process by which the individual creatively adapts to an ever new and changing World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

We may also value the process by which knowledge transcends itself, as for example the theory of relativity transcended Newtonian physics, itself to be transcended in some future day by a new perception. If we select values such as these we turn to our science and technology of behaviour with a very different set of questions. We will want to now such things as these: Can science assist us in the discovery of new modes of richly rewarding living? More meaningful and satisfying modes of interpersonal relationships? Can science inform us as to how the human race can become a more intelligent participant in its own evolution—its physical, psychological and social evolution? Can science inform us as to ways of releasing the creative capacity of individuals, which seem so necessary if we are to survive in this fantastically expanding atomic age? Dr. Oppenheimer has pointed out that knowledge, which used to double in millenia or centuries, now doubles in a generation or a decade. If we are to be able to adapt effectively, it appears that we will need to discover the utmost in release of creativity. Can science discover the methods by which humans can most readily become a continually developing and self-transcending process, in one’s behaviours, one’s thinking, one’s knowledge? Can science predict and release an essentially “unpredictable” freedom? #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

It is one of the virtues of science as a method that it is as able to advance and implement goals and purposes of this sort as it is to serve static values such as states of being well-informed, happy, obedient. Indeed we have some evidence of this. Psychotherapy can be one of the most subtle tools for the control of one person by another. The therapist can surely mold individuals in imitation of oneself. One can cause and individual to become a submissive and conforming being. When certain therapeutic principles are used in extreme fashion, we call it brain washing, an instance of the disintegration of the personality and a reformulation of the person along lines desired by the controlling individual. So the principles of therapy can be used as a most effective means of external control of human personality and behaviour. Can psychotherapy be anything else? Here I find the developments going on in client-centered psychotherapy an exciting hint of what a behavioural science can do in achieving the kinds of values I have stated. Quite aside from being somewhat new orientation in psychotherapy, this development has important implications regarding the relation of a behavioural science to the control of human behaviour. Let me describe our experience as it relates to the issues of the present discussion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

In client-centered therapy, we are deeply engaged in the prediction and influencing behaviour. As therapists we institute certain attitudinal conditions, and the client has relatively little voice in the establishment of these conditions. Very briefly we have found that the therapist is most effective if one is: genuine, integrated, transparently real in relationships; be acceptant of the client as a separate, different, person, and acceptant of each fluctuating aspect of the client as it comes to expression; and sensitively empathic in one’s understanding, seeing the World through the client’s eyes. Our research permits us to predict that if these attitudinal conditions are instituted or established, certain behavioural consequences will ensue. Putting it this way sounds as if we are again back in the familiar groove of being able to predict behavioural consequences as these: that the client will become more self-directing, less rigid, more open to the evidence of one’s senses, better organized and integrated, more similar to the ideal which one chosen for oneself. In other words we have established by external control conditions which we predict will be followed by internal control by the individual, in pursuit of internally chosen goals. We have set the conditions which predict various classes of behaviours—self-directing behavious, sensitivity to realities within and without, flexible adaptiveness –which are by their very nature unpredictable in their specifics. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The conditions we have established predict behaviour which is essentially “free.” Our recent research indicates that our predictions are to a significant degree corroborated, and our commitment to the scientific method causes us to believe that more effective means of achieving these goals may be realized. Research exists in other fields—industry, education, group dynamics—which seems to support our own findings. I believe it may be conservatively stated that scientific progress has been made in identifying those conditions in an interpersonal relations which, if they exist in B, are followed in A by greater maturity in behaviour, less dependence upon others, an increase in expressiveness as a person, an increase in variability, flexibility and effectiveness of adaptation, an increase in self-responsibility and self-direction. And quite in contrast to the concern expressed by some we do not find that the creatively adaptive behaviour which results from such self-directed variability of expression is too chaotic or too fluid. Rather, the individual who is open to one’s experience, and self-directing, is harmonious, not chaotic, ingenious rather than random, as one orders one’s responses imaginatively toward the achievement of one’s own purposes. One’s creative actions are no more a chaotic accident than was Einstein’s development of the theory of relativity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Thus we find ourselves in fundamental agreement with the statement that “Science has made its way by releasing, not by suppressing, the elements of variation, of invention and innovation, of novel creation in individuals. We have come to believe that progress in personal life and in group living is made in the same way, by releasing variation, freedom, creativity. There has been an interesting development in suburban architecture. Long gone are the days when homes all had verandas, with easy access to the front door, enabling one to become quickly acquainted with other in the neighbourhood. In 2020 we have architecture which speaks more directly to our current values. The most prominent part of a houses used to be the porch, but now the homes are getting larger. Inside are huge spa like bathrooms, plenty of room for delightful diversions—large living areas with fireplaces afford grand lounging; a dining room, cozy interludes. A fully functional kitchen, powder room, utility room, and even a master bedroom on the first floor. The second floor provides well-arranged sleeping quarters—with another large master bedroom—and two full bathrooms, walk-in closets larger than bedrooms some people grew up in. Do not forget the interesting mud room, the home hub and butler’s pantry. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Modern architecture provides for privacy and entertainment as those are a priority today. The old adage that “a person’s house is one’s castle” is coming true today. One’s castle’s moat is one’s front lawn, the drawbridge is one’s driveway, and the portcullis one’s automatic garage door through which one passes with electronic heraldry. Once inside, one removes one’s armour and attends to house and hearth until daybreak, when one assumes one’s executive armament and, briefcase in hand, mounts one’s steed—perhaps a BMW i8 or a BMW X7—presses the button, and rides off to the wars. Today’s home reflects our modern values of individualism, isolation, and privatization. There is this cure in the air behind my body that nobody is going to touch a cloister, a silence closing around a blossom of fire. It is no longer usual to not even know the families immediately surrounding one’s own house! People do not want to get to know their neighbour’s intimately because they may not share the same values and want to stay on good terms with them. Even when the job does not force it, the average American family moves four times. People move from house to house looking for the elusive “something.” We lack roots, continuity, and community—all of which is to say that friendship, especially deep friendship, has fallen on hard times. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

America’s leading psychologist and therapists estimate that only 10 percent of all men have any real friends. The decade-long research of 5,000 men and women by Michael McGill, published in 1985, corroborates this. He reports: “To say that men have no intimate friends seems on the surface too harsh. However, the data indicates that it is not far from the truth. Even the most intimate of friendships (of which there are few) rarely approach the dept of disclosure a woman commonly has with many other women. Men do not value friendship.” Why is this? we wonder. We all know that men, by nature, are not as relational as women. Men’s friendships typically center around activities, while women’s revolve around sharing. Men do not reveal their feelings or weaknesses as readily as women. They gear themselves for the marketplace, and typically understand friendships as acquaintances made along the way, rather than as relationships. Also, if they have an obviously close friendship with another man, men fear being suspected of deviant behaviour. And, of course, there are some who suffer from the Hank Voight, from Chicago PD, delusion that “real men do not need other people.” Tragically, those who think this way rob themselves, their wives, their children, and the Church because they will never be all God wants them to be. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Such thinking ignores the wisdom of both Scripture and life. Soon after Adam’s creation, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone,” reports Genesis 2.18. While this relates directly to the creation of Eve, it is also a primary ontological statement about the nature man, who is, whether he admits it or not, a relational being. His growth and significance are worked out in relationships. Christ is our example. His ministry was centered in deep friendships with the Twelve, whom He repeatedly called “friends” (John 15.13-15), and there was also the inner circle of three with whom He formed an even deeper friendship and to whom He bared His heart. Being a Christian is a relationship with the Triune God through Christ and with His Body, the Church. God becomes our Father; we become eternal brothers and sisters. Relationships! The warning to not “give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Hebrews 10.15) was, and is, a call to relationships and friendships with other believers. Friendship is not optional. Men, if you are married, your wife must be your most intimate friend, but to say, “my wife is my best friend” can be a cop-out. You also need Christian male friends who have same-sex understanding of the serpentine passages of your heart, who will not only offer counsel and pray for you, but will also hold you accountable to your commitments and responsibilities when necessary. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

It is quite clear that the point of view I am expressing is in sharp contrast to the unusual conception of the relationship of the behavioural sciences to the control of human behaviour, previously mentioned. In order to make this contrast even more blunt, I will state this possibility in a form parallel to the steps which I described before. It is possible for us to choose to value a being as a self-actualizing process of becoming; to value creativity, and the process by which knowledge becomes self-transcending. We can proceed, by the methods of science, to discover the conditions which necessarily precede these processes, and through continuing experimentation, to discover better means of achieving these purposes. It is possible for individuals or groups to set these conditions, with a minimum of power or control. According to present knowledge, the only authority necessary is the authority to establish certain qualities of interpersonal relationship. Exposed to these conditions, present knowledge suggests that individuals become more self-responsible, make process in self-actualization, become more flexible, more unique and varied, more creatively adaptive. Thus such an initial choice would inaugurate the beginnings of a social system or subsystem in which values, knowledge, adaptive skills, and even the concept of science would be continually changing and self-transcending. The emphasis would be upon humans as a process of becoming. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

I believe it is clear that such a view as I have been describing does not lead to any definable Utopia. It would be impossible to predict its final outcome. It involves a step by step development, based upon a continuing subjective choice of purposes, which are implemented by the behavioural sciences. It is in the direction of the “open society,” as that term has been defined, where individual carry responsibility for personal decisions. It is at the opposite pole from the concept of a closed society, of which Walden Two would be an example. I trust it is also evident that the whole emphasis is upon process, not upon end states of being. I am suggesting that it is by choosing to value certain qualitative elements of the process of becoming, that we can find a pathway toward the open society. It is my hope that I have helped to clarify the range of choice which is possessed before us and our children in regard to the behavioural sciences. We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood. We can choose to utilize our scientific knowledge to make people necessarily happy, well-behaved, and productive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

We can, if we wish, choose to make men submissive, conforming, docile, Or at the other end of the spectrum of choice we can choose to use the behavioural sciences in ways which will free, not control; which will bring about constructive variability, not conformity; which will develop creativity, not contentment; which will facilitate each person in one’s self-directed process of becoming; which will assist individuals, groups, and even the concept of science, to become self-transcending in freshly adaptive ways of meeting life and its problems. The choice is up to us, and the human race being what it is, we are likely to stumble about, making at times some nearly disastrous value choices, and at other times highly constructive ones. If we choose to utilize our scientific knowledge to free people, then it will demand that we live openly and frankly with the great paradox of the behavioural sciences. We will recognize that behaviour, when examined scientifically, is surely best understood as determined by prior causation. This is the great fact of science. However, responsible personal choice, which is the most essential element in being a person, which is the core experience in psychotherapy, which exists prior to any scientific endeavour, is an equally prominent fact in our lives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

We will have to live with the realization that to deny the reality of experience of responsible persona choice is as stultifying, as closed-minded, as to deny the possibility of a behavioural science. That these two important elements of our experience appear to be in contradiction has perhaps the same significance as the contradiction between the wave theory and the corpuscular theory of light, both of which can be shown to be true, even though incompatible. We cannot profitably deny our subjective life, any more than we can deny the objective description of that life. It is my contention that science cannot come into being without a personal choice of the values we wish to achieve. And these values we choose to implement will forever lie outside of the science which implements them; the goal we select, the purposes we wish to follow, must always be outside of the science which achieves them. To me this has the encouraging meaning that the human person, with one’s capacity of subjective choice, can and will always exist, separate from and prior to any of one’s scientific undertakings. Unless as individuals and groups we choose to relinquish our capacity of subjective choice, we will always remain free persons, not simply pawns of a self-created behavioural science. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

And the fact that God does not owe us anything, where does that leave us? It leaves us in the blessed position of being eleventh hour workers in God’s Kingdom. It leaves us going home at the end of the day from God’s vineyard profoundly grateful, knowing that the gracious landowner has been generous beyond all measure. In a word it leaves us content, and “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” reports 1 Timothy 6.6. Contentment with what we have—whether it is possessions, or station in life, or mental or physical abilities—is worth far, far more than all the things we do not have. A multimillionaire reportedly was once asked how much money was enough, to which he replied, “One dollar more.” The person who is living on the basis of merit is like the multimillionaire. One is never content. One day one thinks one is not being rewarded fairly by God; the next day one is afraid one has forfeited all hope for any reward. Far better to adopt the biblical attitude that grace does not depend on merit at all, but on the infinite goodness of God and His sovereign purpose for my life (a purpose God has already declared to be for my good) than rely on all the merit points I could ever possibly accumulate. We need to remember God has already been shown to be the exceedingly gracious and generous landowner. To realize that grace, all we must do is acknowledge we are no more than eleventh-hour workers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

With this emphasis on contentment, I am not suggesting we should always be satisfied with the status quo in every area of our lives and not pray for or seek improvement. Remember, God by His nature is graciously disposed to give us all good things (Romans 8.32). However, for all of us, there are certain things that simply are not going to change. In those areas, we must learn to be content, always accepting the fact that God does not owe us something different. Frankly, I have had to struggle to learn this myself. God has given me a physical body that, in a number of ways, is less than average. He has given me spiritual gifts that are possessed largely outside the mainstream ministry of the organization He called me to serve with. Neither of these circumstances is going to change, so I have had to learn to be content with what God has given me. I have learned this by focusing on two facts; God does not own me anything, and what He has given me was given by His grace alone. “And now, I speak unto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For, if I heave learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for, for this intent I have written this epistle,” reports Moroni 8.4-6. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

O Lord our God, Whose compassion is the first cause of our fearing and loving Thy Name, mercifully pour (Thy grace) into our hearts, that we, casting away what displeases Thee, may be untied to Thee with an honest will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, the Comforter of the humble, and the Strength of the faithful, be merciful to Thy suppliants; that human weakness, which by itself is prone to fall, may be evermore supported by Thee to stand upright; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty God, I am loved with everlasting love, clothed in eternal righteousness, my peace flowing like a river, my comforts many and large, my joy and triumph unutterable, my soul lively with a knowledge of salvation, my sense of justification unclouded. I have scarce anything to pray for; Jesus smiles upon my soul as a ray of Heaven and my supplications are swallowed up in praise. How sweet is the glorious doctrine of election when based upon thy word and wrought inwardly within the soul! I bless thee that thou wilt keep the sinner thou hast loved, and hast engaged that one will not forsake thee, else I would never get to Heaven. I wrong the work of grace in my heart if I deny my new nature and my eternal life. If Jesus were not my righteousness and redemption, I would sink into nethermost hell by my misdoings, shortcomings, unbelief, unlove; if Jesus were not by the power of his Spirit my sanctification there is no sin I should not commit. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

O when shall I have this mind! When shall I be conformed to his image? All the good things of life are less than nothing when compared with his love, and with one glimpse of thy electing favour. All the treasures of a million Worlds could not make me richer, happier, more contented, for one’s unsearchable riches are mine. One moment of communion with him, one view of his grace, is ineffable, inestimable. But O God, I could not long after thy presence if I did not know the sweetness of it; and such I could not know except by the Spirit in my heart, nor love thee at all unless thou didst elect me, call me, adopt me, save me. I bless thee for the covenant of grace. O God, the Bestower of peace and the Lover of charity, grant to Thy servants a true agreement with Thy will, that we may be delivered from all the temptations which attack us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “For immediately after I had learned these things of you I inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And the word of the Lord came to me by the power of the Holy Ghost, saying: Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the World not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me,” reports Moroni 8.7-8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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February 10, 2020 3:44 am

But Love is Blind, and Lovers Cannot See the Pretty Follies that themselves Commit!

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shine a good deed in a naughty World. Some scientists suggest that the tasks for the behavioural sciences is to make humans productive, well-behaved, and so forth, it is obvious that they are making a choice. One might have chosen to make humans submissive, dependent, and gregarious, for example. Yet by this stated objective of some scientists in another being’s capacity to choose, one freedom to select one’s course and to initiate action—these powers do not exist in the scientific picture of humans. Here is, I believe, the deep-seated contradiction, or paradox. Let me spell it out as clearly as I can. Science, to be sure, rests on the assumption that behaviour is caused—that a specified event is followed by a consequent event. Hence all is determined, nothing is free, choice is impossible. However, we must recall that science itself, and each specific scientific endeavour, each change of course in a scientific research, each interpretation of the meaning of a scientific finding and each decision as to how the finding shall be applied, rests upon a personal subjective choice. Thus science in general exists in the same paradoxical situation as do many scientists. A personal subjective choice made by humans that there can be no such thing as a personal subjective choice. I shall make some comments about this continuing paradox at a later point. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

I stressed the fact that each of these choices initiating or furthering the scientific venture, is a value choice. The scientist investigates this rather than that, because one feels the first investigation has more value for one. One chooses one method for one’s study rather than another because one values it more highly. One interprets one’s findings in one way rather than another because one believes the first way is closer to the truth, or more valid—in other words that it is closer to a criterion which one values. Now these value choices are never a part of the scientific venture itself. The value choices connected with a particular scientific enterprise always and necessarily are possessed outside of that enterprise. I wish to make it clear that I am not saying that values cannot be included as a subject of science. It is not true that science deals only with certain classes of facts and that these classes do not include values. It is a bit more complex than that, as a simple illustration or two may make clear. If I value knows of the “three R’s” (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic) as a goal of education, the methods of science can give me increasingly accurate information as to how this goal may be achieved. If I value problem-solving ability as a goal of education, the scientific method can give me the same kind of help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Now if I wish to determine whether problem-solving ability is “better” than knowledge of the three R’s, then scientific method can also study those two values, but only—and this is very important—only in term of some other value which I have subjectively chosen. I may value college success. Then I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is most closely associated with that value. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is “better” for achieving any one of these values. However, the value or purpose which gives meaning to a particular scientific endeavour must always be possessed outside of the endeavour. Though our concern in these lectures is largely with applied science what I have been saying seems equally true of so-called pure science. In pure science the usual prior subjective value choice, and science can never say whether it is the best choice, save in the light of some other value. Geneticists in Russian, for example, had to make a subjective choice of whether it was better to pursue truth, or to discover facts which upheld strict and rigid government doctrines. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Which choice is “better”? We could make a scientific investigation of those alternatives, but only in the light of some other subjectively chosen value. If, for example, we value the survival of a culture then we could begin to investigate with the methods of science the question as to whether pursuit of truth or support of governmental dogma is most closely associated with cultural survival. Any scientific endeavour, pure or applied, is carried on in the pursuit of a purpose or value which is subjectively chosen by persons. It is important that this choice be made explicit, since the particular value which is being sought can never be tested or evaluated, confirmed or denied, by the scientific endeavour to which it gives birth and meaning. The initial purpose or value always and necessarily is possessed outside the scope of the scientific effort which it sets in motion. Among other things this means that if we choose some particular goal or series of goals for human beings, and then set out on a large scale to control human behaviour to the end of achieving those goals, we are locked in the rigidity of our initial choice, because such a scientific endeavour can never transcend itself to select new goals. Only subjective human persons can do that. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Thus if we choose as our goal the state of happiness for human beings (a goal deservedly ridiculed by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World), and if we involved all of society in a successful scientific program by which people become happy, we would be locked in a colossal rigidity in which no one would be free to question this goal, because our scientific operations could not transcend themselves to question their guiding purposes. And without labouring this point, I would remark that colossal rigidity, whether in dinosaurs or dictatorships, has a very poor record of evolutionary survival. If, however, a part of our scheme is to set free some “planners” who do not have to be happy, who are not controlled, and who are therefore free to choose other values, his has several meanings. It means that the purpose we have chosen as our goal is not a sufficient and satisfying one for human beings, but must be supplemented. It also means that if it is necessary to set up an elite group which is free, then this shows all too clearly that the great majority are only the slaves—no matter by what high-sounding name we call them—of those who select the goals. Perhaps, however, the thought is that a continuing scientific endeavour will evolve its own goals; that the initial findings will alter the directions, and subsequent findings will alter them still further and that science somehow develops its own purposes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

This seems to be a view implicitly held by many scientists. It is surely a reasonable description, but it overlooks one element in this continuing development, which is that subjective personal choice enters in at every point at which the direction changes. The findings of a science, the results of an experiment, do not and never can tell us what next scientific to pursue. Even in the purest of science, the scientist must decide what the findings mean, and must subjectively choose what next step will be most profitable in the pursuit of one’s purpose. And if we are speaking of the application of scientific knowledge, then it is distressingly clear that the increasing scientific knowledge of the structure of the atom carries with it no necessary choice as to the purpose to which this knowledge will be put. This is a subjective personal choice which must be made by many individuals. Science has its meaning as the objective pursuit of a purpose which has been subjectively chosen by a person or persons. This purpose or value can never be investigated by particular scientific experiment or investigation to which it has given birth and meaning. Consequently, any discussion of the control of human beings by the behavioral sciences must first and most deeply concern itself with the subjectively chosen purposes which such an application of science is intended to implement. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The neurotic’s fundamental attitudes toward others has acquainted us with two of the major ways in which one attempts to solve one’s conflicts or, more precisely, to dispose of them. One of these consists in repressing certain aspects of the personality and bringing their opposites to the fore; the other is to put such distance between oneself and one’s fellows that the conflicts are set out of operation. Both processes induce a feeling of unity that permits the individual to function, even if at considerable cost to oneself. A further attempt, here to be described, is the creation of an image of what the neurotic believes oneself to be, or of what at the time one feels one can or ought to be. Conscious or unconscious, the image is always in large degree removed from reality, though the influence it exerts on the person’s life is very real indeed. What is more, it is always flattering in character, as illustrated by a cartoon in the New Yorker in which a middle-aged woman, above average weight sees herself in the mirror as Paris Hilton, a slender young girl. The particular features of the image vary and are determined by the structure of the personality: beauty may be held to be outstanding, or power, intelligence, genius, saintliness, honesty, or what you will. Precisely to the extent that the image is unrealistic, it tends to make the person arrogant, in the original meaning of the words; for arrogance, though used synonymously with superciliousness, means to arrogate to oneself qualities that one does not have, or that one potentially but not factually. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

And the more unrealistic the image, the more it makes the person vulnerable and avid for outside affirmation and recognition. We do not need confirmation for qualities of which we are certain, but we will be extremely touchy when false claims are questioned. We can observe this idealized image at its most blatant in the grandiose notions of psychotics; but in principle its characteristics are the same in neurotics. It is less fantastic here, but it may be just as real to them. If we regard the degree of removal from reality as marking the difference between psychoses and neuroses, we may consider the idealized image as a bit of psychosis woven into the texture of neurosis. In all its essentials the idealized image is an unconscious phenomenon. Although one’s self-inflation may be most obvious even to an untrained observer, the neurotic is not aware that one is idealizing oneself. Nor does one know what a bizarre conglomeration of characters is assembled here. One may have a vague sense that one is making high demands upon oneself, but mistaking such perfectionist demands for genuine ideals one in no way questions their validity and is indeed rather proud of them. How can one’s creation affect one’s attitude toward oneself varies with the individual and depends largely on the focus of interest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

If the neurotic’s interest is possessed in convincing oneself that one is one’s idealized image, one develops the belief that one is in fact the mastermind, the exquisite human being, whose very faults are divine. If the focus is on the realistic self which by comparison with the idealized image is highly despicable, self-derogatory criticism is in the foreground. Since the picture of the self that results from such disparagement is just as far removed from reality as is the idealized image, it could appropriately be called the despised image. If, finally, the focus is upon the discrepancy between the idealized image and the actual self, then all one is aware of and all we can observe are one’s incessant attempts to bridge the gap and whip oneself into perfection. In this event one keeps reiterating the word “should” with amazing frequency. One keeps telling us what one should have felt, thought, done. He is at bottom as convinced of one’s inherent perfection as the naively “narcissistic” person, and betrays it be the belief that one could be perfect if only one were more strict with oneself, more controlled, more alert, more circumspect. In contrast to authentic ideals, the idealized image has a static quality. It is not a goal toward whose attainment one strives but a fixed idea which one worships. Ideals have a dynamic quality; they arouse an incentive to approximate them; they are an indispensable and invaluable force for growth and development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The idealized image is a decided hindrance to growth because it either denies shortcomings or merely condemns them. Genuine ideals make for humility, the idealized image for arrogance. This phenomenon—however defined—has long been recognized. It is referred to in the philosophic writings of all times. Dr. Freud introduced it into the theory of neurosis, calling it by a variety of names: ego ideal, narcissism, superego. It forms the central thesis of Adler’s psychology, descried there as a striving for superiority. It would lead us to far afield to point out in detail the differences and similarities between these concepts and my own. Briefly, all of these are concerned only with one or another aspect of the idealized image, and fail to see the phenomenon as a whole. Hence despite pertinent comment and argument not only by Dr. Freud and Dr. Adler but by many other writers as well—among them Franz Alexander, Paul Federn, Bernard Glueck, and Ernest Jones—the full significance of the phenomenon and its functions has not been reorganized. What, then, are its functions? Apparently it fulfills vital needs. No matter how the various writers account for it theoretically, they are all agreed on the one point that it constitutes a stronghold of neurosis difficult to shake or even to weaken. Dr. Freud for one regarded a deeply ingrained “narcissistic” attitude as among the most serious obstacles to therapy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

There is instruction—verbal instruction, verbal warning. The word “instruction” literally means “to place before the mind. Often this means to confront and thus is related to the precious topic, discipline. This is precisely where the high priest Eli was such an abysmal domestic failure in raising his sons. First Samuel 3.11-13 reports to us: And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them.” The Greek word for “restrain” in the Septuagint has the same root as “instruction” in Ephesians 6.4. Eli failed to confront his boys. He failed to instruct them about their sin. And because of this, they were destroyed. Clear, forthright instruction is necessary for proper upbringing. Men, if we are to own up to our responsibilities, we must be: Involved in verbally instructing children, regularly reading them in family devotions and prayer, monitoring and being responsible along with our wives for the input that enters their impressionable minds, taking responsibility to help assure that church is a meaningful experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

And above all, to be responsible fathers we must make sure that the open book of our lives—our example—demonstrates the reality of our instruction, for in watching us they will learn the most. The “do’s” of fathering—tenderness, discipline, and instruction—together demand one great thing, as a certain busy doctor came to realize. He would appear at meals, pay allowances, and give advice, often without really listening to the problems of his family before he spoke. One afternoon, as he was preparing an article for a respected journal of medicine, his little son crept into the forbidden sanctuary of his father’s study. “Daddy,” he appealed. Without speaking, the doctor opened his desk drawer and handed the boy a box of candy. A few moments later the boy again said, “Daddy,” and his father absent mindedly handed him a pencil. “Daddy,” the boy persisted. The doctor responded to this with a grunt, indicating he knew the boy was there but did not want to be bothered. “Daddy!” the body called out again. Angered, the busy doctor swung around in his chair and said, “What on Earth is so important that you insist on interrupting me? Can you not see I am busy? I have given you candy and a pencil. Now what do you want?” “Daddy, I want to hang out with you.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The “do’s” of fatherhood cannot be lived out by proxy. You need to participate in putting your little ones to bed and praying for and with them. You need to be at their plays, speeches, recitals, and sporting events. You need to schedule regular time along with each of your children. You need to take the lead in planning terrific family vacations and in celebrating and cementing family solidarity. Now in mid-life I sometimes wistfully think, “Where did the time go between the two indelible memories of the birth of my daughter and the birth of her son?” To be honest, some of the years were long and hard. I thought we would never get through many of the stresses. However, when these great events are recalled in all their colour, there seems to be no time between them. That is why, whenever I have occasion to hold a baby in my arms, I often encourage the parents to savour every moment and not to rush through the experience—the child will be grown up and gone in no time. The realization that we have only a brief time to raise our children should give us huge motivation to make the most of it and should make Scriptural advice about fathering pulse with importance for us. Men, time is the chrysalis of eternity—there is no other time but the present. I realize we all go through periods in our lives when we have little time for our families—it is part of the natural rhythm of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

However, excessive “busyness” must not be by choice—as it so often is! We must beware of packing our schedules by saying “yes” to things which mean “no” to our families. Now is the time to take time. There is no other! Will you do it? Will I? Men, we must evaluate our fatherhood. What does your heart tell you as you read these questions listed? Are you weak our strong? Do you criticize your children, or build them up? Are you overly strict, or reasonably strict—gradually granting your child greater freedom? Are you impatient and irritable, or patient and self-controlled, when dealing with your children? Are you consistent in your expectations? Have you kept you promises? Do you show favouritism? Are you tender with both your sons and daughters? Do you share in the discipline? Are you spending time with your children, as a family and individually? What awesome power we have! Our children all want the “aura and armament” of their fathers. Men, their hearts are turned to us! And our Lord wants our hearts to be turned to them. We hear this truth memorably stated by the Angel Gabriel when he announced that part of John the Baptist’s mission in making a people ready for the Lord was “to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,” reports Luke 1.17. Now that Christ has come, this is a perpetual result of His saving work. When a man truly gives his heart to Christ, it is turned toward his children. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Men, submit to Christ—allow Him to turn your hearts to your children. Ask the Holy Spirit for the power to practice the discipline of fatherhood. Sweat for your children’s souls. We actually cannot give God anything that He has not first given to us. David recognized this fact when the leaders of Israel gave so generously for the building of the Temple. In his prayer of praise to God he said, “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. O Lord our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you,” reports 1 Chronicles 29.14, 16. David knew he and his people had not given anything to God that was not already His. Even our service to God comes from His hand. As the prophet Isaiah said, “LORD, all that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. Paul summed up the whole question of what we have given to God rather conclusively when he said, “And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all humans life and breath and everything else,” reports Acts 17.25. When every breath we breathe is a gift from God there really is noting left to give that has not been first given. Almighty and everlasting God, convert us with our whole souls to Thyself; that as Thou vouchsafest such good gifts to the undeserving, Thou mayest bestow yet greater on the devout; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, convert our minds, we beseech Thee, to deeds which shall be pleasing in Thy sight; that Thy rebuke may not prove, by our neglect, a greater cause of punishment, but, by our amendment, a Fatherly admonition; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, convert all our hearts unto Thyself, that we, abstaining from thing which offend Thee, may feel Thy mercy, and not Thy wrath; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And now, my child, I speak onto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For if you have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, my child, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for this intent I have written this epistle,” Moroni 8.4-6. O Lord God, the first act of calling is by thy command in thy word, “Come unto me, return unto me”; the second is to let in light, so that I see that I am called particularly, and perceive the sweetness of the command as well as its truth, in regard to thy great love of the sinner, by inviting one to come, though vile, in regard to the end of the command, which is fellowship with thee, in regard to thy promise in the gospel, which is all of grace. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Therefore, Lord, I need not search to see if I am elect, or loved, for if I turn thou wilt come to me; Christ has promised me fellowship if I take him, and the Spirit will pour himself out on me, abolishing sin and punishment, assuring me of strength to persevere. It is thy pleasure to help all that pray for grace, and come to thee for it. When my heart is unsavoury with sin, sorrow, darkness, hell only thy free grace can help me ac with deep abasement under a sense of unworthiness. Let me lament for forgetting daily to come to thee, and cleanse me from the deceit of bringing my heart to a duty because the act pleased me or appealed to reason. Grant that I may be salted with suffering, with every exactment tempered to my soul, every rod excellently filled to my back, to chastise, humble, break me. Let me not overlook the hand that holds the rod, as thou didst not let me forget the rod that fell on Christ, and drew me to him. O Eternal Father, convert our hearts unto Thyself; for nothing needful shall be lacking to those whom Thou shalt enabled to be devoted to Thy worship; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, Almighty God, look not upon the multitude of our wickedness; but draw away our weakness from sin, and guide the wills of Thy servants to what is right; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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February 8, 2020 1:51 am

God is Living and Large-Hearted Enough to Receive Us, Sins, Weaknesses, Foolishness and All!

Imagination was given to humans to compensate for what one dreams about. A sense of humour was provided to console us for our shortcomings. Behavioural science is clearly moving forward; the increasing power for control which it gives will be held by some one or some group; such an individual or group will surely choose the purposes or goals to be achieved; and most of us will then be increasingly controlled by means so subtle we will not even be aware of them as controls. Thus whether a council of wise psychologists (if this is not a contradiction in terms) or a Stalin or a Big Brother has the power, and whether the goal is happiness or productivity, or resolution of some complex, or submission, or love of Big Brother, we will inevitably find ourselves moving toward the chosen goals, and probably thinking that we ourselves desire it. Thus if this line of reasoning is correct, it appears that some form of completely controlled society—a Walden Two or a 1984—is coming. The fact that is would surely arrive piecemeal rather than all at once, does not greatly change the fundamental issues. Humans and their behaviour would become a planned product of a scientific society. You may well ask, “But what about individual freedom? What about the democratic concepts of the rights of the individual?” #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

The hypothesis that humans are not free is essential to the application of scientific method to the study of human behaviour. The free inner human who is held responsible for the behaviour of the external biological organism is only a pre-scientific substitute for the kinds of causes which are discovered in the course of a scientific analysis. All these alternative causes are possessed outside the individual. As the use of science increases, we are forced to accept the theoretical structure with which science represents its facts. The difficulty is that this structure is clearly at odds with the traditional democratic conception of humans. Every discovery of an event which has a part in shaping human’s behaviour seems to leave so much the less to be credited to the human being; and as such explanations become more and more comprehensive, the contribution which may be claimed by the individual oneself appears to approach zero. Human’s vaunted creative powers, one’s original accomplishments in art, science and morals, one’s capacity to choose and our right to hold one responsible for the consequences of one’s choice—none of these is conspicuous in this new self-portrait. Humans, we once believed, were free to express themselves in art, music and literature, to inquire into nature, to seek salvation in their own way. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

One could initiate action and make spontaneous and capricious changes of course. Under the most extreme duress some sort of choice remained to one. One could resist any effort to control one, though it might cost one one’s life. However, science insists that action is initiated by forces impinging upon the individual, and that caprice is only another name for behaviour for which we have not yet found a cause. The democratic philosophy of human nature and of government is seen as having served a useful purpose at one time. In rallying humans against tyranny it was necessary that the individual be strengthened, that one be taught that one had rights and could govern oneself. To give the common being a new conception of one’s worth, one’s dignity, and one’s power to save oneself, both here and hereafter, was often the only resource of the revolutionist. However, that philosophy is now out of date and indeed an obstacle if it prevents us from applying to human affairs the science of humans. That kind of World would destroy human persons as I have come to know them in the deepest moments of psychotherapy. In such moments I am in relationships with a person who is spontaneous, who is responsibly free, that is, aware of one’s freedom to choose who one will be, and aware also of the consequences of one’s choice. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

To believe, as some hold, that awareness is an illusion, and that spontaneity, freedom, responsibility, and choice have no real existence, would be impossible for me. I think that to the limit of my ability I have played my part in advancing the behavioural sciences, but if the result of my efforts and those of others is that humans become robots, created and controlled by a science of one’s own making, then I am very unhappy indeed. If the good life of the future consists in so conditioning individuals through the control of their environment, and through the control of the rewards they receive, that they will be inexorably productive, well-behaved, happy or whatever, then I want none of it. To me this is a pseudo-form of the good life which includes everything save that which makes it good. And so I ask myself, is there any flaw in the logic of this development? Is there any alternative view as to what the behavioural sciences might mean to the individual and to society? It seems to me that I perceive such a flaw, and that I can conceive of an alternative view. In addition to one’s permanent high evaluation of what one regards as freedom and independence, one may at some time in the analysis express an extreme appreciation for human goodness, sympathy, generosity, self-effacing sacrifice, and at another time swing to a complete jungle philosophy of callous self-interest. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

If one has no clear perspective of the whole structure, the analyst will easily become confused. One may try to follow one path or the other without getting very far in either direction because again and again the patient takes refuge in one’s detachment, thereby shutting all the gateways as one would shut the watertight bulkheads of a ship. There is a perfect and simple logic underlying the special “resistance” of the detached person. One does not want to relate oneself to the analyst or to take cognizance of one as a human being. One does not really want to analyze one’s human relationships at all. One does not want to face one’s conflicts. And if we understand one’s premise, we see that one cannot even be interested in analyzing any of these factors. One’s premise is the conscious conviction that one need not bother about one’s relations with others so long as one keeps at a safe distance from them; that a disturbance in these relations will not upset one if only one keeps away from others; that even the conflicts of which the analyst speaks can and should be left dormant because they will only bother one; and that there is no need to straighten things out because one will not budge from one’s detachment anyway. As we have said, this unconscious reasoning is logically correct—up to a point. What one leaves out and for a long time refuses to recognize is that one cannot possibly grow and develop in a vacuum. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The all-important function of neurotic detachment, then, is to keep major conflicts our of operation. It is the most radical and most effective of the defenses erected against them. One of the many neurotic ways of creating an artificial harmony, it is an attempt at solution through evasion. However, it is no true solution because the compulsive cravings for closeness as well as for aggressive domination, exploitation, and excelling remain, and they keep harassing if not paralyzing their carrier. Finally, no real inner peace or freedom can ever be attained as long as the contradictory sets of values continue to exist. To prosecutors and judges in our court system, as well as to people in ordinary situations of life, it still matters greatly whether wrongdoers show signs of remourse or seem to be truly sorry for what they have done. Why is that? It is because genuine remorse tells us something very deep about the individual. The person who can harm others and feel to remourse is, indeed, a different kind of person from the one who is sorry. There is little hope for genuine change in one who is without remourse, without the anguish of regret. Much of what is called Christian profession today involves no remourse or sorrow at all over who one is or even for what one has done. There is little awareness of being lost or of a radical evil in our hearts, bodies, and souls—which we must get away from and from which only God can deliver us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

To manifest such awareness today would be regarded—and certainly by most Christians as well—as psychologically sick. It is common today to hear Christians talk of the “brokenness.” However, when you listen closely, you may discover that they are talking about their wounds, the things they have suffered, not about the evil that is in them. Few today have discovered that they have been disastrously wrong and that they cannot change or escape the consequences of it on their own. There is little sense of “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a person of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts,” reports Isiah 6.5. Yet, without this realization of our utter ruin and without the genuine revisioning and redirection of our lives, which that bitter realization naturally gives rise to, no clear path to inner transformation can be found. It is psychologically and spiritually impossible. We will steadfastly remain on the throne of our Universe, so far as we are concerned, perhaps trying to “use a little God” here and there. This will grow clearer as we look into the radical goodness of the renovated self. “And such were some of you; but were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God,” 1 Corinthians 6.11. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

One of the amazing things about the human being is that it is capable of restoration, and indeed of a restoration that makes it somehow more magnificent because it has been ruined. This is a hopeful but strange thought. How it is so should become clear as we proceed. However, for now we want to see clearly what goes on within the person who is “unruined,” as we might say. In particular, we must see what is the basic shift (given regeneration and forgiveness) that can lead to the reordering of the six universal dimension of the human self in subordination to God. The key to understanding the overall reordering is provided by what we learned about the human ruin. John Calvin, once again, remarked, “For as the Surest source of destruction to human is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God.” By service, I mean not only that which consists in verbal obedience, but that by which the mind divested of its own carnal feelings, implicitly obeys the call of the Spirit of God. This transformation (which Paul calls the renewing of the mind, Romans 12.2; Ephesians 4.23), though it is the first entrance of life, was unknown to all the philosophers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

They give the government of humans to reason alone…But Christian philosophy bids her give place, and yield complete submission to the Holy Spirit, so that the human oneself no longer lives, but Christ lives and reigns in him (Galatians 2.20). The concepts of love, power, and justice plays an important role in the description of ultimate reality. The element of power is used for the sake of fundamental characterization of being-as-being. In an ontological discussion of power like that in which we are engaged, it is necessary to understand the concept of power. The will to power is a designation of the dynamic self-affirmation of life. It is, like all concepts describing ultimate reality, both literal and metaphorical. The same is true of the meaning of power in the concept “will to power.” It is not the sociological function of power which is meant, although sociological power is included as tne of the manifestations of ontological power. Sociological power, namely the chance to carry through one’s will against social resistance, is not the content of the will to power. The latter is the drive of everything living to realize itself with increasing intensity and extensity. The will to power is not the will of humans to attain power of humans, but it is the self-affirmation of life in its self-transcending dynamics, overcoming internal and external resistance. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

In spite of our willingness to appreciate the expressive requirements of these several kinds of situations, we tend to see these situations as special cases; we tend to blind ourselves to the fact that everyday secular performances in our Anglo-American society must often pass a strict test of aptness, fitness, propriety, and decorum. Perhaps this blindness is partly due to the fact that as performers we are often more conscious of the standards which we might have applied to our activity but have not than of the standards we unthinkingly apply. In any case, as students we must be ready to examine the dissonance created by a misspelled word, or by a slip that is not quite concealed by a skirt; and we must be ready to appreciate why a near-sighted plumber, to protect the impression of rough strength that is de rigueur in one’s profession, feels it necessary to sweep one’s spectacles into one’s pocket when the housewife’s approach changes his work into a performance, or why a television repairman is advised by one’s public relations counsel that the screws one fails to put back into the set should be kept alongside one’s own so that the unreplaced parts will not give an improper impression. In other words, we must be prepared to see that the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The expressive coherence that is required in performances point out a crucial discrepancy between our all-too-human selves and out socialized selves. As human beings we are presumably creatures of variable impulses with moods and energies that change from one moment to the next. As characters put on for an audience, however, we must not be subject to ups and downs. We do not allow our higher social activity to follow in the trail of our bodily states, as our sensations and our general bodily consciousness do. A certain bureaucratization of the spirit is expected so that we can be relied upon to give a perfectly homogeneous performance at every appointed time. The socialization process not only transfigures, it fixes: But whether the visage we assume be a joyful or a sad one in adopting and emphasizing it we define our sovereign temper. Henceforth, so long as we continue under the spell of this self-knowledge, we do not merely live but act; we compose and play our chosen character, we wear the buskin of deliberation, we defend and idealize our passions, we encourage ourselves eloquently to be what we are, devoted or scornful or careless or austere; we soliloquize (before an imaginary audience) and we wrap ourselves gracefully in the mantle of out inalienable part. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

So draped, we solicit applause and expect to die amid a universal hush. We process to live up to the fine sentiment we have uttered, as we try to believe in the religion we profess. The greater our difficulties the greater our zeal. Under our published principles and plighted language we must assiduously hide all the inequalities of our moods and conduct, and this without hypocrisy, since our deliberate character is more truly ourself than the flux of our involuntary dreams. The portrait we paint in this way and exhibit as our true person may well be in the grand manner, with column and curtain and distant landscape and finger pointing to the terrestrial globe or to the Yorick-skull of philosophy; but if this style is native to us and our art is vital, the more it transmutes its model the deeper and truer art it will be. The severe bust of an archaic sculpture, scarcely humanizing the block, will express a spirit far more justly than the human’s dull morning looks or casual grimaces. Everyone who is sure of one’s mind, or proud of one’s office, or anxious about one’s duty assumes a tragic mask. One deputes it to be oneself and transfers to it almost all one’s vanity. While still alive and subject, like all existing things, to the undermining flux of one’s own substance, one has crystallized one’s soul into an idea, and more in pride than in sorrow one has offered up one’s life on the altar of the Muses. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Self-knowledge, like any art or science, renders its subject-matter in a new medium, the medium of ideas, in which it loses its old dimensions and its old place. Our terrestrial habits are transmuted by conscience into loyalties and duties, and we become “persons” or masks. Through social discipline, then, a mask of manner can be held in place from within. However, we are helped in keeping this pose by clamps that are tightened directly on the body, some hidden, some showing. Even if each person dresses in conformity with one’s status, a game is still being played: artifice, like art, belongs to the realm of the imaginary. It is not only that shirt, tie, hairstyle, and jacket disguise body and face; but that the lest sophisticated of people, once one is dressed, does not present oneself o observation; one is, like the picture or the statue, or the actor on the stage, an agent through whom is suggested someone not there that is, the character one represents, but is not. It is this identification with something unreal, fixed, perfect as the hero of a novel, as a portrait or a bust, that gratifies one; one strives to identify oneself with this figure and thus to seem to oneself to be stabilized, justified in one’s splendor. However, we can never obligate God by our obedience or our sacrificial service. Even if we were perfectly obedient in all our Christian duties, we would still be forced to say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty,” reports Luke 17.10. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Supposed you perfectly obey all the traffic laws of your state. You always stay within the speed limit, always come to a complete stop at stop signs, always drive in the proper lane, always use your turn signals—always obey every traffic rule. Do you receive any reward? Not at all, that is what you are supposed to do. You have only done your duty. You do not, by perfect obedience of the traffic laws, obligate the state to reward you in any manner. All you can say is, “I have only done my duty.” As the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe, God has the right to require perfect obedience and faithful service from all of us without in the least obligating Himself. We own God such obedience and service. If we were to perfectly obey every command God has given and faithfully perform every duty—which, of course, we never do—we still could only say, “I have merely done my duty.” We cannot obligate God in any way. God Himself asserted His freedom from any obligation when He said to Job, “Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under Heaven belongs to me,” reports Job 41.11. God was not stating a mere abstract, theological principle. He was rebuking an attitude of “I am no getting what I deserve,” on Job’s part. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Job, in defending himself against the false accusation of his so-called friends, had fallen from an attitude of grace into thinking he deserved better treatment from God. He had fallen from an attitude of “The LORD have and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the Lord me praised,” into an attitude of “It profits a man noting when he tries to please God,” reports Job 1.21, 34.9. Job had, over the time of his suffering, shifted from the position of an eleventh-hour worker to one who felt he had indeed “borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day,” reports Matthew 20.12. And God directly addressed Job’s attitude. If God were to deal with us today as He did with Job, I wonder how many of us would receive a similar rebuke? Through the inspired pen of the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit again asserts His freedom from obligation to anyone when He says, “Who had ever given to God that God should replay him?” reports Romans 11.35. This assertation was not made in a vacuum. Paul had been dealing with the difficult question of the Jews’ future in the face of God’s apparent spurning of them in favour of the Gentiles. Regardless of how we understand Paul’s teaching about the Jews in Romans 9-11 (an issue on which many Christians disagree), the principle stated by the Holy Spirit through Paul is crystal clear: God does not owe anyone anything. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

There is a very high sense of entitlement within modern society. Older people feel entitled to certain benefits from society. Middle-aged people feel entitled to jobs with positions of authority and seniority. Younger adults feel entitled to immediately enjoy the same standard of living their parents too year to achieve. And young people feel entitled to whatever material luxuries they desire. Many observers of our culture are quite concerned about this pervasive sense of rights and expectations within our society as a whole. However, for Christians, such a high sense of entitlement is especially detrimental to our spiritual lives. For one thing, God is the ultimate supplier of all our needs and desires. Every good gift from God, regardless of the intermediate means through which that gift is supplied. As James said, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” reports James 1.17. However, God, through His providential workings, almost always uses some person or institution or other human instrumentality to meet our needs. Ultimately, though, He is the One who provides or withholds what we desire or think we need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Therefore, a high sense of entitlement and expectations, though seemingly directed toward some person or institution, is actually directed toward God and His providential dealings in our lives. If we do not receive what we think we have a right to expect, it is ultimately God who has withheld. More importantly, our sense of entitlement, which may be originally directed toward other people or institutions, is almost invariably transferred directly to God. We begin to be as demanding of our “rights” before God as we are toward people. It is bad enough, and certainly not very Christian, to have the attitude “The World owes me something just because I am,” but to have the attitude that God owes me something is exceedingly dangerous to spiritual health. It will ruin our relationship with God, nullify our effectiveness in ministry, and perhaps turn us bitter or resentful. Unlike our government, or school, or family, or employer, God will not give in to our sense of rights or respond to pressure tactics. We never win the battle of rights with God. He cares too much about our spiritual growth to let that happen. “I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end,” reports Moroni 8.3. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

O God, Who hast enkindled in the holy hearts of all Thy Saints so great an ardour of faith, that they despised all bodily pains, while hastening with all spiritual earnestness to Thee the Author of life; hear our prayers, and grant that the hateful sweetness of sin may wax faint in us, and we may glow with the infused warmth of love for Thee; through Thy mercy may we be inspired to go more deeply into ourselves during prayer, and feel an affinity and may the attraction of God persistently keep recurring to one. Holy Trinity, all praise to thee for electing me to salvation, by foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus; I adore the wonders of thy condescending love, marvel at the true believer’s high privilege within whom all Heaven comes to dwell, abiding in God and God in one; I believe it, help me experience it to the full. Continue to teach me that Christ’s righteousness satisfies justice and evidences thy love; help me to make use of it by faith as the ground of my peace and of thy favour and acceptance, so that I may live always near the cross. It is not feeling the Sprit that proves my saved state but the truth of what Christ did perfectly for me; all holiness in him is by faith made mine, as if I had done it; therefore I see the use of his righteousness, for satisfaction to divine justice and making me righteous. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

It is not inner sensation that makes Christ’s death mine for that may be delusion, being without the word, but his death apprehended by my faith, and so testified by word and Spirit. I bless thee for these lively exercises of faith, for the righteousness that is mine in Jesus, for grace to resign my will to thee; I rejoice to think that all things are at thy disposal, and I love to leave them there. Then prayer turns wholly into praise, and all I can do is to adore and love thee. I want not the favour of humans to lean upon, for I know that thy electing grace is infinitely better. O Christ the Son of God, our great joy and everlasting gladness, Who after their bitter sufferings dost vouchsafe to Thy Saints the contemplation of Thy sweetness, so that pain and groaning have no more place among them; bestow now on us, through undeserving, the healing gift of comfort; that we who through our own fault have been far removed from Thee, may be gathered into the company of Thy Saints, and with them attain to infinite gladness; though they mercy we have found our Master and you are a powerful magnet. The blessing of peace and power we feel in God’s presence makes all our questions fade away because we sense his authenticity and spirituality. Humility is required to recognize that God’s wisdom is better than our own. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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February 7, 2020 2:02 am

All We Ask is to be Let Alone—God Made this Country and Humans Made this Town!

We do not lose our sense of humour when we get older—we get older when we lose our sense of humour. It is great to be great, but it is greater to be human. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,” reports St. Matthew 17.20. Today I want to consider the question of how we—as individuals, as groups, as a culture—will live in, will respond to, will adapt to, this brave new World. What stance will we take in the face of these new developments? Deny and Ignore—one attitude which we can take is to deny that these scientific advances are taking place, and simply take the view that there can be no study of human behaviour which is truly scientific. We can hold that the human being cannot possibly take an objective attitude toward oneself, and that therefore no real science of behaviour can exist. We can say that humans are always a free agent, in some sense that makes scientific study of one’s behaviour impossible. Not long ago, at a conference on the social sciences, curiously enough, I heard a well known economist take just this view. And one of this country’s most noted theologians writes, “In any event, no scientific investigation of past behaviour can become the basis of predictions of future behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This attitude of the general public is somewhat similar. Without necessarily denying the possibility of a behavioural science, the being in the street simply ignores the developments which are taking place. To be sure one becomes excited for a time when one hears it said that the Communists have attempted to change the soldiers they have captured, by means of “brainwashing.” One may show a mild reaction of annoyance to these revelations which show how heavily, and in what manipulative fashion, the findings of the behavioural sciences are used by modern industrial corporations. However, by and large one sees nothing in all this to be concerned about, any more than one did in the first theoretical statements that the atom could be split. We may, if we wish, join one in ignoring the problem. We may go further, like the antiquated intellectuals, and looking at the behavioural sciences may declare that “there ain’t no such being.” However, since these reactions do not seem particularly intelligent I shall leave them to describe a much more sophisticated and much more prevalent point of view. Among behavioural scientists it seems to be largely taken for granted that the findings of such science will be used in the prediction and control of human behaviour. Yet most psychologists and other scientists have given little thought to what this would mean. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

An exception to this general tendency is Dr. B.F. Skinner of Harvard who has been quite explicit in urging psychologists to use the powers of control which they have in the interest of creating a better World. In an attempt to show what he means Dr. Skinner wrote a book some years ago entitled Walden Two, in which he gives a fictional account of what he regards as a Utopian community in which the learnings of the behavioural sciences are fully utilized in all aspects of life—marriage, child rearing, ethical conduct, work, play, and artistic endeavour. There are also some writers of fiction who have seen the significance of the coming influence of the behavioural sciences. Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, has given a horrifying picture of saccharine happiness in a scientifically managed World, against which humans eventually revolt. George Orwell, in 1984, in which the behavioural sciences are used as instruments of absolute control of individuals so that not behaviour alone but even thought is controlled. The writers of science fiction have also played a role in visualizing for us some of the possible developments in a World where behaviour and personality are as much the subject of science as chemical compounds or electrical impulses. I should like to try to present, as well as I can, a simplified picture of the cultural pattern which emerges if we endeavour to shape human life in terms of the behavioural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

There is first of all the recognition, almost the assumption, that scientific knowledge is the power to manipulate. We must accept the fact that some kind of control of human affairs is inevitable. We cannot use good sense in human affairs unless someone engages in the design and construction of environmental conditions which affect the behaviour of humans. Environmental changes have always been the condition for the improvement of cultural patterns, and we can hardly use the more effective methods of science without making changes on a grander scale…Sciences has turned up dangerous processes and materials before. To use the facts and techniques of a science of humans to the fullest extent without making some monstrous mistake will be difficult and obviously perilous. It is not time for self-deception, emotional indulgence, or the assumption of attitudes which are no longer useful. The next assumption is that such a power to control is to be used. It is seen as being used benevolently, though we recognize the danger of its being misused. Even if control is used with benevolent intent, it could actually create a nightmare. If such power of the behavioural sciences is used malignantly, the results will be that it will enhance the degree of regulation exercised by a dictatorial government. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Let us look at some of the elements which are involved in the concept of the control of human behaviour as mediated by the behavioural sciences. What would be the steps in the process by which a society might organize itself so as to formulate human life in terms of the science of humans? First would come the selection of goals. One possible goal is to be assigned to the behavioural technology is this: Let humans be happy, informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive. Well, what do you say to the design of personalities? Would that interest you? The control of temperament? Give me the specifications, and I will give you the man! What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make humans most productive and most successful? Does that seem to you fantastic? Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally. Think of the possibilities! Let us control the lives of our children and see what we can make of them. What is essentially being said here is that the current knowledge in the behavioural sciences plus that which the future will bring, will enable us to specify, to a degree which today would seem incredible, the kind of behavioural and personality results which we wish to achieve. This is obviously both an opportunity and a very heavy burden. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The second element in this process would be one which is familiar to every scientist who has worked in the field of applied science. Given the purpose, the goal, we proceed by the method of science—by controlled experimentation—to discover the means to these ends. If for example our present knowledge of the conditions which cause humans to be productive is limited, further investigation and experimentations would surely lead us to new knowledge in the field. And still further work will provide us with the knowledge of even more effective means. The method of science is self-correcting in thus arriving at increasingly effective ways of achieving the purpose we have selected. The third element in the control of human behaviour through the behavioural sciences involves the question of power. As the conditions or methods are discovered by which to achieve our goal, some person or group obtains the power to establish those conditions or use those methods. There has been too little recognition of the problem involved in this. To hope that the power being made available by the behavioural sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by a benevolent group, seems to me a hope little support by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely that behavioural scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the rocket scientists specializing in guided missiles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

First they worked devotedly for the aggressor to destroy Russia and the United States. Now depending on who captured them, they work devotedly for Russian in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly for the United States in the interest of destroying Russia. If behavioural scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probable that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power. However, this is, in a sense a digression. The main point of this view is that some person or group will have and use the power to put into effect the methods which have been discovered for achieving the desired goal. The fourth step in this process whereby a society might formulate its life in terms of the behavioural sciences is the exposure of individuals to the methods and conditions mentioned. As individuals are exposed to the prescribed conditions this leads, with a high degree of probability, to the behavioural which has been desired. People then become productive, if that has been the goal, or submissive, or whatever it has been decided to make them. To give something of the flavour of this aspect of the process as seen by one of its advocates. Now that we know rewarding reinforcement works, and why negative does not, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That is the source of the tremendous power of using rewards as a way to reinforce behaviour you want—there is no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that cause the question of freedom never arises. The neurotic, in contrast to the psychotic, cannot help registering with painful accuracy all the thousand little incidents of real life which do not fit in with one’s conscious illusion. Consequently one wavers in one’s self-valuation between feeling great and feeling worthless. At any minute one may shift from one extreme to the other. At the same time that one feels most convinced of one’s exceptional value one may be astonished that anyone takes one seriously. Or at the same time that one feels miserable and down-trodden one may feel furious that anyone should think one in need of help. One’s sensitivity can be compared with that of a person who is sore all over one’s body and flinches at the slightest touch. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

One easily feels hurt, despised, neglected, slighted, and reacts with proportionate vindictive resentment. Here again we see a “vicious circle” at work. While grandiose ideas have a definite reassurance value and afford some support, even though only in an imaginary way, they not only reinforce the tendency to recoil, but through the medium of sensitivity create greater rage and thereby greater anxiety. This is, to be sure, the picture of severe neuroses, but in minor degrees it can also be seen in less serious cases, where it may not even be recognized by the person concerned. On the other hand, however, a sort of lucky circle may start as soon as the neurotic is able to do some constructive work. By this means one’s self-confidence grows, and there is thus less necessity for one’s grandiose ideas. The neurotic’s lack of success—one’s falling behind others in any respect, whether it concern career or marriage, security or happiness—makes one envious of others and thus reinforces the attitude of begrudging envy which has developed from other sources. Several factors may lead one to repress one’s begrudging attitude, factors such as inherent nobility of character, a deep conviction that one has no right to demand anything for oneself, or simply failure to recognise one’s existing unhappiness. However, the more it is repressed the more it may be projected on others, resulting in a sometimes almost paranoid fear that others begrudge one everything. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

If something goof happens to one, a new job, a flattering recognition, a fortunate acquisition, good fortune in a love-relationship, this anxiety may be so great that one feels absolutely uneasy. Hence it may greatly reinforce one’s tendencies to refrain from having anything or getting anywhere. Leaving out all details, the main outlines of the “vicious circle” which develops out of the neurotic striving for power, prestige and possession may roughly indicate as follows: anxiety, hostility, impaired self-esteem; striving for power and the like; enhanced hostility and anxiety; tendency to recoil from competition (with accompanying tendencies toward self-belittling); failures and discrepancies between potentialities and achievements; enhanced grandiose ideas (with fear of envy); enhanced sensitivity (with renewed tendency to recoil); enhanced hostility and anxiety, which starts the cycle all over again. In order, however, to understand fully the role hat envy plays in neuroses, we have to regard it from a more comprehensive viewpoint. The neurotic, whether or not feels it consciously, is not only a very unhappy person indeed, but one does not see any chance of escaping one’s misery. What the outside observer describes as vicious circles developing out of attempts to get reassurance, the neurotic oneself feels as being hopelessly caught in a net. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

As a patient of mine has described it, he feels tied up in a Brooklyn Basement with many doors, and whichever door he opens leads only into new darkness. And all the time he knows that others are walking outside in Sunshine. All because he was looking for love in all the wrong places and ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Family secrets are revealed and he learns blood is not always thicker than water! I do not believe that one can understand any severe neurosis without recognizing the paralyzing hopelessness which it contains. Some neurotic persons express their exasperation in no uncertain terms, but in others it is deeply covered by resignation or by a show of optimism. It may be difficult then to see that behind all the odd vanities, demands, hostilities, there is a human being who suffers, who feels excluded from all that makes life desirable, who knows that even if one gets what one wants one cannot enjoy it. When one recognizes the existence of all this hopelessness it should not be difficult to understand what appears to be an excessive aggressiveness or even meanness, unexplainable by the particular situation. A person so shut out from every possibility of happiness would have to be a veritable Angel if one did not feel hatred toward a World one cannot belong to. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Coming back now to the problem of envy, this gradually developing hopelessness is the basis from which envy is constantly generated. It is not so much an envy of something special, but what is described as Lebensneid, a very general envy of everyone who feels more secure, more poised, more happy, more straightforward, more self-confident. If such a feeling of hopelessness has developed in a person, regardless of whether it is close to one’s awareness or far away, one will attempt to account for it. One does not see it—as the analytical observer does—as the outcome of an inexorable process. Instead one sees it as caused either by others or by oneself. Often one will blame both sources, though usually one or the other is in the foreground. When one puts the blame on others an accusatory attitude results, which may be directed toward fate in general, toward circumstances, or toward special persons: parents, teachers, husband, physician. Neurotic demands on others, as we have pointed out frequently, are to be understood largely from this point of view. It is as if the neurotic thought along these lines: “Since you are all responsible for my suffering, it is your duty to help me, and I have a right to expect it from you.” In so far as one seeks the source of evil in oneself, he feels that one has deserved one’s misery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Speaking of the neurotic’s tendency to put the blame on others may give rise to a misunderstanding. It may sound as if one’s accusations were unwarranted. As a matter of fact one has definite good reasons to feel accusatory, because one has indeed been dealt with unfairly, particularly in childhood. However, there are also neurotic elements in one’s accusations: they often take the place of constructive efforts toward beneficial goals and usually they are blind and indiscriminate. They may be directed, for example, toward persons who want to help one and at the same time one may be entirely incapable of feeling and expressing accusations against those persons who really injure one. When the floodtides of evil break across the television screen or wash the pages of print media in what is now called “news,” people roll their eyes helplessly and say, “Why?” They never say “Why?” when something good happens. However, they would if they ever faced up to the reality of the ruined soul. However, they simply cannot deal with the actual content of the human heart, mind, body, social context, and soul. In intellectual circles (and do not we all live there now?) evil, like sin, is a non-category. It is impolite and politically incorrect to speak seriously of it, even if it is the most tragic event that has ever taken place in modern history. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Some years ago a leading media personality had a high-level conference in Aspen, Colorado USA, on the topic of evil. (Should not that meeting have been held elsewhere? South Los Angeles or Sacramento?) The outcome was that one or two participants out of a large group thought that there was such a thing as evil. However, most were either noncommittal on the point or certain that evil did not exist at all. When you heard their comments it was clear that they simply could not conceptualize the evil to be seen flourishing abundantly around them in the twentieth century. One of the most glaring evidences of the bankruptcy of contemporary ethical thinking is that it cannot deal with evil. A recent proposal to found a field of “Evil Studies” within academia will not be enthusiastically received. We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss Heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the Universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal kind of life “from above” naturally takes. It is the path one must be on if one is to be an eternal kind of life. It is not a project of life enhancement, where the life in question is the usual life of normal human beings—that is, life apart from God. It is, rather, the process of developing a different kind of life, the life of God himself, sustained by God as a new reality in those who have confidence that Jesus is the anointed One, the Son of God. “Believing in him we have life in his name,” reports John 20.31. Those “in Christ”—that is, caught up in his life, in what he is doing, by the inward gift of birth from above—“are of a new making. The ‘old stuff’ no longer matters. It is the new that counts,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.17. Here in this new creation is the radical goodness that alone can thoroughly renovate the heart. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which one hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons (and daughters) of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like hum, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as one is pure. Amen,” Moroni 7.48. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, Who adornest the sacred body of Thy Church by the confessions of holy Martyrs; grant us, we pray Thee, that both by their doctrines and their pious example, we may follow after what is pleasing in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mercifully give us, O Lord, an increasing of faith in Thee; that as it glorifies Thy holy Martyrs who held it fast even unto blood, it may also justify us who follow it in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that as we welcome with a temporary service the commemoration of Thy Saints, so we may rejoice in beholding them perpetually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of my exodus, great was the joy of Israel’s sons, when Egypt died upon the shore, far greater the joy when the redeemer’s foe lay crushed in the dust. Jesus strides forth as the victor, conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might; He bursts the bands f death, tramples the powers of darkness down, and lives for ever. He, my gracious surety, apprehended for payment of my debt, comes forth from the prison house of the grave free, and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death. Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted, that the claims of justice are satisfied, that the devil’s sceptre is shivered, that one’s wrongful throne is levelled. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Give me the assurance that in Christ I died, in him I rose, in his life I live, in his victory I triumph, in his ascension I shall be glorified. Adorable redeemer, thou who wast lifted up upon a cross art ascended to highest Heaven. Thou, who as Man of sorrows wast crowned with throns, art now as Lord of life wreathed with glory. Once, no shame more deep than thine, no agony more bitter, no death more cruel. Now, no exaltation more high, no life more glorious, no advocate more effective. Thou art in the triumph BMW M5 leading captive thine enemies behind thee. What more could be done than thou hast done! Thy death is my life, thy resurrection my peace, thy ascension my hope, thy prayers my comfort. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that the examples of Thy Saints may stir us up to a better life, so that we who celebrate their solemnities, may also imitate their actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who permittest us to celebrate the commemoration of all Thy Saints, grant that we Thy servants may enjoy their fellowship in eternal gladness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who dost enkindle the flame of Thy love in the hearts of the Saints, grant to our minds the same faith and power of love; that as we rejoice in their triumphs, we may profit by their examples; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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February 6, 2020 2:48 am

House of Beauty—Thy Presence is to Me a Treasure of Unending Peace for Thou Has Drawn Me with Cords of Love!

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. Knowledge has never been known to enter the head through an open mouth. Sometimes it is better to remain quiet and look like a fool, than to pen one’s mouth and remove all doubt. “What therefore God … Continue reading →

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February 5, 2020 2:41 am

Lord, I Have Done this Sacrificial Service for You, and Now I am in Need of this Special Answer to Prayer!

Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee,” reports Numbers 6.24. The illumined being gives oneself, the unenlightened one gives one’s possessions. If they are judged by appearances only, the truth of the situation will become reserved, and falsity will appear as truth. That is, the illumined being will seem the most uncharitable. They master’s motive may easily remain unknown to others, especially when one has a mission to fulfill for them, and by this unenlightenment they may just as easily misunderstand one’s actions. If this happens and they turn away from one, an opportunity for their higher growth will be missed. The distorted reading of one’s actions will also cause them to judge one unfairly and incorrectly. One will accept this injustice as part of the price of descending into an evil World where one does not really belong. T expect from such a being at all times and in all places, as both sceptics and followers often expect, a pharisaical propriety of conduct simply shows how little they have comprehended the perfect selflessness and utter purity of one’s character. For they expect ne to behave rigidly according to the patterns of conventional morality, although these are not always sincere or generous or wise. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Because one’s guidance must come from within, from one’s diviner consciousness and not from outside, from a society led by its ego consciousness, these will be occasions when one’s actions will not conform to these patterns. And this is so in spite of the fact that one knows well, and obeys where possible, the requirement that one shall set an example to others. One’s nonconformity will then be denounced or misunderstood, reviled or viewed with bewilderment. There are those who lightly appraise such a being’s spiritual worth by the superficial signs which accident throws their way or by the stories gossip brings to their ears. They are wasting their time. To offer no contradiction to false or slanderous statements made by others in their presence about a Spiritual teacher, is silently to consent to such criticism. It is such a being who most serves one’s fellows yet who least receives the recognition of one’s service. This is because humanity fails to understand where its true interests are possessed, what its true goal is, and why it is here at all. One will be the victim on one side of friendly enthusiasts who credit one with powers and adorn one with virtues which one does not possess, and on the other side of prejudiced enemies who malign one with motives and besmirch one with weaknesses which are wholly foreign to one’s temperament. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

One’s illusionless life may not seem attractive to the mass of people who cannot afford the high cost of truth. Why do so many people stumble over this parable in the Holy Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about the labours who did less work being paid as much as the one who worked twelve hours, and consider the landowner to be unfair? I believe it is because we Christians instinctively identify with the workers who had worked all day. We place ourselves in their shoes instead of in the shoes of those who worked only one hour. We look at society around us, instead of at Jesus Christ, and we begin to feel pretty good about ourselves. We consider ourselves to be twelve-hour workers, and we expect to be rewarded accordingly. That is the way Peter felt and that is the way many people feel today. I was talking one day with a man whose mother, a faithful servant of God for over forty years, was dying of painful cancer. He said, “After all she has done for God, this is the thanks she gets.” Such a statement sounds irreverent to us, but the man did not intend it to be that way. He simply thought God owed hos mother a better life. He only verbalized what many people feel in their hears. There are other occasions when we remind God of the sacrifices we have made to serve him. “Lord, I have done this sacrificial service for You, and now I am in need of this special answer to prayer.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

When we assume such an attitude, we are putting ourselves in the position of the twelve-hour workers. We suggest to God that we deserve this answer to prayer because of our sacrificial service. With such an attitude we may grumble about blessings not received instead of being grateful for those we have received. We need to adopt the attitude of the Roman centurion described in Luke 7. The man sent some of the Jewish elders to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his sick servant. When the elders came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him: “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue” (verses 4-5). Notice the Jewish elders’ emphasis on deserving. The centurion surely was a remarkable man. He was an officer in the Roman occupation army, yet he served the occupied people by building a synagogue for them. Think of an occupying army in today’s culture and ask yourself how many “enemy” officers would do such a thing. However, the centurion’s attitude about oneself is even more remarkable than one’s deeds. Instead of thinking of what one should receive because of what one deserved, one freely confessed one did not deserve anything. He sent word to Jesus, saying, “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you” (verses 6-7). #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

The centurion placed oneself in the shoes of the eleventh-hour workers. Because of this he not only experienced the joy of having one’s request granted, but also the added joy of knowing he had received what he did not deserve. He experienced the joy of knowing he had received a gift—not a repayment of a debt. Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there. However, their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is. Whether or not God’s will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not. There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent. One should seriously inquire if to live in a World permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If not, they can be assured that God will excuse them for his presence. They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke. However, the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and denial of God that they cannot want God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

A well-known minister of other years used to ask rhetorically, “You say you will accept God when you want to?” And then he would add, “How do you know you will be able to want to when you think you will?” The ultimately lost person is the person who cannot want God. Who cannot want God to be God. Multitudes of such people pass by every day, and pass into eternity. The reason they do not find God is that they do not want him or, at least, do not want him to be God. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me. Is it insulting to suggest that someone is or may be lost? That his or her soul is ruined? There are so many fine-looking people all about us! Well, is it insulting to say, in appropriate circumstances, that someone has poor social hygiene and it could be fatal, when you know it to be true? Perhaps treatment depends upon coming to know it. Say it is cancer or worst? No doubt, in our hypersensitive, egotistical age, that could be insulting to some people. However, that merely illustrates the delusional human condition that has been described earlier. If I am god, people should not say such things to me. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever; and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly. God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity. The “now” that stands still, is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is causes in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the “now,” so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending “now” standing still. God is the author of eternity, and this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicate His eternity to some in the way as He communicates His immutability. God is before eternity, according as it is shared by immaterial substances. That is why intelligence is equal to eternity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

In the words of Exodus, “The Lord shall reign for eternity, and beyond,” eternity stands for age, as another rendering has it. Thus it is said that the Lord will reign beyond eternity, inasmuch as He endures beyond every age, for instance, beyond every kind of duration. For age is nothing more than the period of each thing. Or to reign beyond young eternity can be taken to mean that is any other thing were conceived to exist forever, as the movement of the Heavens according to some philosophers, then God would still reign beyond, inasmuch as His reign is simultaneously whole. Eternity is noting else but God Himself. Hence God is not called eternal, and if He were in any way measured; but the idea of measurement is there taken according to the apprehension of our mind alone. Words denoting different times are applied to God, because His eternity includes all times; not as if He Himself were altered through present, past, and future. “And again, behold I say unto you that one cannot have faith and hope, save one shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so, one’s faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a human be meek and lowly in heart, and confess by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if her have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity,” reports Moroni 7.43-45. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

O Lord, the Saviour and Guardian of such as fear Thee, turn away from Thy Church the deceitful allurements of this World’s wisdom; that under the teaching of Thy Spirit, we may find pleasure in the prophetic delineations and the apostolic instructions, rather than in the terms of philosophy; lest the vanity of falsehoods should deceive those whom the teaching of truth illuminates; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed and glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thanks be to Thee, very and one Trinity, one perfect Godhead. Thee, God the Father Unbegotten; Thee, the Only-begotten Son; Thee, the Holy Spirit the Paraclete; the Holy and Undivided Trinity, do we confess and praise with heart and mouth; to Thee by glory forever Alleluia. O God, the Strength of all Thy Saints, Who hast granted them in Thine abundant bounty the grace to come to their present glory; vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, pardon to our sins, that we may be able worthily to celebrate their solemnities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of unsearchable greatness, before thee I am nothing but vanity, iniquity, perishing; sin has forfeited thy favour, stripped me of thy image, banished me from thy presence, exposed me to the curse of thy law; I cannot deliver myself, and am in despair. However, a resource is found in thee, for without my desert or desire thou didst devise an everlasting plan, honourable to thy perfections, and which Angels desired to look into. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

And the word which announces all the glory of this goodness is nigh me, invite me, beseeches me. May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation, his death the centre of all relief, the source of all gospel-blessings. Help me to repair to that cross, be crucified to the World by it, and in it find deepest humiliation, motives to patience and self-denial, grace for active benevolence, faith to grasp eternal life, hope to lift up my head, love to bind me forever to him who died and rose for me. May his shed blood make me more thankful for thy mercies, more humble under thy correction, more zealous in thy service, more watchful against temptation, more contented in my circumstances, more useful to others. The seeker whose preconceived picture of what constitutes a master is correct—but this is uncommon—will be able to recognize one at their first meeting. One will feel with absolute certainty the inner greatness of the master of the master. Yet it does not follow that this is one’s particular master. There must also be a feeling of personal affinity as well as an intellectual appeal f the doctrines taught. Without this feeling of affinity and the considerable satisfaction which derives from it, one would be prudent to look elsewhere and not accept this person as guru. Take that person as your teacher whose character mentality approach the ideal you have formed, and with whose doctrine and personality you feel in sympathy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

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February 4, 2020 2:37 am

A Marry Heart Maketh a Cheerful Countenance

New opinion are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. Some psychiatrists believe that humans are much more destructive and much crueler than animals. Animals are not sadistic; animals are not enemies of life. However, human history is a chronicle of unimaginable cruelty and destructiveness. That record gives us no reason to make light of the strength and intensity of human aggressiveness. However, I also think that the rots of our aggressiveness do not go back to our terrestrial nature, our instincts, and our past, but that human aggressiveness, to the extent that it is greater than that of animals, can be explained by the specific conditions of human existence. Aggressiveness, or destructiveness is an evil; it is not just a “so-called” evil. However, it is human. It is potential present in humans, present in all of us, and it will come to the fore if our development does not take better, more mature directions. The human “extra” of aggression, that measure of aggression in humans that exceeds animal aggression, is rooted in human character. I do not mean character here in a legal sense but in a psychoanalytical sense: character as a system of relationships that link an individual to the World. By character I mean what humans have created to replace the animal instincts that are only minimally developed in one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

What I am saying about character here may sound somewhat theoretical, but if you look back on your own experience I am sure that many of you will understand precisely what I am driving at when I speak of character in that sense. You will surely have come across people whom you would identify as having a sadistic character. And you will also have met others would characterize as “kindly.” When you make those judgments you are not saying that this person once did something sadistic or that that one was once very friendly. You are referring instead to a quality of character that runs through the individual’s entire life. There are sadistic individuals who never do anything sadistic because they never have the opportunity to, and only a very few acute observer will ever catch them red-handed in some small sadistic act. Conversely, there are character that are not basically destructive, yet individuals of this kind may shoot someone else down in a fit of rage or despair. However, that does not by any means indicate that their characters are essentially destructive. If we assume that human, that is, rooted in human’s specifically human condition and not in one’s primitive past, then we can avoid a logical paradox that the theoreticians of instinct cannot escape, try as they might. They claim that human’s greater aggressiveness can be explained from the lesser aggressiveness of animals. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

How can that be? We cannot assume that what a human has inherited from their primitive past has made them much more and aggressive and destructive than animals have ever been. The more logical conclusion is that human behaviour that differs from animal behaviour—in this case, human’s greater cruelty—is not something humans have inherited from their primitive past but something originating in the specific conditions of human existence. However, now let me make a few remarks about animal aggressiveness. Animal aggressiveness is attuned to biological needs. It serves the survival of the individual and of the species, and it is mobilized whenever there is an external threat to the animal’s vital interests, for example, whenever one is faced with a threat to one’s life, one’s food, one’s relations with animals of the opposite gender, one’s territory, or the like. If threatened, animals—and human beings—will react with either aggressiveness or flight. If no threat is present, no aggression will be mobilized. Aggressiveness is present in the brain as a mechanism that can be activated at any time but does not accumulate and does not have to be vented in actions if there is no particular stimulus or occasion for such behaviour. It does not, in other words, reflect the “hydraulic” model. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

When the neurophysiologist Hess showed which centers or which areas of the brain produced aggressiveness when the appropriate stimuli were present and when a threat to vital interests mobilized those centers, he was the first to make it very clear that animal aggressiveness does not reflect the hydraulic model. The aggressiveness of predators is a different matter. Predators attack to obtain their food. That predatory aggressiveness is located, neurophysiologically, in enters of the brain different from the ones that control defensives aggression. On the whole, then, we find that animals are generally not very aggressive at all, unless they happen to be threatened. Blood is rarely spilled among animals, even when they actually fight. Observation of chimpanzees, sacred baboons, and other primates has shown how extraordinarily peaceful the social life of those primate actually is. We can probably safely say that if humanity displayed no more aggression than the chimpanzees, we would not have to worry about war and aggression at all. The same is true of wolves. Wolves are predators, and if they attack a sheep, they are of course aggressive. Human beings imagine the wolf to be an incredibly aggressive creature. However, in doing so they confuse one’s aggressiveness in finding food with one’s aggressiveness when one is not hunting for food. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18Wolves among themselves are not the least bit aggressive; they are downright friendly. It is therefore unjust to characterize human aggressiveness by comparing it with aggressiveness among wolves, as we do when we say that one man behaved toward another as one wolf did toward another (homo homini lupus). We could possibly say “as a wolf behaved toward a sheep” but not “as a wolf did toward a wolf.” We can see, then, that animal aggressiveness does not follow the hydraulic model. As long as the animal is not threatened, there is no constantly increasing aggressiveness that finally produces an explosion. To put it another way, human aggressiveness is a possibility provided by biology and present in the brain, but its activation is not a necessity. It will not manifest itself unless the need for self-preservation sets it in motion. That is an important difference from the behaviouristic thesis holding that aggressiveness is a learned trait and that it is circumstances and circumstances only that make people aggressive. Things are not that simple either, for if aggressiveness could be taught by circumstances, it could not move into action as quickly and intensely as it does and as it in fact must. The reality is that aggressiveness is a biological given, a possibility that is present and that can be mobilized very quickly. All the neurophysiological mechanisms necessary for its activation are there and functional in us, but, as I have said, they have to be mobilized first, and without mobilization they need not go into action. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Let me illustrate the point with a graphic example. If, for self-defense, someone keeps a revolver next to one of one’s bed at night or in one’s desk during the day, that does not mean one intends to shoot that revolver all the time. However, it does mean that one will use it in case of danger. That is precisely the way the physiology of our brain is organized. There is a revolver present in out brain, as it were, always ready for quick action in case of an attack. However, contrary to what the instinct theory claims, the existence of that state of preparedness does not result in a piling up of aggression that eventually has to explode. Then, too, Hess and other neurophysiologists have found that animals respond to danger not only with attacks but also with flight. Attack is the last resort the animal takes when its chances of flight are cut off. Only then does it attack; only then does it fight. And if we are to speak of an “aggressive instinct” in human beings, then we must also speak of a flight instinct as well. If the proponents of a theory of aggression and of instinct say humans are constantly prodded on by aggressive feelings that one can control only when the greatest of difficulty, we are obliged to add that humans are also motivated by an almost irresistible urge to flee, and this impulse, too, can be controlled only with the greatest of difficulty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Anyone who has ever observed combat knows very well how strong the human impulse to flee is. Otherwise we would not need the laws that often punish military desertion with death. In other words, the human brain provides us with two possibilities for reacting to an attack: We can fight or we can flee. However, both the flight impulse and the attack impulse remain inactive if there is no threat, and they do not automatically produce a constantly active and ever-increasing tendency for aggression or flight. We have seen that the “hydraulic” theory of aggression is not tenable. Neurophysiological findings show that neither human or animal aggressiveness is a constantly growing, spontaneously self-activating drive but is mobilized by stimuli carrying a threat to either the human being’s or the animal’s existence or vital interests. However, there are reasons other than physiological ones that make the “hydraulic” theory untenable. It collapses, too, in the face of facts we can marshal from anthropology, paleontology, psychiatry, and social psychology. If the theory were correct, then we would expect that on the whole aggressiveness would be about the same in all individuals and in all cultures and societies. We would, of course, make allowance—as we do with intelligence—for differences in intensity, relatively small though those differences are. However, by and large people everywhere should display the same amount of aggressiveness and destructiveness. However, that is simply not the case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Perhaps even more impressive than our knowledge of groups is the knowledge which is accumulating in the behavioural sciences as to the conditions which will be followed by specified types of behaviour in the individual. It is the possibility of scientific prediction and control of individual behaviour which comes closet to the interest of each one of us. Let us look at scattered bits of this type of knowledge. We know how to set up the conditions under which many individuals will report as true, judgments which are contrary to the evidence of their senses. And when a person is led to believe that everyone else in the group has an opinion, then one has a strong tendency to go along with this judgment, and in many instances does so with a real belief in one’s false report. Not only can we predict that a certain percentage of the individuals will thus yield, and disbelieve their own senses, but we can also determine the personality attributes of those who will do so, and by selection procedures would be able to choose a group who would almost uniformly give in to these pressures for conformity. We know how to change the opinions of an individual in a selected direction, without one’s ever becoming aware of the stimuli which changed one’s opinion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

A static, expressionless portrait of a man was flashed on a screen by Smith, Spence and Klein. Then they intermittently flashed the word “angry” on the screen, at exposures so brief that the subjects were consciously completely unaware of having seen the word. They tended, however, to see the face as becoming more angry. When the word “happy” was flashed on the screen in similar fashion, the viewers tended to see the face as becoming more happy. Thus they were clearly influenced by stimuli which registered at a subliminal level, stimuli of which the individual was not, and could not be, aware. We know how to influence psychological moods, attitudes, and behaviours, through drugs. For this illustration we step over into the rapidly developing borderline area between chemistry and psychology. Fromm drugs to keep awake while driving or studying, to so-called “truth serum” which reduces the psychological defenses of the individual, to the chemotherapy now practiced in psychiatric wards, the range and complexity of the growing knowledge in this field is striking. Increasingly there are efforts to find drugs with more specific effects—a drug which will energize the depressive individual, another to calm the excited, and the like. Drugs have reportedly been given to soldiers before a battle to eliminate fear. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Trade names for the tranquilizing drugs such as Miltown have already crept into our language, even into our cartoons. While much is still unknown about this field, in the not-too-distant future, the motivational and emotional conditions of normal life will probably be maintained in any desired state through the use of drugs. While this seems to be a somewhat exaggerated view, this prediction could be partially justified. We know how to provide psychological conditions which will produce vivid hallucinations and other abnormal reactions in the thoroughly normal individual in the waking state. This knowledge came about as the unexpected by-product of research at McGill University. It was discovered that if all channels of sensory stimulation are cut off or muffled, abnormal reactions follow. If healthy subjects lie motionless, to reduce kinaesthetic stimuli, with eyes shielded by translucent goggles which do not permit perception, with hearing largely stifled by foam rubber pillows as well as by being in a quiet cubicle, and with tactile sensations reduced by cuffs over the hands, then hallucinations and bizarre ideation bearing some resemblance to that of the psychotic occur withing forty-eight hours in most subjects. What the results would be if the sensory stifling were continued longer is not known because the experience seemed so potentially dangerous that the investigators were reluctant to continue it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

We know how to use a person’s own words to open up whole troubled areas in one’s experience. When a recorded therapeutic interview with a patient, brief statements by the patient which seem significantly related to the underlying dynamics of the case. Such a brief statement is then put on a continuous tape so that it can be played over and over. When the patient hears one’s own significant words repeated again and again, the effect is very potent. By the time it has been repeated twenty or thirty times the patient often begs to have it stopped. It seems clear that it penetrates the individual’s defenses, and opens up the whole psychic area related to that statement. For example, a woman who feels very inadequate and is having marital difficulties, talked about her mother in one interview, saying of her, among other things, “That is what I cannot understand—that one could strike at a little child.” This recorded sentence was played over and over to her. It made her very uneasy and frightened. It also opened up to her all her feelings about her mother. It helped her to see that “not being able to trust my mother not to hurt me has made me mistrustful of everybody.” This is a very simple example of the potency of the method, which can not only be helpful but which can be dangerously disorganizing if it penetrates the defenses too deeply or too rapidly. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

We know the attitudes which, if provided by a counselor or a therapist, will be predictably followed by certain constructive personality and behaviour changes in the client. Studies we have completed in recent years in the field of psychotherapy justify this statement. The findings from these studies may be very briefly summarized in the following way. If the therapist provides a relationship in which one is a genuine, internally consistent; acceptant, prizing the clients as a person of worth; empathically understanding of the client’s private World of feelings and attitudes; then certain changes occur in the client. Some of these changes are; the client becomes more realistic in one’s self-perceptions; more confident and self-directing; more beneficially valued by oneself; less likely to repress elements of one’s experience; more mature, socialized and adaptive in one’s behaviour; less upset by stress and quicker to recover from it; more like the healthy, integrated, well-functioning person in one’s personality structure. These changes do not occur in a control group, and appear to be definitely associated with the client’s being in a therapeutic relationship. We know how to disintegrate a being’s personality structure, dissolving one’s self-confidence, destroying the concept one has of oneself, and making one dependent on another. We have an accurate study of the process popularly know as “brainwashing.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The study has shown that no magical nor essentially new methods have been used, but mostly a combination of practices have been developed for brainwashing by rule of thumb. What is involved is largely a somewhat horrifying reversal of the conditions of psychotherapy briefly noted above. If the individual under suspicion is rejected and isolated for a long time, then one’s need for a human relationship is greatly intensified. The interrogator exploits this by building a relationship in which one shows mostly non-acceptance, and does all one can to arouse guilt, conflict and anxiety. One is acceptant toward the subject only when the subject cooperates by being willing to view events through the interrogator’s eyes. One is completely rejecting of the subject’s internal frame of reference, or personal perception of events. Gradually, out of ones need for more acceptance, the subject comes to accept half-truths as being true, until little by little one has given up one’s own view of one’s self and of one’s behaviour and has accepted the viewpoint of one’s interrogator. One is very much demoralized and disintegrated as a person, and largely the puppet of the interrogator. One is then willing to “confess: that one is an enemy of the state, and has committed all kinds of treasonable acts which wither one has not done, or which actually had a very different significance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In a sense it is misleading to describe these methods as a product of the behaviour sciences. They were developed by the police, not by scientists. Yet I include them here since it is very clear that these crude methods could be made decidedly more effective by the means of scientific knowledge which we now possess. In short our knowledge of how personality and behaviour may be changed can be sued constructively or destructively, to build or to destroy persons. Remember the story in the Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about a land owner who paid all the workers equally no matter how many hours they worked? Well, at a certain state university there was a freshman English class with the typical variety of students. One the one hand there were a few conscientious and well-disciplined students who had learned good study habits in high school. They consistently did assignments, studied well for tests, and turned in well-prepared term papers on time. At the opposite end of the spectrum were the typical “party boys” who did just enough work to get by. They rarely did assignments, hardly studied for tests, and never turned in a term paper on time. And as is typical in such a class, the vast majority of students were somewhere in between. At last final exam day arrived. As expected, the disciplined students all did well, and the party boys all did poorly. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

After a couple of days, the professor posted the grades outside his office door. As the students crowded around to see what grade they had received, they were all stunned to see that everyone in the class had received an “A.” The party boys could hardly believe their good fortune, and the good students were outraged to realized that those who deserved to fail had received the same tip grade as they had. If you saw any credibility in this story you probably shared in the outrage of the hardworking students. It certainly does seem unfair that the class of “goof-offs” should receive the same grade as those who actually earned an “A.” However, what you have read is simply a modern-day version of the parable of the generous landowner we considered in the Bible story. Although I have recast the story in terms of a present-day setting, the essential elements of the two stories are identical. In both versions a group of people got far more than they deserved and received as much reward as those who had actually worked for theirs. The message even of the biblical parable strikes many people as unfair. One some speaking occasions, I have actually asked for a how of hands on the issue, and the vast majority of people have felt the landowner was unfair. People agree with those workers who labored a full twelve hours, right through the heat of the day, that they should be paid more than those who worked only one hour. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

In the strict context of labour relations (or of class grades in the modern parable), they are right that the people who worked longer should have been paid more. The landowner and the English professor both seem unfair. However, Jesus was not teaching principles of labour relations. He was teaching principles of grace. He said, “The kingdom of Heaven is like…” and proceeded to tell the parable. In effect, He said to Peter, “In the kingdom of Heaven the operative principle is not merit but grace.” One group of people did not think the landowner was unfair: the labourers who worked only one hour. Jesus did not tell us their reaction, but we can easily assume they were elated and grateful. As the day had worn on, leaving them standing unemployed in the marketplace, their hope for any pay and hence any food for their families for the day had gradually eroded. At give o’clock in the afternoon they faced an evening with no supper. Finally they were given an opportunity to earn what they assumed would be a mere pittance, one-twelfth of a day’s wages—not nearly enough to buy food for their families. It is not hard to imagine, then their joy upon receiving a day’s wages, enough to feed their families that day. They did not think about any unfairness on the part of the landowner; they considered him very generous. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

God is teaching us to be the change we want to see in the World and giving everyone grace so they can feel compelled to treat others well. “I judge that ye have faith in Christ because of your meekness; for if ye have not faith in him then ye are not fit to be numbered among the people of his church. And again, my beloved brethren I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope? And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Wherefore, if a being have faith one must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope,” reports Moroni 7.39-41. Lord Jesus Christ, pour into us the Holy Spirit promised by the Father, that He may give us life, and teach us the fulness of truth in the Mystery of the blessed and undivided Trinity; that our salvation may be perfectly accomplished by His gift, wherein consists the perfection of all virtue. O Holy Spirit of the Comforter, Who with the Father and the Son abides One God in Trinity; descend this day into our hearts, that while Thou makest intercession for us, we may with full confidence call upon our Father. May the infinite and ineffable Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, direct our life in good works, and after our passage through this World vouchsafe to us eternal rest with the righteous. Grant this, O Eternal and Almighty God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Lord God Almighty, Thou art beforehand with men for thou hast reconciled thyself to the World through the cross, and dost beseech people to accept reconciliation. It is my responsibility to grasp thy overtures of grace, for if thou, the offended part, act first with the word of appeasement, I need not call in question thy willingness to save, but must deplore my own foolish maliciousness; if I do not come to thee as one who seeks thy favour, I live in contempt, anger, malice, self-sufficiency, and thou dost call it enmity. Thou hast taught me the necessity of a mediator, a messiah, to be embraced in love with all my heart, as king to rule me, as prophet to guide me, as priest to take away my sin and death, and this by faith in thy beloved Son who teaches me not to guide myself, not to obey myself, not to try to rule and conquer sin, but to cleave to the one who will do all for me. Thou hast made known to me that to save me is Christ’s work, but to cleave to him by faith is my work, and with this faith is the necessity of my daily repentance as mourning for the sin which Christ by grace has removed. Continue, O God, to teach me that faith apprehends Christ’s righteousness not only for the satisfaction of justice, but as unspotted evidence of thy love to me. Help me to make use of his work of salvation as the ground of peace, and thy favour to, and acceptance for me the sinner, so that I may live always near the cross. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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February 3, 2020 5:09 am

God is Our Refuge and Strength, a Very Present Help in Trouble!

It is good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is part of nature. Progressive people cannot help having detractors, for people can see only what one permits them to see. And if that small part is misread by them, … Continue reading →

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February 1, 2020 2:39 am

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