Do not back to a civil tone with me. Yes, I saw Meghan. I saw her in the little sailor dress and she sat next to me. Another example of the differences between the modes of having and being is the exercise of authority. The crucial point is expressed in the difference between having authority and being an authority. Almost all of us exercise authority at least at some stage of our lives. Those who bring up children must exercise authority—whether they want to or not—in order to protect their children from dangers and give them at least minimal advice on how to act in various situations. In a patriarchal society women, too, as objects of authority, for most men. Most members of a bureaucratic, hierarchically organized society like ours exercise authority, except the people on the lowest social level, who are only objects of authority. Our understand of authority in the two modes depends on our recognizing that authority is a broad term with two entirely different meanings: it can be either rational or irrational authority. Rational authority is based on competence, and it helps the person who leans on it to grow. Irrational authority is based on power and serves to exploit the person subjected to it. “Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan has great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the World,” reports 3 Nephi 6.15. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Among the most primitive societies, for instance, the hunters and food gatherers, authority is exercised by the person who is generally recognized as being competent for the task. What qualities this competence rests on depends much on the specific circumstances, although the impression would be that they would include experience, wisdom, generosity, skill, presence, courage. No permanent authority exists in many of these tribes, but an authority emerges in the case of need. Or there are different authorities for different occasions: warn, religious practice, adjustment of quarrels. When the qualities on which the authority rests disappear or weaken, the authority itself ends. A very similar form of authority may be observed in many primitive societies, in which competence is often established not by physical strength but by such qualities as experience and wisdom. In a very ingenious experiment with monkeys, it was discovered that if the dominant animal even momentarily losses the qualities than constitute its competence, its authority ends. Being-authority is grounded not only in the individual’s competence to fulfill certain social functions, but equally so in the very essence of a personality that has achieved a high degree of growth and integration. Such persons radiate authority and do not have to give orders, threaten, bribe. They are highly developed individuals who demonstrate by what they are—and not mainly by what they do or say—what human beings can be. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The great Masters of Living were such authorities, and to a lesser degree of perfection, such individuals may be found on all educational levels and in the most diverse cultures. (The problem of education hinges on this point. If parents were more developed themselves and rested in their own center, the opposition between authoritarian and laissez-faire education would hardly exist. Needing this being-authority, the child reacts to it with great eagerness; on the other hand, the child rebels against pressure or neglect or overfeeding by people who show by their own behavior that they themselves have not made the effort they expect from the growing child.) With the formation of societies based on a hierarchical order and much larger and more complex then those of the hunters and food gatherers, authority by competence yields to authority by social status. This does not mean that the existing authority is necessarily incompetent; it does mean that competence is not an essential element of authority. Whether we deal with monarchical authority—where the lottery of genes decides qualities of competence—or with an unscrupulous criminal who succeeds in becoming authority by murder or treachery, or, as frequently in modern democracy, with authorities elected on the basis of their photogenic physiognomy, if they are appointed, or the amount of money they can spend on their election, in all these cases there may be almost no relation between competence and authority. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
However, there are even serious problems in the cases of authority established on the basis of some competence: a leader may have been competent in old field, incompetent in another—for instance, a statesperson may be competent in conducting war and incompetent in the situation of peace; or a leader who is honest and courageous at the beginning of his or her career loses these qualities by the seduction of power; or age or physical troubles may lead to a certain deterioration. Finally, one must consider that it is much easier for the members of a small tribe to judge the behavior of an authority than it is for millions of people in our system, who know their candidate only by the artificial image created by public relations specialists. Whatever the reasons for the loss of the competence-forming qualities, in most larger and hierarchically organized societies the process of alienation of authority occurs. The real or alleged initial competence is transferred to the uniform or to the title of the authority. If the authority wears the proper uniform or has the proper title, this external sign of competence replaces the real competence and its qualities. The king—to use this title as a symbol for this type of authority—can be stupid, vicious, evil, for instance, utterly incompetent to be an authority, yet he has authority. As long as he has the title, he is supposed to have the qualities of competence. Even of the emperor is undressed, everybody believes he wears beautiful clothes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
That people take uniforms and titles for the real qualities of competence is not something that happens quite of itself. Those who have these symbols of authority and those who benefit therefrom must dull their subject people’s realistic, for instance, critical, thinking and make them believe the fiction. Anybody who will think about it knows the machinations of propaganda, the methods by which critical judgment is destroyed, how the mind is lulled into submission by clichés, how people are made dumb because they become dependent and lose their capacity to trust their eyes and judgment. They are blinded to reality by the fiction they believe. However, here we must pause to answer two objections. Some readers may be thinking that this emphasis on the necessity and value of consciousness of self will make people too concerned about themselves. One objection would be that is leads one to be too introspective, and another that it makes for pride in one’s self. Persons with this latter objection might raise the questions, “Are we not told to think too highly of ourselves? And has it not been proclaimed that mortal’s pride in one’s self is the root of most evil in our time?” Let us consider the latter objection first. To be sure, one ought not to think too highly of one’s self, and a courageous humility is the mark of the realistic and mature person. However, thinking too highly of one’s self, in the sense of self-inflation and conceit, does not come from greater consciousness of one’s self or greater feelings of self-worth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
In fact, self-inflation and conceit comes from just the opposite of greater consciousness. Self-inflation and conceit are generally the external signs of inner emptiness and self-doubt; a show of pride is one of the most common covers for anxiety. Pride was a chief characteristic of the famous roaring 1920’s, but we know now that this period was one of widespread, suppressed anxiety. The person who feels weak becomes a bully, the inferior person the braggart; a flexing of muscles, much talk, cockiness, an endeavor to brazen it out, are the symptoms of covert anxiety in a person or a group. Tremendous pride was exhibited in fascism, as everyone knows who has seen the pictures of the strutting Mussolini, Hitler; but fascism is a development in people who are empty, anxious and despairing, and therefore seize on megalomaniac promises. To push this question deeper, many of the arguments in our day against pride in one’s self, and many of the homilies on alleged self-abnegation, have a motive quite other than humility or a courageous facing of one’s human situation. A great number of these arguments, for example, reveal a considerable contempt for the self. Aldous Huxley declares, “For all of us, the most intolerably dreary and deadening life is that which we live with ourselves.” Fortunately, it can be remarked immediately, this generalization is obviously untrue; it is empirically not a fact that the most dreary and deadening hour of Spinoza were those he lived with himself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
Consider Thoreau or Einstein or Jesus or many a human being who has no fame whatever, but who has ventured to become conscious of one’s self. In fact, I seriously doubt whether Huxley’s remark is true even of himself, or of Reinhold Niebuhr, or others who with so much self-confidence and assertiveness proclaim the evils of mortal’s asserting themselves. Indeed, it is very easy to get an audience these days if one preaches against conceit and pride in one’s self, for most people feel so empty and convinced of their lack of worth anyway that they readily agree that the one who is condemning them must be right. This leads us to the most important point of all in understanding the dynamics of much modern self-condemnation, namely that condemning ourselves is the quickest way to get a substitute sense of worth. People who have almost, but not quite, lost their feeling of worth generally have very strong needs to condemn themselves, for that is the mist ready way of drowning the better ache of feelings of worthlessness and humiliation. It is as though the person were saying to one’s self, “I must be important that I am so worth condemning,” or “Look how noble I am: I have such high ideals and I am so ashamed of myself that I fall short.” A psychoanalyst once pointedly remarked that when someone in psychoanalysis berates one’s self at great length for picayune sins, one feels like asking, “Who do you think you are?” The self-condemning person is very often trying to show how important he or she is that God is so concerned with punishing him or her. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemn themselves could well ponder Spinoza’s remark, “One who despises one’s self is the nearest to a proud man.” In ancient Athens when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by claiming, “Your vanity shows forth from every hole in your coat.” The mechanism of much of this self-condemnation in our day can be observed in psychological depression. The child, for example, who feels one is not loved by one’s parents can always say, generally to one’s self, “If I were different, If I were not bad, they would love me.” By this means one avoids facing the full force and the terror of the realization that one is not loved. Thus, too, with adults: if they can condemn themselves they do not need really to feel the pain of their isolation or emptiness, and the fact that they are not loved then does not cast doubt upon their feelings of worth as persons. For they can always say, “If it were not for such and such a sin or bad habit, I would be loved. It our age of hollow people, the emphasis upon self-condemnation is like whipping a sick horse: it achieves a temporary life, but it hastens the eventual collapse of the dignity of the person. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
The self-condemning substitute for self-worth provides the individual with a method of avoiding an open and honest confronting of one’s problems of isolation and worthlessness, and makes for a pseudo-humility rather than the honest humility of one who seeks to face one’s situation realistically and so what one can constructively. Furthermore, the self-condemning substitute provides the individual with a rationalization for one’s self-hate, and this reinforces the tendencies toward hating one’s self. And, inasmuch as one’s attitude toward other selves generally parallel one’s attitude toward one’s self, one’s covert tendency to other others is also rationalized and reinforced. The steps are not big from the feeling of worthlessness of one’s self to self-hatred to hatred for others. In circles where self-contempt is preached, it is of course never explained why a person should be so ill-mannered and inconsiderate as to force one’s company on other people if one finds it so dreary and deadening one’s self. And furthermore the multitude of contradictions are never adequately explained in a doctrine which advises that we should hate the one self, “I,” and love all others, with the obvious expectation that they will love us, hateful creatures that we are; or that the more we hate ourselves, the more we love God who made the mistake, in an off moment, of creating this contemptible creature “I.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self-love is not only necessary and good but that is also is a prerequisite for loving others. Selfishness and excessive self-concern really come from an inner self-hatred. Self-love is not only not the same as selfishness but is actually the opposite to it. That is to say, the person who inwardly feels worthless is the one who must build one’s self up by selfish aggrandizement, and the person who has a sound experience of one’s own worth, that is who loves one’s self, has the basis for acting generously toward one’s neighbor. Fortunately, it also become clear from a longer religious perspective that much contemporaneous self-condemning and self-contempt are a product of particular modern problems. So many individuals feel so insignificant in the age of information, as they did during industrial development. This disease of emptiness may arise from feeling alienated from the advancement of society, or feeling unwelcomed in a foreign land. If anyone, therefore, will not learn from Christianity to love one’ self in the right way, then neither can one love one’s neighbor. To love one’s self in the right way and to love one’s neighbor are absolutely analogous concepts, are at bottom one and the same. Hence the law is: “You shall love yourself as you love your neighbor when you love him or her as yourself.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
We cannot rest with the contradictions we have seen in psychology and psychotherapy. Nor can we leave will and decision to chance. We cannot work on the assumption that ultimately the patient somehow happens to make a choice or slides into a decision by ennui, default, or mutual fatigue with the therapist, or act from sensing that the therapist (now the benevolent parent) will approve of one if one does take such steps. I propose that we need to put decision and will back into the center of the picture—“The very stone which the builders rejected is the head of the corner.” Not in the sense of free will against determinism, nor in the sense of denying what Dr. Freud describes as unconscious experience. These deterministic, unconscious factors certainly operate, and those of us who do therapy cannot escape having this impressed upon us many times in an hour. The issues, rather, is not against the infinite number of deterministic forces operating on every person. We shall keep our perspective clear if we agree at the outset that there are certain values in determinism. One is that a belief in determinism allies one with a powerful movement. That fact that one is most free to act energetically with abandon by virtue of being allied to a determinism is one of the paradoxes of our problem. Another value is that the determinism releases you from most of the innumerable petty and not-so-petty issues that you must settle every day; these are settled beforehand. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
A third value is that a belief in determinism overcomes your own self-consciousness: sure of yourself, you can charge ahead. For determinism in this sense is an enlarging of human experience by placing the issues on a deeper level. However, if we are true to our experience, we must find our freedom on the same deeper level. This paradox precludes our ever talking of complete determinism, which is a logical contradiction. For if it were true, there would be no need to demonstrate it. If someone does set out to demonstrate, as often used to occur in my college days, that one is completely determined, I would agree with one’s reasons and then add to one’s list a number of ways in which one is determined by unconscious dynamics which one may not be aware of and, indeed, is determined (possibly for the reason of one’s own emotional insecurity) to make the logical rebuttal that is one’s present argument is simply a result of one’s being completely determined, one is making an argument without consideration of whether it is true or false, and, therefore, that one and we have no criteria for deciding that it is true. This logical self-contradiction of complete determinism is, I believe, irrefutable. However, I would probably choose—remaining existential—rather to point out to my questioner that in the very raising of these questions, and by taking the energy to pursue them, one is exercising some significant element of freedom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
In therapy, for a better example, no matter how much the patient is the victim of forces of which one is unaware, one is orienting one’s self in some particular way to the data in the very revealing and exploring of these deterministic forces in one’s life, and is thus engaged in some choice no matter how seemingly insignificant; one is experiencing some freedom, no matter how subtle. This does not at all mean that we push the patient into decisions. Indeed, I am convinced that it is only by the clarification of the patient’s own powers of will and decision that the therapist can avoid inadvertently and subtly pushing the patient in one direction or another. My argument is that self-consciousness itself—the person’s potential awareness that the vast, complex, protean flow of experience in one’s experience, a fact that often takes one by surprise—unavoidably brings in the element of decision at every point. I have had the conviction for a number of years, a conviction which has only been deepened by my experience as a psychoanalyst, that something more complex and significant is going on in human experience in the realm of will and decision than we have yet taken int our studies. And I am convinced that we have omitted this realm to the impoverishment of both our science of psychology and our understanding of our relations with ourselves and others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
When we focus on God instead of on our circumstances, doubt, fear, anxiety, and negativity do not have a chance. When we magnify God instead of focusing on our difficulties, faith rises in our hearts. That will keep you fully persuaded that God will make a way, even though you do not see a way. And the beauty is that God will show up and do amazing things! In the experience of the holy, the ontological and the moral element are essentially untied, while in the life of faith they diverge and are driven to conflicts and mutual destruction. Nevertheless, the essential unity cannot be completely dissolved: there are always elements of the one type within the other, as previously indicated. In the sacramenta type o faith the ritual law is omnipresent, demanding purification, preparation, subjection to the liturgical rules, and ethical fitness. On the other hand, we have seen how many ritual elements are present in the religions of the law—the moral type of faith. This is true even of the humanist faith, where progressive and utopian elements can be found in the romantic-conservative type, while the progressive-utopian type is based on given traditions from which it criticizes the present situation and drives beyond it. The mutual participation of the types of faith in each other makes each of them complex, dynamic and self-transcending. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The history of faith, which is more embracing than the history of religion, is a movement of divergence and convergence of the different types of faith. This is true of the act of faith as well as the content of faith. The expressions of mortal’s ultimate concern, understood subjectively as well as objectively, are not a chaos of unlimited varieties. They are representations of basic attitudes which have developed in the history of faith and are consequences of the nature of faith. Therefore, it is possible to understand and describe their movements against and toward each other and perhaps to show a point at which their reunion is reached in principle. It is obvious that the attempt to do this is dependent on the ultimate concern of the person making the attempt. If he happens to be a Christian theologian of the Protestant type, he will see in Christianity—and especially Protestant Christianity—the aim toward which the dynamics of faith are driving. This cannot be avoided, because faith is a matter of personal concern. At the same time, he who makes the attempt must give objective reasons for his decisions. Objective means in this case: derived from the nature of faith which is the same in all types of faith—if the term faith is to be used at all. Roman Catholicism rightly has called itself a system which united the most divergent elements of mortal’s religious and culture life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
Its sources are the Old Testament, which itself combines the sacramental and the moral type, Hellenistic mystery religions, individual mysticism, classical Greek humanism, and the scientific methods of later antiquity. Above all, it is based directly on the New Testament, which in itself includes a variety of types and represents a union of ethical and mystical elements. A conspicuous example is Paul’s description of the Spirit. Faith, in the New Testament, is the state of being grasped by the divine Spirit. As Spirit it is the presence of the divine power in the human mind; as holy Spirit it is the Spirit of love, justice and truth. I would not hesitate to call this description the Spirit the answer to the question and the fulfillment of the dynamics which drive the history of faith. However, such an answer is not a place to rest upon. It must be given again and again on the basis of new experiences, and under changing conditions. Only if this is done does it remain an answer and a possible fulfillment. Neither Catholicism nor fundamentalism is aware of this necessity. Therefore, both have lost elements of the original union and have fallen under the predominance of one or the other side. This is the point where the Protestant protest has arisen before, during an after the Reformation of the sixteenth century. This is the point where the Protestant protest must always arise in the name of the ultimacy of the ultimate. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The general criticism of the Roman Church by all Protestant groups was the exclusion of the prophetic self-criticism by the authoritarian system of the Church and the growth of the sacramental elements of faith over the moral-personal ones. The first point made a change of the second within the Church impossible, and so a break was unavoidable. However, the break brought about a loss of Roman sacramentalism and the uniting authority based on them. In consequence of this loss, Protestantism became more and more a representative of the mortal type of ultimate concern. In this way it lost not only the large number of ritual traditions in the Catholic churches but also a full understanding of the presence of holy in sacramental and mystical experiences. The Pauline experience of the Spirit as the unity of all types of faith was largely lost in both Catholicism and Protestantism. It is the attempt of the present description of faith to point, in contemporary terminology, to the reality of Paul’s understanding of the Spirit as the unity of the ecstatic and the personal, of the sacramental and the moral, of the mystical and the rational. Only if Christianity is able to regain in real experience this unity of the divergent types of faith can it express its claim to answer the questions and to fulfill the dynamics of the history of faith in past and future. However, how good is it to have a beautiful temple if it in is in the bowels of Hell? #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
I felt her strength recede, and her eyes misted. A great glowing fire was quelled, and I had done it, and an ever present grief enfolded it. A protective surge rose in me and the wild fantasies reigned again inside of me as if no one else was present. The goal for every human being is to become a person. Every organism has one and only one central need in life, to fulfill its own potentialities. The acorn becomes an oak, the puppy become a dog and makes the fond and loyal relations with its human family which befit the dog; and all that is required of the oak tree and the and the dog. However, if the human being’s task in fulfilling one’s nature is much more difficult, for one must do it in self-consciousness. That is, human development is never automatic but must be to some extent chosen and affirmed by oneself. Among the works of mortals, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and in beautifying, the first importance surely is mortals themselves. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. We should also mention that there is a tendency of the inward forces which make mortals a living thing, namely that mortals do not grow automatically like a tree, but fulfills their potentialities only as one in his own consciousness plans and chooses. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
Fortunately the long protracted period of infancy and childhood in human life—in contrast to the condition of the acorn, which is on its own as soon as it falls to the soil, or of the puppy which must fend for itself after a few weeks—prepares the child for this difficult task. One is able to acquire some knowledge and inner strength so that as one must begin to choose and decide, one has some capability for it. Mortals, furthermore, must make their choices as an individual, for individuality is one side of one’s consciousness of one’s self. We can see this point clearly when we realize that consciousness of one’s self is always a unique act—I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you never can know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each mortal must stand alone. This fact makes for much of the tragedy and inescapable isolation in human life, but it also indicates again that we must find the strength in ourselves to stand in our own inner sanctum as individuals. And this fact means that, since we are not automatically merged with our fellows, we must through our own affirmation learn to love each other. If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick, just as your legs would wither away if you never walked. However, the power of your legs is not all you would lose. The flowing of your blood, your heart action, your whole organism would be the weaker. And in the same way if mortals do not fulfill their potentialities as a person, one becomes to that extent constricted and ill. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
This is the essence of neurosis—the person’s unused potentialities, blocked by hostile conditions in the environment (past or present) and by one’s own internalized conflicts, turn inward and cause morbidity. Neurosis does not deny the existence of reality, it merely tries to ignore it. Energy is Eternal Delight; one who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. In contrast, joy is the affect which comes when we use our powers. Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal for life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity, who is able to affirm one’s being, if need be, against all others beings and the whole inorganic World. This power in its ideal form is shown in the life of a Socrates, who was so confident in himself and his values that he could take his being condemned to death not as a defeat but as a greater fulfillment than compromising his beliefs. However, we do not wish to imply such joy is only for the heroic and the outstanding; it is as present qualitatively in anyone’s act, no matter how inconspicuous, which is done as an honest and responsible expression of one’s own powers. The way to love other people is to express what we feel—anger and love—without aiming to hurt feelings. Open but reverent communication is now to make love in our lives. “The Lord has poured out his Spirit and caused hearts to be filled with joy,” reports Mosiah 4.20. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
If we assumed a complete indeterminism, for instance, that we could make ourselves over in bland freedom by any New Year’s whim or resolution, no one would need to bother to come for psychotherapy. Actually, we find that people’s problems are stubborn, recalcitrant, and troublesome—but we find they can change. And so we need to look further for what changes them. Academic psychologists tended also, no matter what the individual psychologist oneself believed about one’s own ethical actions, to accept the position that as psychologists we are concerned only with what is determined and could be understood in a deterministic framework. This limitation of perception inevitably tended to put blinders on our perception; we made our person over into the image of what we let ourselves see. Psychologists tended to repress the problem of power, particularly irrational power. We took literally Aristotle’s dictum that mortals are a rational being by assuming that they are only that, and that irrationality is merely a temporary aberration to be overcome by right education of the individual or, if the pathology is somewhat more severe, by re-education of one’s maladjusted emotions. There is, of course, a psychological concern with power, has generally been taken as merely a subhead to one’s beliefs in society inferiority and the struggle for security. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Dr. Freud’s assumptions about primitive cannibalism and the aggressive instinct have the element of power in them. However, this also tends to be a rationalize away in that it is used in referring only to severe pathology. The repression of power enable psychology more readily to discard will and hold to a theoretical determinism, since the critical element of the soul and effects of determinism did not then come out into the open. However, in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, where therapists deal with living, suffering people, the problem of the undermining of will and decision become increasingly critical. For the theory and process of psychoanalysis and most other forms of psychotherapy inevitably play into the passive tendencies of the patient. There are built-in tendencies in psychoanalysis itself that sap its vitality and tends to emasculate not only the reality with which psychoanalysis deals but the power and inclination of the patient to change. In the early days of psychoanalysis, when revelations of the unconscious have an obvious shock value, this problem does not come out into the open as much. And in any case with hysterical patients, who formed the bulk of those Dr. Freud worked with in his early formative years, there does not exist a special dynamic in what Dr. Freud could call repressed libido, pushing expression. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
However, now, when most of our patients are compulsive of one for or another, and everybody knows about the Oedipus complex, and our patients talk about pleasures of the flesh with an apparent freedom which would have shocked Dr. Freud’s Victorian patients off the couch (and, indeed, talking about pleasures of the flesh is the easiest way of avoiding really making any decisions about love and passionate intimacy relatedness), the predicament resulting from the undermining of will and decision can no longer be avoided. The repetition compulsion, a problem that has always remained intractable and insoluble within the context of classical psychoanalysis, is in my judgment fundamentally related to this crisis of will. Other forms of psychotherapy do not escape the dilemma of psychoanalysis, namely that the process of psychotherapy itself has built-in tendencies which invite the patient to relinquish one’s position as the deciding agent. The very name “patient” proposes it. Not only do the automatic, supportive elements in therapy have this tendency, but so does the temptation, to which patient and therapist easily succumb, to search for everything else as responsible for one’s problems rather than one’s self. To be sure, psychotherapists of all stripes and schools realize that sooner or later the patient must make some decision, learn to take some responsibility for oneself; but the theory and the technique of most psychotherapy tends to be built on exactly the opposite premise. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
The freedom to make choices experienced by a human being has nothing whatever to do with free will as a principle governing human behavior but is a subjective experience which is itself causally determined. Freedom may presumably be an illusion. Choice and responsibility are illusions caused by prior states but, in turn, causal of future acts. However, here we arrive at the radical inconsistency—as therapists, the analysts could not help recognizing that the patient’s act of choosing is of central importance. Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to choose one way or the other. Toward the end of analysis the therapist may find oneself wishing that the patient were capable of more push, more determination, a greater willingness to make the best of it. Often this wish eventuates in remarks to the patient: People must help themselves; nothing worth while is achieved without effort; you have to try. Such interventions are seldom included in case reports, for it is assumed that they possess neither the dignity nor effectiveness of interpretation. Often an analyst feels uncomfortable about such appeals to volition, as though one were using something one did not believe in, and as though this would have been unnecessary had only one analyzed more skillfully. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Psychoanalysts then found themselves in the curious, anomalous position of believing that the patient must have an illusion of freedom in order to change, and they therefore must cultivate this illusion, or at least do obeisance to it. The paradox, for example, is as psychotherapy progress the experience of freedom encases, so that successfully analyzed people report experiencing more freedom in the conduct of their lives than they did prior to psychotherapy. If this freedom is illusory, the purpose of therapy, or at least the result of successful therapy, is to restore an illusion even though most therapists believe that successful therapy increases the accuracy with which the patient perceives oneself and one’s World. Some analysts, indeed, admit openly that they are engaged in the cultivation of an illusion, and undertake to rationalize this in their theory. Consider what this means. We are told that an illusion is most significant in effecting personality change; that truth is not is most significant in effecting personality change; that truth is not fundamentally (or is only theoretically) relevant to actions, but illusion is. Thus, we are to strive not for truth but for an illusion. We are to believe in definitions of the World by which we cannot live. Or, if we do try strictly to live by them, we shall slide back into passive impotence that leads to apathy and depression. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
I do not need to labor the point that this resolution of the dilemma is untenable. Even we analysts could not live by such an illusion—for how is it possible (without considerable pathology) to commit one’s self if one knows in advance one is committing oneself to an illusion? Furthermore, if patients need to believe in illusions, the possibilities of illusions are, unlike truth, infinite—who is to decide which illusions are, unlike truth, infinite—who is to decide which illusion which works? If so, then our concept of truth has been wrong; for if the illusion genuinely works, it cannot be entirely illusion. Indeed, the statement that the illusions is most decisive for change is essentially an antirational (and thus, anti-scientific) one, for it implies that at the level of behavior the truth or falsehood of a concept is irrelevant. This cannot be accepted; if it seems to be true, there must be some truth in what we call illusion and some illusion in what we call truth. Another solution has been proposed from a different angle. Recognizing that freedom and will have to be given some place in the psychoanalytic structure of personality, the later ego analysts have developed the concept of the autonomy of the ego. The ego, then, is assigned the function of freedom and choice. However, the ego is, by definition, a part of the personality; and how can a part be free? #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
When we consider the autonomy of the unconscious, and the autonomy of the body, each of these would have a partial truth. However, would not each also be importantly wrong? Neither the ego nor the body nor the unconscious can be autonomous, but can only exist as parts of a totality. And it is in this totality that will and freedom must have their base. I am convinced that the compartmentalization of the personality into ego, superego, and id is an important part of the reason why the problem of will has remained insoluble within the orthodox psychoanalytic tradition. We know in our practice of psychoanalysis that lack of freedom is shown in all aspects of the patient’s organism. It is shown in one’s body (muscular inhibitions) and in what is called unconscious experience (repression) and in one’s social relationships (one is unaware of others to the extent one is unaware of oneself). We also know experientially that as this person gains freedom in psychotherapy, one becomes less inhibited in bodily movements, freer in one’s dreams, and more spontaneous in one’s unthought-out, involuntary relations with other people. This means that autonomy and freedom cannot be the domain of a special part of the organism, but must be a quality of the total self—the thinking—feeling—choosing—acting organism. Will and decision are inseparably linked with is as well as ego and supergo, if we are to use Dr. Freud’s terms. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Something of profound significance is going on—in spontaneity, feeling, symbolic meanings—in each decision one makes prior to anything which might be termed an ego function. A strong ego is not the cause of decisions but the result. Dos not the concept of autonomy of the ego have the same difficulties as the old one of free will, in positing some special part or organ of the personality as the seat of choice? If we strip the concept of its sophisticated clothes, it become something akin to the place where the soul is located. To be sure, ego psychoanalysis has the positive aspect of reflecting the pressing concerns of contemporary mortals with one’s problems of autonomy, self-direction, and choice. However, it is also caught in the contradictions with which these problems inescapably confront us. Psychoanalysis and psychology, in all their representations, reveal, with the inconsistency and contradiction which lie therein, the dilemma of will and decision that Western mortals today experiences. It is a sign Dr. Freud’s usual honesty that he frankly states that he is trying to give the patient freedom to choose even tough he knows this is directly contradictory to his theory. He did not quail before contradiction nor leap to too easy a solution. However, as the culture has evolved since Dr. Freud, it has become less and less possible to survive in this contradiction. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
We must consider the fact that we have omitted a dimension of human experience which is important, indeed critical, to human will. Let us assume that I am an omnipotent physiologist with a complete knowledge of the physiology, chemistry, and molecular activities of your brain at any given moment. With this knowledge I can then predict precisely what you will do as a result of the operation of your brain’s mechanisms, since your behavior, including your conscious and verbal behavior, is completely correlated with your neural functioning. However, this only applies if I do not tell you my prediction. Suppose that I tell you what you will do as a result of my complete knowledge of your brain. In doing this I shall have changed the physiology of your brain by furnishing it with this information. This makes it possible for you then to behave in a way quite different from my prediction. If I were to try to allow beforehand for the effects of telling you my prediction, I would be doomed to an endless regression—logically chasing my own tail in an effort to allow for the effects of allowing for the effect of allowing for the effects, indefinitely. Human awareness and consciousness—that is, knowing—introduce unpredictable elements into our being. And mortals are the creature who obstreperously insists on knowing. The change of consciousness which this involves is both outside and inside, consisting of forces operating on the World and the attitude of the person who is attending to these forces. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
We can note that one’s awareness would involve such things as becoming aware of forgotten and buried events in such things as becoming aware of forgotten and buried events in childhood and other aspects of the depth experiences which emerge in therapy. This is—to predict our later discussion—the problem of intentionality in contrast to mere intention. Intentionality, in human experience, is wat underlies will and decision. It is not only prior to will and decision but makes them possible. Why it has been neglected in Western history is clear enough. Ever since understanding has been separated from will, science has proceeded on the basis of this dichotomy, and we tried to assume that facts about human beings could be separated from conation. Particularly since Dr. Freud, this is no longer possible—even though Dr. Freud, without full justice to his own discoveries, clung to the old dichotomy in scientific theory. Intentionality does not rule out deterministic influence, but places the whole problem of determinism and freedom on a deeper plane. The moral types of faith are characterized by the idea of the law. God is the God who has given the law as a gift and as a command. He can be approached only by those who obey the law. There are, of course, laws in the sacramental and mystical types of faith, and no one can reach the ultimate without fulfilling these laws. However, there is an important difference between the laws in the two types of faith. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The law in the ontological types of faith demands subjection to ritual methods or ascetic practices. The law in the moral type demands moral obedience. The difference, certainly, is not absolute. For the ritual law includes moral conditions and the ethical laws includes ontological conditions. However, the difference is sufficient to make understandable the rise of the various great religions. They follow the one or the other type. One can distinguish the juristic, the conventional and the ethical in the mortal types of faith. The juristic type id most strongly developed in other countries; the ethical type is represented by Jewish prophets. The faith of a Christian is faith in revelation given by prophets in the Bible, and this revelation is the ultimate concern. The revelation preached by prophets are largely ritual, social, and spiritual laws. The ritual laws point to the sacramental stage out of which all religions and cultures have arisen. The social laws transcend the ritual elements and produce a holiness of what ought to be. And the spiritual laws teach us why it is important to keep our covenants with God. These laws permeate the whole life. Their source is a matter of ultimate concern, the prophet; their content is identical with God’s commands. The law is always felt as both a gift and a command. Under the protection of the law, life is possible and satisfying. This is true of the average person who believes in God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
When we love the spirit and letter of the law, the things of eternity can distill upon our souls like the dews from Heaven. With daily obedience and refreshing living water, we find answers, faith, and strength to meet everyday challenges and opportunities with gospel patience, perspective, and joy. This is possible through the covenant between God and the nation, and the ritual law in all its richness and abundance of sacramental activities. The law of justice is the way of reaching God. The divine law is of ultimate concern, as it is the central content of faith. As we keep the best of familiar patterns while seeking new and holier ways to love Go and help us and others prepare to meet him, it gives rules for a continuous actualization of the ultimate concern within the preliminary concerns of the daily life. The ultimate shall always be present and remembered even in the smallest activities of the ordinary life. On the other hand, all this is worth nothing if it is not united with obedience to the moral law, the law of justice, and righteousness. The final criterion for the relation of mortal to God is subjection to the law of justice. It is the greatest invitation from God and is full of love and possibility because Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
We are fighting for freedom from sacramentally consecrated bondage and for justice for every human being. It is faith that allows this superior power of reason to unite with justice and truth. This revolutionary movement gives the World tremendous power, as this type of faith is a state of ultimate concern and total devotion to this concern. The connections in the case of being are neither mechanical nor purely logical, but alive. In this assurance by God’s grace we may be perfected, experience peace, and promise that we will continue to flow forward with faith and confidence in the Lord even when things do not go as we hope, expect, or perhaps deserve, through no fault of our own, even after we have done our best. Remembering in the mode of being implies brining to life something one saw or heard before. Life can be filled with faith, joy, happiness, hope, and love when we exercise the smallest amounts of real faith in Christ. This will allow people to respond spontaneously and productively; they forget about themselves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their pride does not stand in their way, and it is precisely for this reason that they can fully respond to other people’s and their ideas. They give birth to new ideas, because the are not holding onto anything, but faith in God, and this can produce and give. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
While the having (material) persons rely on what they possess, the being persons rely on their faith in God and that fact that they are, that they are alive and that something new will be born if only they have the courage to let go and to respond. They come fully alive in the conversation, because they do not stifle themselves by anxious concern with what they have. Their own aliveness is infections and often helps the other person to transcend self-importance. Thus the conversation ceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge, status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter any more who is right. The Lord helps us and blesses us and we learn to treasure our many precious gifts from God. God has enhanced our knowledge, culminated experience, rummaged our memories, enhanced our knowledge, and deepened our insight into human nature and we have gained knowledge of ourselves. We are inspired and come away with cultural property. When we are this deep in our faith, we are like a well-informed guide at a museum. We learn to hear so that we can distinguish when God speaks to our brains and hearts. “The Spirit of God, is also the spirit of freedom,” reports Alma 61.15. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
I showered you with abuse. I was so very wrong. I was wrong to speak of your other fledglings the way I did, to speak of your long-ago tragedies with such coarsens and attempted cruelty. I should have never spoken to anyone with such callousness, let alone to you. It was spiritually and morally crude. And it was not my nature. When I say that, please trust me. It was not my nature. It was downright hateful. On the very day I was writing these words, a young intern reported in his psychoanalytic session a dream which is essentially parallel to the dreams of almost everyone who is in a crisis in one’s growth. This young man had originally come for psychoanalytic help as a medical student because of attacks of anxiety so severe and prolonged that he was on the verge of dropping out of medical school. His problems were chiefly due to his close tie to a female guardian, a very unstable but strong and dominating woman. Having by now completed his medical studies, he was a successful inter and had applied for the most responsible residency in the hospital for the next year. The day preceding the night on which he had this dream, he had received a letter from the hospital directors warding him the residency and paying him compliments on his excellent work as an intern. However, instead of being pleased, he had been suddenly seized with an attack of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
The dream follows in his own words: I was bicycling to my childhood home where my father and mother were. The place seemed beautiful. When I went in, I felt free and powerful, as I am in my real life as a doctor now, not as I was as a boy. However, my mother and father would not recognize me. I was afraid to express my independence for fear I would be kicked out. I felt as lonely and separate as though I were at the North Pole and there were no people around but only snow and ice for thousands of miles. I waked through the house, and in the different rooms were signs tacked up, “Wipe your feet,” and “Clean your hands.” The anxiety after his being offered the desired position indicates that something in it, or in the responsibility it entailed, very much frightened him. And the dream tells us why. If he is a responsible, independent person in his own right—in contrast to the boy tired to his mother’s apron strings—he will be ejected from his family, and will be isolated and alone. The fascinating vignettes in the form of the “wipe-your-feet” sign add a footnote which says the house is like a military camp and not a loving home at all. The real question facing this young man, of course, was why he dreamed of going home at all—what need was there within himself to go back to mother and father and the house he pictured as externally beautiful in the dream, when he is confronted with responsibility? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Becoming a person, an identity in one’s own right, is the original development which begins in infancy and carries over into adulthood no matter how old one may be; and the crises it involves may cause tremendous anxiety. No wonder many persons repress the conflict and try all their lives to run from the anxiety! What does it mean to experience one’s self as a self? The experience of our own identity is the basic conviction that we all start with as psychological beings. It can never be proven in a logical sense, for consciousness of one’s self is the presupposition of any discussion about it. There will always be an element of mystery in one’s awareness of one’s own being—mystery here meaning a problem the data of which encroach on the problem. For such awareness is a presupposition of inquiry into one’s self. For such awareness is a presupposition inquiry into one’s self. That is to say, even to meditate on one’s own identity as a self means that one is already engaging in self-consciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
Some psychologist and philosophers are distrustful of the concept of self. They argue against it because they do not like separating mortals from the continuum with animals, and they believe the concept of the self gets in the way of scientific experimentation. However, rejecting the concept of self as unscientific because it cannot be reduced to mathematical equations is roughly the same as the argument nearly over a century ago that Dr. Freud’s theories and the concept of unconscious motivation were unscientific. It is a defensive and inflexible science—and therefore not true science—which uses a particular scientific method as a Procrustean bed and reject all forms of human experience which do not fit. To be sure, the continuum between mortals and animals should be seen clearly and realistically; but one need not jump to the unwarranted conclusion that therefore there is no distinction between mortals and animals. We do not need to prove the self as an object. It is only necessary that we show people have the capacity for self-relatedness. The self is the organizing function within the individual and the function by means of which one human being can relate to another. It is prior to, not an object of, our science; it is presupposed in the fact that one can be a scientist. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Human experience always goes beyond our particular methods of understanding it at any given moment, and the best way to understand one’s identity as a self is to look into one’s own experience. Imagine being able to lay in bed all day, watching TV, have three meals provided to you in bed, and treatments brought to you to make you feel comfortable. Well, that is what happens to people in the hospital and they do not seem to enjoy it all that much. In fact, they cannot wait to go home and get back to work. The consciousness of one’s identity as a self certainly is not an intellectual idea. Many people spend all their lives trying to find the basic principle for human existence, some spend a life time trying to forget or recover. Our clinical work gives some analogies to the crisis of will and throws light on our general problem. In life, people can get caught in deadlocks as we are in our World of reality. The catatonic’s problem hinges on values and will, and one’s immobility is one expression of the contradiction one experiences. A patient, John, Catholic, and intelligent professional in his thirties, was referred because of his repeatedly increasing anxiety. This anxiety reminded John of the time ten years previously when he had developed a full catatonic episode. Wanting to prevent a recurrence of the event, he sought treatment. I shall give some excerpts from this case report, particularly with respect to the original catatonic episode. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
John, one of four children, recollected attacks of anxiety going back to his early childhood. He remembered how much he needed to cling to his aunt who brought him up. The aunt had the habit of undressing in his presence, causing him mixed feelings of excitement and guilt. Between nine and ten there was an attempted homosexual relation with his friend, and fleeting homosexual desires thereafter, and also the customary masturbation. He did well in school, and after puberty became very interested in religion, considered becoming a monk especially in order to control his pleasures of the flesh. This control was in a certain way opposite to that of one of his sisters who was leading a very promiscuous life. After college he decided to make a complete attempt to remove pleasures of the flesh from his life. He also decided to go for a rest and vacation at a farm for young men where he could cut trees. On this farm, however, he became anxious and depressed. He resented the other fellows increasingly, who he felt were rough and profane. He felt that he was going to pieces. He remembered one night saying to himself, “I cannot stand it any more. Why am I in this way, so anxious for no reason? I have done no wrong in my whole life.” However, he would control himself by thinking perhaps he was experiencing was in accordance with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Obsessions and compulsions acquired more and more prominence. He found himself “doubting and doubting his doubt, and doubting the doubting of his doubts,” and possessed by intense terror. One day in the terror he observed a discrepancy between what he wanted to perform and the action that he really carried out. For instance, when he was undressing and wanted to drop a shoe, he instead would drop a log. He was mentally lucid and perceived what was happening, but he realized he had no control over his actions. He though he could commit crimes, even kill somebody. He said to himself, “I don’t want to be damned in this World as well as in the other. I am trying to be good and I can’t. It is not fair. I may kill somebody when I want a piece of bread.” Then he felt as if some movement or action he would make could produce disaster not only to himself but to the whole camp. By not acting or moving he was protecting the whole group. He felt that he had become his brothers’ keeper. The fear became so intense as actually to inhibit any movement. Petrified, in his own words, he “saw himself solidifying, assuming statuesque positions.” He was aware of one purpose—to kill himself—better to die than to commit crimes. He climbed a big tree and jumped down, but was taken to the hospital with minor contusions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
In the hospital John would not move at all. He was like a statue of stone. During his hospitalization John made 71 suicide attempts. Although he generally was in state of catatonia he would occasionally makes impulsive acts such as tearing the strait jacket to pieces and making a rope to hang himself. When the doctor asked him why he had to repeat these suicidal attempts, he gave two reasons—the first was to relieve the feeling of guilt and present himself from committing crimes. However, the second reason was even more atypical—to commit suicide was the only act which would go beyond the barrier of immobility. This, to commit suicide was to live; the only act of life left to him. One day John’s doctor said to him, “You want to kill yourself. Isn’t there anything at all in life that you want?” With great effort John mumbled, “Eat, to eat.” The doctor took him to the patients’ cafeteria and told him, “You may eat anything you want.” John immediately grabbed a large quantity of food and ate in a ravenous manner like he was at Golden Corral. Without going to the rest of the details of John’s catatonia and his overcoming of it, let us note several things. First, the homosexual stimulation he was exposed to at the camp. Second, the refuge he sought in religious feeling. Third, the obsessive-compulsive mechanism and the fact that the anxiety which was first connected with any action that had to do with sexual feelings became extended to practically every action. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Every action became loaded with a sense of responsibility, a moral issue. Every motion was not considered as a fact but as a value. The doctor noted that John’s “feelings were reminiscent of the feelings of cosmic power or negative omnipotence experienced by other catatonics who believe that by acting they may cause the destruction of the Universe.” We see in John a radical conflict in will, tied up with the values he held. To me, the doctor’s questions, “Don’t you want something?” is very significant, since it shows the importance of getting at the simple wish, the point where every act of will starts. The doctor points out that when one bears a tremendous responsibility as John did, his passivity is entirely understandable. It is not transference or conformism in the hypnotic sense. “The patient follows orders because these orders are willed by others, and therefore he does not have the responsibility of them.” This is parallel, in extreme form, to the fact that in our confused age people go apathetic comparable to John’s stupor, and unconsciously yearn for someone to take responsibility for them. Such a patient is in a “state where volition is connected with a pathologically intensified sense of value, so that torturing responsibility reaches the acme of intensity when a little movement of the patient is considered capable of destroying the World. Alas, this conception of the psychotic mind reminds us of its possible actuality today, when the pushing of a button may have such cosmic effects! Only the oceanic responsibility of the catatonic could include this up-to-now unconceived possibility.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
In relatively normal persons, in contrast to John, the beleaguered will takes refuge in half-measures that temporarily promise it some viability. When the will is gradually emptied of content, one is always the shadow of their adversary, waiting for him or her to move so that you can move yourself. Sooner or later, your will becomes hollow, and may then be forced back to the next line of defense. This next defense is projection of blame. The self righteous security that is achieved by means of blaming the other gives one a temporary satisfaction. However, beyond this gross oversimplification, we pay a more serious price for such security. We have tacitly given the power of decision over to our adversary. Blaming the enemy implies that the enemy has the freedom to choose and act, not ourselves, and we can only react to him or her. This assumption, in turn, destroys our own security. For in the long run, we have, against our intention, given him or her all the power. Will is this further undermined. We see here an example of the self-contradictory effect of al psychological defensiveness: it automatically hands the power over to the adversary. In these unsatisfactory measures, the activity of will becomes more and more tautological and repetitive, and finally tends toward apathy. And if apathy cannot be transmuted into an impetus to move to a higher state of consciousness in order to embrace the problem at hand, the person or group tends to surrender the capacity for willing itself. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
If apathy is to be avoided in such paralysis of will, the individual needs to ask sooner or later: Is there possibly something going on in myself that is a cause of, or contributes to, my paralysis? The machine society, especially through its exploding mass media, has confused people’s sense of reality and personal identity. There is a confused blur between mass media, news, drama, and live experience. Existence has increasingly become a spectator sport. If this is to be the pattern of the future, we need to ensure that humanistic personas are among those selected to set society’s goals, to establish its norms, to program the activities, and to produce the learning. Totalitarian government is a very real possibility for any society that gives up its human responsibilities and forgets the essential lessons of Christ and ecology: that we are all part of each other, and what affects one of us affects us all. We are in the midst of a rapid and revolutionary period. We are experiencing changes of so many kinds and so rapidly that many of us are not able to keep up with them. Stress occurs not only because of inner conflicts, but also simply because of change. If we do not prepare for change or develop some system of adaptation, we will drown under the tidal wave of change that hits us today. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
How to we prepare for change? Parents can first of all keep their child’s environment relatively free from dramatic changes and help their children experience consistency in their daily lives. The World is not always consistent, but this early stable environment will help the child later when he or she must cope with rapid and sometimes bewildering change. We can also inform the child, at an age when their consciousness is beginning to unfold, that there are many inconsistencies and illogical experience to living. Fairy tales generally portray the World in two stark contrast: good guys and bad guys, princesses and bad witches, helpful animals and ferocious beast. Children learn early what is reality and what is fantasy. Fairy tales can help prepare the child for both the good and bad events they will face in their lifetimes. Of course, the World is not always absolute. A true picture of the World is made up of shifting patterns. If we want to prepare for the future, we have to realize that it is here already. The seeds of tomorrow were planted yesterday. All we do today is water and nurture them in out daily acts of living. We can catch glimpses of what is going to be happening in the future, however, flashing on the scree of our minds and the media and in the conversations we have with others. The future may loom large and exciting to some, but to others it represents threats of all sorts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
To some, the future means maturity, freedom, enjoyment, and things to be planned for now. For others, it means getting older, losing hair and vitality, facing unknowns that have only shown themselves in nightmares. For still others, it is a combination of both. Whatever the future brings, we need to prepare for it now. We need to recognize that change is one of the immutable laws of the Universe, and if we want to live in that Universe, we must keep up. It can be fun and very challenging. It can also knock us down. It is up to each of us to make the future what we want it to be. To believe in the human condition might be regarded as the attitude of a fool, but to despair of it is the act of a coward. Are we heading for a society of oppression and control, where individual rights and life-styles will be sacrificed for the sake of the state? Of course we hope it will not. We believe people with intelligence and concern and respect for humanity will summon all their humanistic skills to keep it from happening. Also, mental healthy is not a game to rob someone of their credibility or a tool to tease people and prevent then from getting the help they need. Mental illness goes much deeper than these terms you hear and people throw around like biscuits at tea time. It is not funny, it is not a game. People who are depressed, for instance, feel dead, as if they are not even living. It is much more than being sad. Some people who truly suffer from anxiety are scared about what they might do, if they will commit crimes or even stop the World from spinning. Such concerns caused a young man to try to kill himself over 71 times. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
What is learned about human behavior and aggression and mental and physical health needs to be effectively shared with those who shape the international policies of nations. In the past, psychologist have often been drafted into devising new and more effective ways of demoralizing and punishing other humans. However, the seldom been asked to help nations promote peace and understanding instead. And that, in fact, could be their most effective use. Political corruption sometimes seems too big a problem for any individual or group to tackle. Graft, dirty politics, and dog-eat-dog business practices have been around for a long time. Fear of using our rights, as well as ignorance of the channels open to us, still keeps most ordinary citizens from acting to solve such problems. Each of us has a definite stake in ensuring that freedom of individual and social existence will spread and become the norm everywhere. However, it will not happen automatically. “learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God. Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yes, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever. Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou sliest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let they have be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day, reports Alma 37.35-37. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
A tyrant will always find a pretext for his or her tyranny. Europe, the youngest child of humanity, culturally speaking, developed such wealth and such weapons that it became the master of the rest of the World for several hundred years. However, again, in the middle of the twentieth century, a drastic change is occurring, a change as great as ever occurred in the past. The new techniques replace the use of the physical energy of animals and mortals by that of steam, oil and electricity; they create means of communication which transform the Earth into the size of one continent, and the human race into one society where the fate of one group is the fate of all; they create marvels of devices which permit the best of art, literature and music to be brought to every member of society; they create productive forces which will permit everybody to have a dignified material existence, and reduces work to such dimension that it will fill only a fraction of the day. Yet today, when mortals seem to have reached the beginning of a new, richer, happier human era, their existence and that of the generations to follow is more threatened then ever. How is this possible? “Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every mortal to become a law unto oneself; it invites anarchy,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Mortals had won their freedom from clerical and secular authorities, they stood alone with their reason and their conscience as one’s only judges, but they were afraid of the newly won freedom; mortals had achieved freedom to—to be oneself, to be productive, to be fully awake. Thus they tried to escape from freedom. One’s very achievement, the mastery over nature, opened up the avenues for one’s escape. “Most things worth doing in the World had been declared impossible before they were done,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandies. However, in building the new industrial machine, mortals become so absorbed in the new task that it became the paramount goal of one’s life. One’s energies, which once were devoted to the search for God and salvation, were now directed toward the domination of nature and ever-increasing material comfort. People ceased to use production as a means for a better life, but hypostatized it instead to an end in itself, and end to which life was subordinated. In this process of an ever-increasing division of labor, ever-increasing mechanization of work, and an ever-increasing size of social agglomerations, mortals themselves became part of the machines, rather than its master. People experiences themselves as a commodity, as an investment; their aim became to be a success, that is, to sell oneself as profitably as possible on the market. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The valued of a mortal became possessed in one’s stability, not in human qualities of love, reason, or in one’s artistic capacities. Happiness became identical with consumption of newer and better commodities, the drinking in of music, screen plays, fun, pleasures of the flesh, cranberry juice, and medications of various kinds. Not having a sense of self expect the one which conformity with the majority can give, one is insecure, anxious, depending on approval. One is alienated from oneself, worships the product of one’s own hands, the leaders of one’s own making, as if they were above him or her, rather than made by the individual. People are in a sense back where they were before the great human evolution began in the second millennium B.C. Society is incapable to love and to use their reason, to make decisions, in fact incapable to appreciate life and thus ready and even willing to destroy everything. “Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. People feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free people from the bondage of irrational fears,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Modern society started out with the vision as its ideal the harmony between the individual and social needs, the end of the conflict between human nature and the social order. One believed one would arrive at this goal in two ways; by the increased productive techniques which permitted feeding everybody satisfactorily, and by a rational, objective picture of mortals and of their real needs. Putting it differently, the aim of the efforts of modern mortals is to create a sane society. More specifically, this means a society whose members have developed their reason to that point of objectivity which permits them to see themselves, others, nature, in their true reality, and not distorted by infantile omniscience or paranoid hate. It means a society, whose members have developed to a point of independence where they know the differences between good and evil, where they make their own choices, where they have convictions rather than opinions, faith rather than superstitions or nebulous hopes. It means a society whose members have developed the capacity to love their children, their neighbors, all mortal, themselves, all of nature; who can feel one with all, yet retain their sense of individuality and integrity; who transcend nature by creating, not by destroying. “The most important political office is that of the private citizen,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Will the majority be converted to sanity—or will it use the greatest discoveries of human reason for its own purposes of unreason and insanity? Will we be able to create a vision of the good, sane life, which will stir the life forces of those afraid of marching forward? This time, humankind is at one crossroad where the wrong step could be the last step. The United States of America and her allies are wealthier; their standard of living is higher, their interest in comfort and pleasure is greater than that of their rivals. The Western World is free to express ideas critical of the existing system. Hence, the Western World carries within itself the possibility for peaceful progressive transformation, and the life of the individual is free from the terror of imprisonment, torture or death. Indeed, life in the Western World has been, and is even now sometimes as rich and joyous as it has ever been anywhere in human history. However, we still need to acknowledge these blessings are part of our free Capitalistic system. Our system is based on industrialization, technology, and information, our goal is ever-increasing economic efficient and wealth. The system is ran by a managerial class, and by professional politicians. Our society is thoroughly materialistic in its outlook with an essence of Christian ideology. We are all organized in a centralized system, large factories and corporations, political mass parties. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Everybody is a cog in the machine, and has to function smoothly. This is achieved by a method of psychological conditioning, mass suggestion, monetary rewards. However, as Justice Louis D. Brandies and Samuel D. Warren wrote in one of the most famous articles in American History The Right to Privacy, published in December 1980 in the Harvard Law Review, which was later echoed in the Supreme Court case of Olmstead v. United States (1928), in which he argued that the creators of the United States Constitution, as evidence of their effort “to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and sensation conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most values by civilized mortals.” A statute of limitations is a law which forbids prosecutors from charging someone with a crime that was committed more than a specified number of years ago. One of the main reasons why states have criminal statutes of limitation is to prevent delays in the filing of charges and to ensure that convictions are based on evidence (physical or eyewitness) that has not deteriorated with time. Another reason is so the government cannot act as a bounty hunter and track its citizens indefinitely. It is also illegal to does not keep a citizen under surveillance and try to entrap them indefinitely. In fact, the police can only keep someone under surveillance for three years, without court proceedings have been started, and that can only be extended an additional two years by the orders of a judge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
These laws are to protect citizens and to keep the system from trying to manufacture criminals and make sure that tax dollars are best used to protect our country. “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk inside the insidious encroachment by people of zeal. If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectful,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Although our inhabitants are well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes which cannot be satisfied; automatons, who follow without force, who are guided without leaders, who make machines which act like mortals and produce mortals who act like machines; mortals, whose reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping mortals with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it. This alienation and automatization leads to an ever-increasing insanity. Life has no meaning, there is no joy, no faith, no reality. Everybody is happy—except that one does not feel, foes not reason, does not love. The danger of the past was that mortals became slaves. The danger of the future is that mortals may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. However, given mortal’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their World and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Our danger are war and robotism. What is the alternative? To get out of the rut in which we are moving, and to take the next step in the birth and self-realization of humanity. The first condition is the abolishment of the war threat hanging over all of us now and paralyzing faith and initiative. We must take the responsibility for the life of all mortals, and develop on an international scale what all great countries have developed internally, a relative sharing of wealth and a new and more just division of economic resources. This must lead eventually to forms of international economic cooperation and planning, to forms of World government. In the economic sphere we need co-management of all who work in an enterprise, to permit their active and responsible participation. A cultural renaissance must also combine work education for the young, adult education and a new system of poplar art and secular ritual throughout the whole nation. Income must also be increased so that everybody has the material basis for a dignified life, even though we will still have economic differences and various social classes. Mortals must be restored to their supreme place in society, never a means, never a thing to be used by others or by oneself. Mortal’s used by mortal must end, and economy must become the servant for the development of mortals. Capital must serve labor, things must serve life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
No change must be brought about by force, it must be a simultaneous one in the economic, political and cultural sphere. Changes restricted to one sphere are destructive of every change. Primitive mortals were helpless before natural forces. They saw a large, bright object move across the sky. It has a profound effect upon their bodies. While it was there, they felt warm, and they could see. In its absence, the World became dark and cold. As time passed, those first human beings saw trees drop their leaves and die. Then, magically, the trees came back to life in brilliant colors and alluring smells. Finally, those trees produced an object that was good to eat. Then the trees appeared to die, only to return to give birth again and again. Try to imagine how awed early people must have been by these simple events. The first humans were becoming aware. However, they had no word-symbols to express that awareness in thought or speech. In most primitive cultures even today, people assume that they have little choice in their own destiny, because it is controlled by good and evil spirits of fate. Therefore, some modern mortals remain helpless before the social and economic forces created by oneself. Many worship the works of their own hands, bowing to the new idols, yet swearing by the name of the God who commanded them to destroy all idols. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Mortals can protect themselves from the consequences of their own madness only by creating a sane society which conforms with the needs of mortals, needs which are rooted in the very conditions of their existence. A society in which mortals relate to people lovingly, in which one is rotted in bonds of humanness and solidarity, rather than the ties of blood and soil; a society which gives people the possibility of transcending nature by creating rather than by conformity, in which a system of orientation and devotion exists without mortal’s needing to distort reality and who worship idols. Building such a society means taking it to the next level; it is the next step which means the end of humanoid history, the phase in which mortals had not become fully human. It does not mean the end of days, the completion, the state of perfect harmony in which no conflicts or problems confront mortals. On the contrary, it means mortal’s fate that one’s existence is beset by contradictions, which one has to solve without ever solving them. When one has overcome the primitive state of human sacrifice, be in it in the ritualistic form in the Aztecs, Hollywood, the fake news media, or in the secular form of way, when one has been able to regulate their relationship with nature reasonably instead of blindly, when things have truly become their servants rather than their idols, mortals will be confronted with the truly human conflicts and problems. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
People will have to become adventuresome, courageous, imaginative, capable of suffering and of joy, but their powers will be in the service of life, and not in the service of death. If it comes to pass, the new phase of human history will be a new beginning, not and end. Mortals today are confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism or Communism, but the between robotism (of both the capitalistic and the communist variety), or Humanistic Capitalism. Most facts seem to indicate that one is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. However, all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in mortal’s reason, good will and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. However, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization. A small tribe was told thousands of years ago: “I put before you life and death, blessing and curse—and you chose life.” This is our choice too. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
However many blessings we expect from God, his infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts. In the correlation between the subject and the object of faith, God can do exceedingly great things. There is no criterion by which faith can be judged from outside the correlation of faith. However, something else can happen: The faithful can ask oneself or be asked by someone else whether the medium through which one experiences ultimate concern expresses real ultimacy. This question is the dynamic force in the history of religion, revolutionizing the sacramental type of faith and driving faith beyond in different directions. As followers of Christ, we often suffer not because we are out of God’s will but because we are in it, not because we lack faith but because we have faith. We suffer not because we need to be filled with the Spirit but because we already are. Stronger faith does not mean less suffering, but more suffering means stronger faith. Far from calling our faith into question, our afflictions result in our becoming more and more like Christ himself. Nothing is sacred except in the correlation of faith. Even the saints are saints only because the source of all holiness is transparent through. The interest of mystical faith is not to reject the concrete, sacramental ways of faith, but to go beyond them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Mystical faith is the end of a long way from the most concrete forms of faith to the point in which all concreteness disappears in the abyss of pure divinity. Mysticism is not irrational. Some of the greatest mystics in Europe and Asia were, at the same time, some of the great philosophers, outstanding in clarity, consistency, and rationality. However, they realized that the true content of faith in an ultimate concern can neither be identified with a piece of reality, as sacramental faith desire, nor be expressed in terms of a rational system. It is a matter of ecstatic experience, and one can only speak of the ultimate in a language which as the same times denies the possibility of speaking about it. This is the only way in which mystical faith can express itself. Moral conscience, the heritage of the Juaeo-Christian tradition, and intellectual conscience, the heritage of the Greek tradition, fused and brought about a flowering of human creation as mortals have hardly ever known it before. There is a place where the ultimate is present within the finite World, namely, the depth of the human soul. This depth is the point of contact between the finite and the and the infinite. In order to go into it, mortals must empty oneself of all the finite contents of one’s ordinary life; one must surrender all preliminary concerns for the sake of the ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
In adversity we usually want God to do a removing job when he wants to do an improving job. One must go beyond the pieces of reality in which sacramental faith experiences the ultimate. The ultimate is beyond this division, and one who wants to reach the ultimate must overcome this division for oneself by mediation, contemplation, and ecstasy. Faith, within this movement of the soul, is in a state of oscillation between having and not having the content of ultimate concern. It moves in degrees of approximation, in relapses and sudden fulfillment. The mystical faith does not despise or reject the sacramental faith. It goes beyond it to that which is present in every act of sacramental faith, yet hidden under the concrete objects in which it is embodies. Theologians sometimes have contrasted faith and mystical experience. They say the distance between faith and the ultimate can never be bridged. Mysticism tries to merge the mind with the content of its unconditional concern, with the ground of being and meaning. However, this contrast has only limited validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
The mystic is aware of the infinite distance between the infinite and the finite, and accepts a life of preliminary stages of union with the infinite, interrupted only rarely, and perhaps never, in this life by the final ecstasy. And the faithful can have faith only if one is grasped by the content of one’s ultimate concern. Like sacramentalism, mysticism is a type of faith; and there is a mystical as well as a sacramental element in every type of faith. This is true even of the humanist kind of the ontological type of faith. A consideration of this kind of faith is especially important, because humanism is often identified with unbelief and contrasted with faith. This is possible only if faith is defined as belief in the existence and actions of divine beings. However, if faith is understood as the state of being ultimately concerned about the ultimate, humanism implies faith. Humanism is the attitude which makes mortals the measure of one’s own spiritual life, in art and philosophy, in science and politics, in social relations and personal ethics. For humanism the divine is manifest in the human; the ultimate concern of mortal is mortal. All this, of course, refers to mortal in their essence: the true mortal, the mortal of the idea, not the actual mortal, nor the mortal in estrangement from one’s true nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
If, in this sense, the humanist declares the one’s ultimate concern is mortals, one sees mortal as the ultimate in a piece of reality or as mystical faith finds in the depth of mortal the place of the infinite. For those who seek, allow, and live for it, the dawn of faith, sometimes gradually, will come or can return. The difference is that the sacramental and mystical types transcend the limits of humanity and try to reach the ultimate itself beyond mortal and one’s World, while the humanists remains within these limits. For this reason the humanist faith is called secular, in contrast to the two types of faith which are called religious. Secular means, belonging to the ordinary process of events, not going beside it or beyond it into a sanctuary. In Latin and some derived languages one speaks of profanity in the sense of being before the doors of the temple. Profane in this sense is the same as secular. Often people say that they are secular, that they live outside the doors of the temple, and consequently that they are without faith! However, if one asks them whether they are without an ultimate concern, without something which they take as unconditionally serious, they would strongly deny this. And in denying that they are without an ultimate concern, they affirm that they are in a state of faith. They represent the humanist type of faith which itself is full of varieties; the fact that they are secular does not exclude them from the community of faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Attempt to be creative, even if the results are modest. Creativity can engender a spirit of gratitude for life and for what the Lord has woven into your being. If you choose wisely, it does not have to absorb a lot of time. It is an almost infinite task to describe the manifold forms in which the humanist type of faith has expressed itself and is alive in large sections of the Western World and in the Asiatic cultures. If we apply to it the distinction we have applied to the religious types of faith, the distinction between the ontological and the mortal type, we can say that the ontological type of secular faith is romantic-conservative, the moral type is progressive-utopian. The word “romantic,” in this context, points to the experience of the infinite in the finite, as it is given in nature and history. The word “conservative” in connection with romantic emphasizes the experience of the presence of the ultimate in the existing forms of nature and history. If a mortal sees the holy in the flower as it grows, in the animal as it moves, in mortals as one represents a unique individuality, in a special nation, a special culture, a special social system, one is romantic-conservative. For one the given is holy and is the content of one’s ultimate concern. The analogy of this kind of faith to the sacramental faith is obvious. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The romantic-conservative type of humanist faith is secularized sacramental faith: the divine is given here and now. All cultural and political conservatism is derived from this type of secular faith. It is faith, but it hides the dimension of the ultimate which it presupposes. Its weakness and its danger is that it may become empty. History has shown this weakness and final emptiness of all merely secular cultures. It has turned them back again and again to the religious forms of faith from which they came. All things denote there is a God. When we desire and seek it, the light will come. Being patient and obedient to God’s commandment and being open to God’s grace and healing and covenants is a faith that is demonstrated, and which God can see. Although we cannot love ourselves enough to say ourselves, Heavenly Father loves us more and know us better than we love or know ourselves. We can trust the Lord and lean not unto our own understanding. “People long for an afterlife in which there is nothing to do but delight in Heaven’s pleasures,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Can God see your faith? Are you doing anything to demonstrate your trust? The action you take does not have to be something big. It could be just a small step that activates God’s favor. However, when you take time to honor God, he is moved by your faith. Your faith is opening the door for the extraordinary. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Oh, if only I could give you some peace of mind. I wish I could. Please, please wait for her to call you, and do not think about her anymore. A final consequence and evidence of the loss of our conviction of the worth and dignity of the person is that we have lost the sense of the tragic significance of human life. For the sense of tragedy is simply the other side of one’s belief in the importance of the human individual. Tragedy implies a profound respect for the human being and a devotion to one’s rights and destiny—otherwise it just does not matter whether Orestes or Lear or you or I fall or stand in our struggles. Arthur Miller, in the preface to his play The Death of a Salesman, makes some telling comments on the lack of tragedy in our day. The tragic character, he writes, is one “who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing—his sense of personal dignity.” And “the tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself.” These conditions obtained in the periods in Western history when great tragedy was written. One has only to look at fifth-century Greece, when Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote the mighty tragedies of Oedipus, Agamemnon and Orestes, or at Elizabethan England when Shakespeare gave us Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
However, in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relative and rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, as in Eugene O’Neill’s drama, The Iceman Cometh. This play is set in a saloon, and its dramatis personae—alcoholics, comfort men and women, and, as the chief character, a mortal who in the course of the play goes psychotic—can dimly recall the periods in their lives when they did believe in something. It is this echo of human dignity in a great void of emptiness that gives this drama the power to elicit the emotions of pity and terror of classical tragedy. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which we have mentioned earlier, is itself one of the few real tragedies about the common people—neither alcoholics nor psychotics—who make up the social situation in this country out of which most of us have sprung. (In the movie version of this drama, Willie Loman, the salesman, is unfortunately made to look pathetic—those who saw only the movie may have to imagine Willie in a broader context to appreciate his real tragic import.) He was a man who took seriously the teachings of his society, that success should attend hard, energetic work, that economic progress is a reality and that if one has the right contacts achievements and salvation should follow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
It is easy enough from our later perspective to see through Willie’s illusions, and to poke fun at his unsound go-getter values. However, that is not the point. The one thing that matters is that Willie believed; he took seriously his own existence and what he had been taught he could rightly expect from life. “I don’t say he is a great man,” says his wide in describing Willie’s disintegration to their sons, “but he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.” The tragic fact is not that Willie is a man of the grandeur of Lear or the inward richness of Hamlet; “he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor,” as his wife also says. However, it is the tragedy of a historical period—if one multiplies Willie by the hundreds of thousands of fathers and brothers who also believed what they were taught but found in the changing times that it did not work, one has enough to shake one with pity and fear as in the tragedies of old. “He never knew who he was,” and he was one who took seriously his right to know. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
“The flaw, or crack in the tragic character,” Miller writes, “I really nothing—and need be nothing—but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are ‘flawless.’ Most of us are in that category.” Miller goes on to point out that the quality in a tragedy which shakes us “derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this World. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was.” Let no one assume we are advocating a pessimistic view we mourn the loss of the tragic sense. On the contrary, as Miller also notes, “Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinion of the human animal.” For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously mortal’s freedom and one’s need to realize oneself; it demonstrates our belief in the indestructible will of mortals to achieve one’s humanity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
The knowledge of human nature and the insights into mortal’s unconscious conflicts which are disclosed in psychotherapy give new ground for believing in the tragic aspects of human life. The psychotherapist, privileged to be an intimate witness to some persons’ inner wrestling and their often grave and bitter struggles with themselves and with external forces which challenge their dignity, gains a new respect for these persons and a new realization of the potential dignity of the human being. Countless times a week, furthermore, one receives proof in one’s consulting work that when mortals at last accept the fact that they cannot successfully lie to themselves, and at last learn to take themselves seriously, they discover previously unknown and often remarkable recuperative powers within themselves. The picture of the roots of the malady of our time given in this essay adds up to a bleak diagnosis. However, it does not necessarily imply a bleak prognosis. For the beneficial side is that we have no choice but to move ahead. We are like people part way through psychoanalysis whose defenses and illusions are broken through, and their only choice is to push on to something better. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
We—and by we I mean everyone, however old or young, who is aware of the historical situation in which we live—are not the lost generation of the 1920’s. The term lost, when applied to members of that period of adolescent rebellion following the first World War, meant that one was temporarily away from home, and could go back again whenever one became too frightened at being on one’s own. However, we are, rather, the generation which cannot turn back. We in the middle of the twentieth century are like pilots in the transatlantic flight who have passed the point of no return, who do not have fuel enough to go back but must push on regardless of storms or other dangers. What, then, is the task before us? The implications are clear in the above analysis: we must rediscover the sources of strength and integrity within ourselves. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the discovery and affirmation of values in ourselves and in our society which will serve as the core of unity. However, no values are effective, in a person or a society, except as there exists in the person the prior capacity to do the valuing, that is, the capacity actively to choose and affirm the values by which one lives. This the individual must do, and in this way one will help lay the groundwork for the new constructive society which will eventually come out of this disturbed times, as the Renaissance came out of the disintegration of the Middles Ages. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Those who are concerned with making the World more healthy had best start with themselves. We could go father and point out that finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow mortals. It is said that when the fisher people in the sea around Norway see their boat heading for a maelstrom, one reaches ahead to try to throw an oar into the boiling whirlpool; if one can do so, the maelstrom quiets down, and one and one’s boat go safely though. Just so, one person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him or her. This is what our society needs—not new ideas and inventions, important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen and superwomen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves. It is our task to find the sources of this inner strength. Students in the having mode of existence will listen to a lecture, hearing the words and understanding their logical structure and their meaning and, as best they can, will write down every word in their loose-leaf notebooks—so that, later on, they can memorize their notes and this pass an examination. However, the content does not become part of their own individual system of thought, enriching and widening it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Instead, with the information being consumed, they transform the words they hear into fixed clusters of thought, or whole theories, which they store up. The students and the content of the lectures remain strangers to each other, expect that each student has become the owner of a collection of statements made by somebody else (who has either created them or taken them over from another source). Students in the having mode have but one aim: to hold onto what they learned, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new. In fact, the having type of individual feel rather disturbed by new thoughts or ideas about a subject, because the new puts into question the fixed sum of information they have. Indeed, to one for whom having is the main form of relatedness to the World, ideas that cannot easily be pinned down (or penned down) are frightening—like everything else that grows and changes, and thus is not controllable. The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode of relatedness to the World. To being with, they do not go to the course lectures, even to the first one in a course, as tabulae rasae. They have thought beforehand about the problems the lectures will be dealing with and have in mind certain questions and problems of their own. They have been occupied with the topic and it interests them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
When people are interest and eager to learn, instead of being passive receptacles of words and idea, they listen, they hear, and most important, they receive and they respond in an active, productive way. New questions, new ideas, new perspectives arise in their minds. Their listening is an alive process. They listen with interest, hear what the lecturer says, and spontaneously come to life in response to what they receive. They do not simply acquire knowledge that they can take home and memorize. Each student has been affected and has changed: each is different after the lecture than he or she was before it. Of course, this mode of learning can prevail only if the lectures offers stimulating material. Empty talk cannot be responded to in the being mode, and in such circumstances, students in the being mode find it best not to listen at all, but to concentrate on their own thought processes. To undertake this venture of becoming aware of ourselves, and to discover the sources of inner strength and security which are the rewards of such a venture, let us start at the beginning by asking, What is this person, this sense of selfhood we seek? #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
We want to experience ourselves as an identity who is separated from our parents and can stand against them if need be. This remarkable emergence is the birth of the human creature into a person. This consciousness of the self, this capacity to see one’s self as though from the outside, is the distinctive characteristic of mortals. Our consciousness of ourselves is the source of our highest qualities. It underlies our ability to distinguish between I and the World. It gives us the capacity to keep time, which is simply the ability to stand outside the present and to imagine oneself back in yesterday or ahead in the day after tomorrow. Thus human beings can learn from the past and plan for the future. And thus mortals are the historical mammal in that one can stand outside and look at one’s history; and thereby one can influence one’s own development as a person, and to a minor extent one can influence the march of history in one’s nation and society as a whole. The capacity for consciousness of self also underlies mortal’s ability to use symbols, which is a way of disengaging something from what it is, such as the two sounds which make up the word “table,” and agreeing that these sounds will stand for a whole class of things. Thus mortals can think in abstractions like “beauty,” “reason,” and “goodness.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
This capacity for consciousness of ourselves gives us the ability to see ourselves as others see us and to have empathy with others. It underlies our remarkable capacity to transport ourselves into someone else’s parlor where we will be in reality next week, and then in imagination to think and plan how we will act. And it enables us to imagine ourselves in someone else’s place, and to ask how we would feel and what we would do if we were this other person. No matter how poorly we use or fail to use or even abuse these capacities, they are the rudiments of our ability to begin to love our neighbor, to have ethical sensitivity, so see truth, to create beauty, to devote ourselves to ideals, and to die for them if need be. To fulfill these potentialities is to be a person. That is what is meant when it is stated in the Hebrew-Christian religious tradition tat mortals are created in the image of God. However, these gifts come only at a high price, the price of anxiety and inward crises. The birth of the self is so simple and easy matter. For the child now faces the frightful prospect of being out on one’s own, alone, and without the full protection of the decisions of one’s parents. It is no wonder that when one begins to feel oneself an identity in one’s own right, one may feel terribly powerless in comparison with the great and strong adults around one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
The healthy child, who is loved and supported but not coddled by one’s parents, will proceed in one’s development despite this anxiety and the crises that face him or her. And there may be no particular external signs of trauma or special rebelliousness. However, when one’s parents consciously or unconsciously exploit one from their own ends or pleasure, or hate or reject one, so that one cannot be sure of minimal support when one tries out one’s new independence, the child will cling to the parents and will use one’s capacity for independence only in the forms of negativity and stubbornness. If, when one first begins tentative to say “No,” one’s parents beat one down rather than love and encourage one, one thereafter will say “No” not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion. Of if, as in the majority of cases in the present day, the parents themselves are anxious and bewildered in the tumultuous seas of the changing times, unsure of themselves and beset by self-doubts, their anxiety will carry over and lead the child to feel that one lives in a World in which it is dangerous to venture into becoming one’s self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
This brief sketch is schematic, to be sure, and it is meant to give us as adults a kind of retrospective picture in the light of which we can better understand how one fails to achieve selfhood. Most of the data for these conflicts of childhood come from adults who are struggling, in dreams, memories or in present-day relations, to overcome what in their past lives originally blocked them in becoming fully born as persons. Almost every adult is, in greater or lesser degree, still struggling on the long journey to achieve selfhood on the basis of the patterns which were set in one’s early experiences in the family. Nor do we for a moment over look the fact that selfhood is always born in a social context. Genetically, Auden is quite right: for the ego is a dream till a neighbor’s need by name create it. Or, as we put it above, the self is always born and grows in interpersonal relationships. However, no ego moves on into responsible selfhood if it remains chiefly the reflection of the social context around it. It our particular World in which conformity is the great destroyer of selfhood—in our society in which fitting the pattern tends to be accepted as the norm, and being well liked is the alleged ticket to salvation—what needs to be emphasized is not only the admitted fact that we are to some extent created by each other but also our capacity to experience, and create, ourselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Humans first emerged from the animal World as a freak of nature. Having lost most of the instinctive equipment which regulates the animal’s activities, one was more helpless, less well equipped for the fight for survival, than most beings. Yet mortals had developed a capacity for thought, imagination, and self-awareness, which was the basis for transforming nature and oneself. For many thousands of generations mortals lived by food gathering and hunting. One was still tied to nature, and afraid of being cast out from her. One identified oneself with other terrestrial beings and worshipped these representatives of nature as one’s gods. After a long period of slow development, mortal began to cultivate the soil, to create a new social and religious order based on agriculture and animal husbandry. During this period one worshipped goddesses as the bearers of natural fertility, experiences oneself as the child dependent on the fertility of the Earth, on the life-giving productivity of mother. At a time some four thousand years ago, a decisive turn in mortal’s history took place. One took a new step in the long-drawn-out process of one’s emergence from nature. Mortals severed ties with nature and with Mother, and set oneself a new goal, that of being fully born, of being fully awake of being fully human; of being free. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Reason and conscience became the principles which were to guide one; one’s aim was society bound by the bonds of humanly love, justice and truth, a new and truly human home to take the place of the irretrievably lost home in nature. We have inherited a plentiful amount of physical wealth—but almost nothing of those values, and the moths and symbols from which they come, which are the basis for responsible choice. What did we do when we unchained this Earth from its Sun? There is a disorder of the will and not of the motor apparatus, and this indicates that the catatonic, in one’s pathological World, is caught in the same inner deadlock as we are in our World of reality. The catatonic’s problem hinges on values and will, and one’s immobility is one expression of the contradiction one experiences. It is now clear that we must take into account what the environment does to an organism not only before but after it responds. Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. I believe that the sequence and timing of our actions over years can help us to see one united and compressive work and not just a series of independent and discrete initiatives. God has revealed a pattern of society progress for individuals and families through ordinances, teaching, programs, and activities. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
I pray that we can recognize the Lord’s work as one great Worldwide work that is becoming ever more home centered. I know and testify that the Lord is revealing and will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God. I promise that increased perspective, purpose, and power will be evident in our learning and living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ as we strive to gather together in one al things in Christ—even in him. All opportunities and blessings of eternal consequence originate in, are possible and have purpose because of, and endure through the Lord Jesus Christ. And in him we find the assurance of peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to some. The holy is first of all experiences as present. It I here and now, and this means it encounters us in a thing, in a person, in an event. Faith sees in a concrete piece of reality the ultimate ground and meaning of all reality. No piece of reality is excluded from the possibility of becoming a bearer of the holy; and almost every kind of reality has actually been considered as holy by acts of faith in groups and individuals. Faith in God produces awe, fascination, and adoration. The assertion that life has sacred character is meaningful for possessing faith. The purpose of God’s plan is to give his children the opportunity to choose eternal life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
They can do everything, actually. They can do the cooking and the cleaning, and they can meet and greet the drop-in guests. They can host the Easter Fest and Christmas Supper and every other imaginable event. Fact is, they can all do far more than they believe they can. And they all have plenty of money, money enough to walk away from this place and be comfortable wherever they go. That gives them a feeling of security, and an air of independence. However, they want to be right here. This is their home. However, they want for there to be a presence, a 
The most important things are the hardest to say. How weirdly appropriate. Our relationship to nature tends to be destroyed not only by our emptiness, but also by our anxiety. A little girl coming home from school after a lecture on how to defend one’s self against the fake news media, asked her parents, “Mother, can’t we move someplace where there isn’t any news?” Fortunately this child’s terrifying but revealing question is an allegory more than an illustration, but it well symbolizes how anxiety makes us withdraw from nature. Modern mortals, so afraid of the fake news media they have constructed, must cower from the TV and hide in caves—must cower from the TV which is classically the symbol of vastness, imagination, entertainment. On a more everyday level, our point is simply that when a person feels oneself inwardly empty, as is the case with many modern people, one experiences nature around one also as empty, dried up, dead. The two experiences of empties are two sides of the same state of impoverished relation to life. We can see more clearly what it means to lose one’s feeling for nature if we glance back to note how the sense of relationship to nature flourished in the modern period, and then died down. One of the chief characteristics of the Renaissance in Europe was an upsurging of enthusiasm for nature in all its forms—whether in the form of animals, or of trees, or in the inanimate form of stars and colors in the sky. One can see this new feeling coming beautifully to life in the paintings of Giotto in the early Renaissance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
If, after looking at the stylized and stiff forms of medieval art, you suddenly come up the frescoes of Giotto, you will be surprised by the most charming cockatiels, lively dogs and windsome donkeys, all presented as vital parts of human experience. And you will likewise be surprised to see that Giotto, in contrast to the artists of the Middle Ages, painted castles and trees as natural forms delightful for their own beauty, not simply for their symbolic religious message; and that, also in contrast to medieval art, he shows human beings experiencing joy, grief, contentment as individual emotions. His paintings tell us more powerfully than words that wen a human being experiences himself as an identity who actively feels his relation to life as an individual, he also experiences as alive relations to animals and nature. However, by the nineteenth century the interest in nature had become increasingly technical; mortal’s concern now was chiefly to mature and manipulate nature. The World had become disenchanted. To be sure, the disenchantment process ad begun way back in the seventeenth century, when we were taught that the body and mind were to be separated, that the objective World of physical nature and the body (which could be measured and weighed) was radically different from the subjective World of mortal’s mind and inner experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The practical result of this dichotomy was that subjective, inner experience—the mind side of the dichotomy—tended to be put on the shelf, and modern mortals had a heyday pursuing, with great success, the mechanical, measurable aspects of experiences. So by the nineteenth century nature had largely become impersonal, as in science, or an object to be calculated for the purpose of making money, as the architecture charts rights angles for the purposes of commerce. Obviously, when we point out that the overemphasis on things which could be calculated and manipulated went hand and hand with the growth of industrialism and bourgeois commerce, we are implying no criticisms of machines and technical progress as such. We mean simply to point out the historical fact that in this development nature became separated from the individual’s subjective, emotional life. Near the beginning of the nineteenth William Wordsworth, among others, clearly saw this loss of the feeling for nature, and be saw the overemphasis on commercialism which was partly its cause and the emptiness which would be its result. He described what was occurring in his familiar sonnet: The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; we have given hearts away, a sordid boon! #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, the winds that will be howling at all hours, and are up-gather’d now like sleeping flowers; for this, for everything, we are out of time; it moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; so might I, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; or hear old Triston blow his weathered horn. It is not by poetic accident that Wordsworth yearns for such mythological creatures as Proteus and Triton. These figures are personifications of aspects of nature—Proteus, the god who keeps changing his shape and form, is a symbol for the sea which is eternally transforming its movement and its color. Triton is the god whose horn is the sea shell, and his music is the echoing hum one hears in the large shells on the shore. Proteus and Triton are examples of precisely what we have lost—namely the capacity to see ourselves and our moods in nature, to relate to nature as a broad and rich dimension of our own experience. The dichotomy we have learned has given modern mortals a philosophical basis for getting rid of the belief in witches, and this contributed considerably to the actual overcoming of witchcraft in the eighteenth century. Everyone would agree that this was a great gain. However, we likewise got rid of the fairies, elves, trolls, and all of the demicreatures of the woods and Earth. It is generally assumed that this, too, was a gain since it helped sweep mortal’s mind clean of superstition and magic. However, I believe this is an error. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Actually what we did in getting rid of the fairies and the elves and their ilk was to impoverish our lives; and impoverishment is not the lasting way to clear mortal’s minds of superstition. There is a sound truth in the old parable of the mortal who swept the evil spirits with one; and the second state of the mortal was worse than the first. For it is the empty and vacant people who size on the new and more destructive forms of our latter-day superstitions, such as beliefs in the totalitarian mythologies, engrams, miracles like the day the Sun stood still, and so on. Our World has become disenchanted; and it leaves us not only out of tune with nature but with ourselves as well. As human beings we have our roots in nature, not simply because of the fact that the chemistry of our bodies is of essentially the same elements as the air or dirt on the grass. In a multitude of other ways we participate in nature—the rhythm of the change of seasons or of night and day, for example, is reflected in the rhythm of our bodies, of hunger and fulfillment, of sleep and wakefulness, of pleasures of the flesh and gratification, and in countless other ways. Proteus can be a personification of the changes in the sea because he symbolizes what we and the sea share—changing moods, variety, capriciousness, and adaptability. In this sense, when we relate to nature we are but putting our roots back into their native soil. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
However, in other respect mortals are very different from the rest of nature. He possesses consciousness of oneself; one’s senses of personal identity distinguishes one from the rest of the living or nonliving things. And nature cares not fig for a mortal’s personal identity. That crucial point in our relatedness to nature brings into the center of the picture the basic theme of this book, mortal’s need for awareness of oneself. One must be able to affirm one’s person despite the impersonality of nature, and to fill the silences of nature with one’s own inner aliveness. It takes a strong self—that is, a strong sense of personal identity—to relate fully to nature without being swallowed up. For really to feel the silence and the inorganic character of nature carries a considerable threat. If one stands on a rocky promontory, for example, and looks at the sea in its tremendous rising and falling of swells, and if one is fully and realistically aware that the sea never has a tear for others’ woes nor cares what any other things, that one’s life could be swallowed up with scarcely an infinitesimal difference being made to the tremendous, ongoing, chemical movements of creation, one is threatened. Or if one gives oneself to the feeling of the distance of the far mountain peaks, permits oneself to empathize with their heights and depths, and if one is aware at the same moment that the mountain never was the friend of one, nor promised what it could not give, and that one could be dashed to pieces on the stone floor at the foot of the peak without one’s extinction as a person making the slightest differences to the walls of granite, one is afraid. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
This is the profound threat of nothingness or nonbeing, which one experiences when one fully confronts one’s relation with inorganic being. And to remind one’s self, dust thou art, to dust returnest, is hollow comfort indeed. Such experiences in relating to nature have too much anxiety for most people. They flee from the threat by shutting off their imagination, by turning their thoughts to the practical and humdrum details of what to have for lunch. Or they protect themselves from the full terror of the treat of nonbeing by making the sea a person who would not hurt them, or by taking refuge in some belief in individual Providence and telling themselves, one shall give one’s angels charge concerning thee…least at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. However, to feel from one’s anxiety, or to rationalize one’s way out of it, only makes one weaker in the long run. It requires, we have said, a strong sense of self and a good deal of courage to relate to nature creatively. However, to affirm one’s own identity over against the inorganic being of nature in turn produces greater strength of self. At this point, however, we are getting ahead of our story—how such strength is developed belongs to later discussion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
We wish here to emphasize that the loss of the sense of one’s own self is detrimental to our souls and society. Little we see in Nature that is ours, as a description of many modern people, is a mark of the weakened and improvised person. Mortals, in order to feel at home in the World, must grasp it not only with one’s cognitive abilities, but with all of one’s sense, one’s eyes, one’s ears, and with all of one’s body. One must act out with one’s body what one thinks out with one’s brain. Body and mind cannot be separated in this, or in any other aspect. If mortal grasps the World and thus unites oneself with it by thought, one creates philosophy, theology, myth and sciences. If mortal expresses one’s grasp of the World by one’s sense, one creates art and ritual, one creates song, dance, drama, painting, sculpture. Using the word “art,” we are influences by its usage in the modern sense, as a separate area of life. We have, on the one hand, the artist, a specialized profession—and on the other hand, the admirer and consumer of art. However, this separation is a modern phenomenon. Not that there were not “artists” in all great civilizations. The creation of the great Egyptian, Greek, or Italian sculptures was the work of extraordinarily gifted artists who specialized in their art; so were the creators of Greek drama or of music since the seventeenth century. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
However, what about a Gothic cathedral, a Catholic ritual, an Indian rain dance, a Japanese flower arrangement, a folk dance, community singing? Are they art? Popular art? We have no word for it, because art in a wide and general sense, as a part of everybody’s life, has lost its place in our World. What word can we use then? In the discussion of alienation I used the term “ritual.” The difficulty here is, of course, that carries a religious meaning, which puts it again in a special and separate sphere. For lack of a better word, I shall use “collective art,” meaning the same as ritual; it means to respond to the World with our senses in a meaningful, skilled, productive, active, shared way. In this description the shared is important, and differentiates the concept of collective art from that of art in the modern sense. The latter is individualistic, both in its production, and in its consumption. Collective art, is shared; it permits mortals to feel one with others in a meaningful, rich, productive way. It is not an individual leisure time occupation, added to life, it is an integral part of life. It corresponds to a basic human need, and if this need is not fulfilled, mortals remain as insecure and anxious as if the need for a meaningful thought picture of the World were unrealized. In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, one must relate oneself to the World artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically. If a culture does not offer such a realization, the average person does not develop beyond one’s receptive or marketing orientation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Where are we? Religious rituals have little importance any more, except for the Catholics. Secular rituals hardly exist. Aside from the attempts to imitate rituals in lodges, fraternities, sororities, and so on, we have a few patriotic and sport rituals, appealing only to a most limited extent to the needs of the total personality. We are a culture of consumers. We “drink in” the movies, the crime reports, the cranberry juice, the fun. There is no active productive participation, no common unifying experience, no meaningful acting out of significant answers to life. What do we expect from our young generation? What are they to do when they have no opportunity for meaningful, shared artistic activities? What else are they to do but to escape into drinking, movie-daydreaming, crime, neurosis, and insanity? What help is it to have almost no illiteracy, and the most widespread higher education which has existed at any time—if we have no collective expression of our total personalities, no common art and ritual? Undoubtedly a relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading, radio-listening, internet-consuming culture. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
No sane society can be built upon the mixture of purely intellectual knowledge and almost complete absence of shared artistic experience, college plus football, crime stories, plus Fourth of July celebrations, with Mothers’ and Fathers’ day and Christmas Supper thrown in for good measure. In considering how we can build a sane society, we must recognize that the need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a non-clerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education. The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together—together, and not be members of a lonely crowd. A number of attempts have been made to revive collective art and ritual. The Religion of Reason with its new feast days and rituals, was the form created by the French Revolution. National feelings created some new rituals, but they never gained the importance which the lost religious ritual once has. Cultural rituals are encouraged in our communities, but the significance is never greater than that of the patriotic ritual. Collective art and rituals are found in the youth movement, which flourished in years before the immigration debacle. However, many community movements remain rather esoteric and are drowned in the rising flood of nationalism and political debates. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill mortal’s need for collective art and ritual, even in the remotest sense, either as to quality or its quantitive significance in life. What are we to do? Can we invent rituals? Can one artificially create collective art? Of course not! However, once one recognizes the need for them, once one begins to cultivate them, probiotics and prebiotics will grow, and gifted people will come forth who will add new forms to old ones, and new talents will appear which would have gone unnoticed without such new orientation. Collective art will begin with children’s games in kindergarten, be continued in school, then in later life. We shall have common dances, choirs, plays, music, bands, not entirely replacing modern sport, but subordinating it to the role of one of the many nonprofit and nonpurpose activities. Here again, as in industrial and political organizations, the decisive factor is decentralization; concrete face-to-face groups, active responsible participation. In the factory, in the school, in the small political discussion groups, in the village, various forms of common artistic activities can be created; they can be stimulated as much as is necessary by the help and suggestion from central artistic bodies, but not fed by them. At the same time, modern radio, television, and internet techniques give marvelous possibilities to bring the best music and literature to large audiences. Needless to say it cannot be left to business to provide for these opportunities, but that they must rank with our educational facilities which do not make a profit for anybody. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
It might be argued that the idea of a large-scale revival of ritual and collective art is romantic; that it suits an age of handicraft, and not an age of machine production. If this objection were true, we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that our way of life would destroy itself soon, because of its lack of balance, and sanity. However, actually, the objection is not any more compelling than the objections made to possibility of railroads and heavier-than-air flying machines. There is only one valid point in this objection. The way we are, atomized, alienated, without any genuine sense of community, we shall not be able to create new forms of collective art and ritual. However, this is just what I have been emphasizing all along. One cannot separate the change in our industrial and political organization from that of the structure of our educational and cultural life. No serious attempt for change and reconstruction will succeed if it is not undertaken in all those spheres simultaneously. Can one speak of a spiritual transformation of society without mentioning religion? Undoubtedly, the teachings of the great monotheistic religions stress the humanistic aims which are the same as those which underlie the productive orientation. The aims of Christianity and Judaism are those of the dignity of mortals as an aim and an end in oneself, of humanly love, of reason and of the supremacy of spiritual over material values. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
These ethical aims are related to certain concepts of God in which the believers of the various religions differ among themselves, and which are unacceptable to millions of others. However, it is an error of the nonbelievers to focus on attacking the idea of God; their real aim ought to be to challenge religionist to take their religion, and especially the concept of God, seriously; that would mean to practice the spirit of humanly love, truth and justice, hence to become the most radical critics of present-day society. On the other hand, even from a strictly monotheistic standpoint, the discussions about God mean to use God’s name in vain. However, while we cannot say what God is, we can state what God is not. It is not time to cease to argue about God, and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry? Today it is not Baal and Astarte but the deification of the state and of power in authoritarian countries and the deification of the machines and of success in our own culture; it is the all-pervading alienation which threatens the spiritual qualities of mortals. Whether we are religionists or not, whether we believe in the necessity for a new religion or in the continuation of the Juaeo-Chrisitian tradition, inasmuch as we are concerned with the essence and not with the shell, with the experience and not with the word, with mortals and not with the institution, we can unite in firm negation of idolatry and find perhaps more of a common faith in this negation than in any affirmative statements about God. Certainly we shall find more of humility and of brotherly love. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
This statement remains true even if one believes, as I do, that the theistic concepts are bound to disappear in the future development of humanity. In fact, for those who see in the monotheistic religions only one of the stations in the evolution of the human race, it is not too far-fetched to believe that a new religion will develop within the next few hundred years, a religion which corresponds to the development of the human race; the most important feature of such a religion would be its universalistic character, corresponding to the unification of humankind which is taking place in this epoch; it would embrace the humanistic teachings common to all great religions of the East and of the West; its doctrines would not contradict the rational insight of humankind today, and its emphasis would be on the practice of life, rather than on doctrinal beliefs. Such a religious would create new rituals and artistic forms of expression, conducive to the spirit of reverence toward life and the solidarity of mortals. Religion can, of course, not be invented. It will come into existence with the appearance of a new great teacher, just as they have appeared in previous centuries wen the time was ripe. In the meaning, those who believe in God should express their faith by living it; those who do not believe, by living the precepts of love and justice and—waiting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Faith as the state of being ultimately concerned lives in many forms, subjectively and objectively. Every religious and cultural group and, to a certain degree, every individual is the bearer of a special experience and content of faith. The subjective state of the faithful changes in correlation to the change of the symbols in faith. Faith is a construction of thought. There are no pure types in any realm of life. However, one can distinguish two main elements in every experience of the holy. One element is the presence of the holy ere and now. It consecrates the place and the reality of its appearance. It grasps the mine with terrifying and fascinating power. It breaks into ordinary reality, shakes it and drives it beyond itself in an ecstatic way. It establishes rules according to which it can be approached. The holy must be present and felt as present in order to be experienced at all. At the same time, the holy is the judgment over everything that is. It demands personal and social holiness in the sense of justice and love. Our ultimate concern represents what we essentially are and—therefore—ought to be. It stands as the law of our being, against us and for us. Holiness cannot be experienced without its power to command what we should be. If we call the first element in the experience of the holy the holiness of being, the second element in the experience of the holy could be called the holiness of what ought to be. In an abbreviated way one could call the first form of faith its ontological type, and the second form its moral type. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The dynamics of faith within and between the religions are largely determined by these two types, their interdependence and their conflicts. Their influence reaches into the most intimate cells of personal faith as well as into the movement of the great historical religions. They are omnipresent in ever act of faith. However, one of them is always predominate; for mortals are finite, and one can never unite all elements of truth in complete balance. On the other hand, one cannot rest on the awareness of one’s finitude, because faith is concerned with the ultimate and its adequate expression. Mortal’s faith is inadequate if one’s hole existence is determined by something that is less than ultimate. Therefore, one must always try to break through the limits of one’s mortality and reach what never can be reached, the ultimate itself. Out of this tension the problem of fait and tolerance arises. A tolerance bound to relativism, to an attitude in which noting ultimate is asked for, is negative and without content. It is doomed to swing toward its own opposite, an intolerant absolutism. Faith must unite the tolerance based on its relativity with certainty based on the ultimacy of its concern. In all types of faith this problem is alive, but especially in the Protestant form of Christianity. From the power of self-criticism and from the courage to face one’s own relativity come the greatness and danger of the Protestant faith. Here more than anywhere else the dynamics of faith become manifest and conscious: the infinite tension between the absolute of its claim and the relativity of its life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Heavenly Father guides us and gives us the experiences we need based on our strengths, weaknesses, and choices so that everything we do will be blessed. We can trust and rely upon the Father. I am blessed that I was introduced to religion at a young age, because in times of hardship, I would not know where to turn and do not dread to think what my life would be like if I did not know God. Being taught about God is certainly a blessing and my faith in him has grown over the years. Sometimes because of challenges in life and the intensity and duration of somethings I may have to endure, I wonder if my prayers are working and sometimes stop praying, but I know that God is reading my thoughts and knows what I need. I will get back to my praying when my soul is ready to, and I encourage others never to stop. Because God has an eternal perspective, Heavenly Father can see things we cannot. His joy, work, and glory are to bring pass our immortality and exaltation. Everything God does it for our benefit. God wants our eternal happiness more than we do. And God would not require us to experience a moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for our benefit or for that of those w love. As a result, God focuses on helping us to progress, not on judging and condemning us. As spirit children of God, each of us has the potential to become like the Heavenly Father. “And it is by faith that my fathers have obtained the promise that these things should come,” reports Ether 12.22. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that was not mine. Next I would be doing in a 
We have an excellent vocabulary for technical subjects; almost every person can name the parts of a BMW M5 engine clearly and definitely. However, when it comes to meaningful interpersonal relations, our language is lost: we stumble, and are practically as isolated as native people who are left in tribe and it is considered a breach of law to contact them. Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass or birds’ feet over shattered glass in our dry cellar. This loss of the effectiveness of language, it may seem strange to point out, is a symptom of a disrupted historical period. When you explore the rise and fall of historical eras, you will note how the language is powerful and compelling at certain times, like the Greek language of the fifth century B.C. in which Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote their classics, or like Elizabethan English of Shakespeare and the King James translation of the Bible. At other periods the language is weak, vague and uncompelling, such as when Greek culture was being disrupted and dispersed in the Hellenistic period. I believe it could be shown in researches—which obviously cannot be gone into here—that when a culture is in its historical phase of growing toward unity, its language reflects the unity and power; whereas when a culture is in the process of change, dispersal and disintegration, the language likewise loses its power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
“When I was eighteen, Germany was eighteen,” said Goethe, referring not only to the fact that ideals of his nation were then moving toward unity and power, but that the language, which was his vehicle of power as a writer, was also in that stage. In our day the study of semantics is of considerable value, to be sure, and is to be commended. However, the disturbing question is why we have to talk so much about what words mean that, once we have learned each other’s language, we have little time or energy left for communicating. There are other forms of personal communication than words: art and music, for example. Although repetition often implies monotony, because we are doing the same thing over and over again, it is not necessarily boring. The sterile World of suburban life depicted in Frank Gohlke’s photograph Housing Development South of Fort Worth, Texas is, precisely, the image of such monotony, as the eye travels down a street where the house after house is the same. Nevertheless, when the same or like elements—shapes, colors, or a regular pattern of any kind—are repeated over and over again in a composition, a certain visual rhythm will result. The suburbs are an effort to capture the beauty and consistency in everyday life, by producing a unified community where people feel safe and at peace. It is a representation of the American Dream and a neat form of art. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
Music as a form of personal communication is not always appreciated, but many people have been captivated when they see the beauty of the craft. It is stuff people want. It touches the spot. For example, the singer Aaliyah, her music wanted publishing, it contains essence. People pay money for it. She went on to compose many tunes including We Need a Resolution and What If, which were ground breaking tunes that communicated information about relationship, political and personal, and it allowed people do discover that Rhythm and Blues had much more appear than some originally thought. Not only was she singing about a lover who had left her, but her ballads talked about the experience of people who are just not communicating in politics and how if Republicans did some of the things Democrats did, it would not be tolerated. Some could say these two particular songs foreshadowed and reflect how many feel about the current government shutdown. As the “Princess of Rhythm and Blues,” Aaliyah recorded extensively in the 1990s and early 2000s. Her creativity was exceptional and inspired many musicians who developed and performed their music based on her style and image. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Clearly, painting, photographs, architecture and music are just some of the sensitive spokespersons in the society, as well as to other societies and other historical periods. However, we find in some modern art and modern music a language which does not communicate. If most people, even intelligent ones, look at modern art without knowing the esoteric key, they can understand practically nothing. They are greeted by every kind of style—impressionism, expressionism, cubism, Harlemism abstractionism, representationalism, nonobjective painting, until Mondrian gives his message only in squares and rectangles, and Jackson Pollock, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum, spatters paint almost accidental forms on large broads and entitles the work simply the date on which it was completed. I of course imply no criticism of these artists, both of whom happen to give me pleasure. However, does it not imply something very significant about our society that talented artists can communicate only in such limited language? If you visit the Art Students League in New York, NY USA—which has perhaps the largest group of outstanding American artists as teachers and the most representative body of students—you will be surprised to find the classes in practically every studio painting in a distinctly different style, and you will have to shift emotional gears every twenty steps. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
In the Renaissance a common mortal could look at the paintings of Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo and feel that the picture was telling one something which one could understand about life in general and one’s own inner life in particular. However, if an untutored mortal walked through the galleries on 57th Street in New York City today and saw, let us say, exhibits by Picasso, Dali and Marin, one might well agree that something important was being communicated but one would no doubt aver that only God and the artist knew what it was. For one’s own part one would probably be bewilder, and possibly somewhat irritated. A person is to be known by one’s own style, that is, by the unique pattern which gives underlying unity and distinctiveness to one’s activities. The same is partly true about a culture. However, when we ask what is the style of our day, we find that there is no style which can be called modern. The one thing these many modern different movements in art have in common, beginning with the great work of Cezanne and Van Gogh, is that they all are trying desperately to break through the hypocrisy and sentimentality of nineteenth-century art. Consciously or unconsciously, the seek to speak in their painting from some solid reality in the self experiencing the World. However, beyond this desperate search for honesty, which is much like that of Freud and Ibsen in their respective fields, there is only a potpourri of styles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Making all necessary qualifications for the fact the time has not yet done its sifting for the modern period as it has, say, for the Renaissance, it is still true tat this potpourri is a revealing picture of the disunity of our times. The pictures that are discordant and empty, as are so many in modern art, are thus honest portrayals of the condition of our time. It is as though every genuine artist were frantically trying different languages to see which one would communicate the music of form and color to one’s fellow beings, but there is no common language. We find a giant like Picasso shifting in his own lifetime from style to style, partly as a reflection of the shifting character of the last four decades in Western society, and partly like a mortal dialing a ship’s radio on the ocean, trying to find the wave length on which one can talk to one’s follow mortals. However, the artists, and the rest of us too, remain spiritually isolated and at sea, and so we cover up our loneliness by chattering with other people about the things we do have language for—the World series, business affairs, the latest news reports. Our deeper emotional experiences are pushed further away, and we tend, thus, to become emptier and lonelier. The attitude inherent in consumerism is that of swallowing the whole World. The consumer is the eternal suckling crying for the bottle. This is obvious in pathological phenomena, such as alcoholism and drug addiction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
We apparently single out alcoholism and drug addiction because their effects interfere with the addicted person’s social obligations. Compulsive smoking is not thus censured because, while not less of an addiction, it does not interfere with the smokers’ social functions, but possibly only with their life spans. Further attention is given to the many forms of everyday consumerism later on. I might only remark here that as far as leisure time is concerned, automobiles, television, travel, and pleasures of the flesh are the main objects of present-day consumerism, and while we speak of them as leisure-time activities, we would do better to call them leisure-time passivities. To sum up, to consume is one form of having, and perhaps the most important one for today’s affluent industrial societies. Consuming has ambiguous qualities: It relieves anxiety, because what one has cannot be taken away; but it also requires one to consume ever more, because previous consumption soon loses its satisfactory character. Modern consumers may identify themselves by the formula: I am = what I have and what I consume. Because the society we live in is devoted to acquiring property and making a profit, we rarely see any evidence of the being mode of existence and most people see the having mode as natural mode of existence, even the only acceptable way of life. All of which makes it especially difficult for people to comprehend the nature of the being mode, and even to understand that having is only one possible orientation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Nevertheless, these two concepts, being and having, are rooted in human experience. Neither one should be, or can be, examined in an abstract, purely cerebral way; both are reflected in our daily life and must be dealt with concretely. The following simple examples of how having and being are demonstrated in everyday life may help people to understand these two alternative modes of existence. No social or political arrangement can do more than further or hinder the realization of certain values and ideals. The ideas of the Judaeo-Christian tradition cannot possibly become realities in a materialistic civilization whose structure is centered around production, consumption and success on the market. On the other hand, no society could fulfill the goal of brotherliness, justice and individualism unless its ideas are capable of filling the hearts of mortals with a new spirit. We do not need new ideals or new spiritual goals. The great teachers of the human race have postulated the norms for sane living. To be sure, they have spoken in different languages, have emphasized different aspects and have had different views on certain subjects. However, altogether, these differences were small; the fact that the great religions and ethical systems have so often fought against each other, and emphasized their mutual differences rather than their basic similarities, was due to the influence of those who built churches, hierarchies, political organization upon the simple foundations of truth laid down by the mortals of the spirit. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Since the human race made the decisive turn away from rootedness in nature and animal existence, to find a new home in conscience and brotherly solidarity, since it conceived first the idea of the unity of the human race and its destiny to become fully born—the ideas and ideals have been the same. In every center of culture, and largely without any mutual influence, the same insights were discovered, the same ideals were preached. We, today, who have easy access to all these ideas, who are still the immediate heirs to the great humanistic teachings, we are not in need of new knowledge of how to live sanely—but in bitter need of taking seriously what we believe, what we preach and teach. The revolution of our hearts does not require new wisdom—but new seriousness and dedication. The task of impressing on people the guiding ideals and norms of our civilization is, first of all, that of education. However, how woefully inadequate is our educational system for this task. Its aim is primarily to give the individual the knowledge one needs in order to function in an industrialized civilization in the age of information, and to form one’s character into the mold which is needed: ambitious and competitive, yet cooperative within certain limits; respectful of authority, yet desirably independent, as some report cards have it; friendly, yet not deeply attached to anybody or anything. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Our high schools and colleges continue with the task of providing their students with the knowledge they must have to fulfill their practical tasks in life, and with the character traits wanted on the personality market. Very little, indeed, do they succeed in imbuing them with the faculty of critical thought, or with character traits which correspond to the professed ideas of our civilization. Surely there is no need to elaborate on this point, and to repeat a criticism which has been made so competently by Robert Hutchins and others. There is only one point I want to emphasize where: the necessity of doing away with the harmful separation between theoretical and practical knowledge. This very separation is part of the alienation of work and thought. It tends to separate theory from practice, and to make it more difficult, rather than easier, for the individual to participate meaningfully in the work one is doing. If work is to become an activity based on one’s knowledge and on the understanding of what one is doing, then indeed there must be a drastic change in our method of education, in the sense that from the very beginning theoretical instruction and practical work should be secondary to theoretical instruction; for people beyond school age, it should be the reverse; but at no age of development would the two sphere be separated from each other. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
No youngster should graduate from school unless one has learned some kind of handicraft in a satisfactory and meaningful manner; no primary education would be considered finished before the student has a grasp of the fundamental technical process of our industry. Certainly high school ought to combine practical work of a handicraft and of modern industrial techniques with theoretical instruction. The fact that we aim primarily at the usefulness of our citizens for the purposes of the social machine, and not at their human development is apparent in the fact that we consider education necessary only up to the age of fourteen, eighteen, or at most, the early twenties. Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? Actually, as Alvin Johnson has pointed out so convincingly, the age between six and eighteen is not by far as suitable for leaning as is generally assumed. It is, of course, the best age to learn the three R’s, and languages, but undoubtedly the understanding of history, philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, etcetera, is limited at this early age, and in fact, even around twenty, at which age these subjects are taught in college, is not ideal. In many instances to really understand the problems in these fields, a person must have had a great deal more experience in living than one has had at college age. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
For many people the age of thirty or forty is much more appropriate for learning—in the sense of understanding rather than of memorizing—than school or collage age, and in many instances the general interest is also greater at the later age than at the stormy period of youth. It is around this age also at which a person should be free to change one’s occupation completely, and hence to have a chance to study again, the same chance which today we permit only to youngsters. A sane society must provide possibilities for adult education, must as it provides today for the schooling of children. This principle find expression today in the increasing number of adult-education courses, but all these private arrangements encompass only a small segment of the population, and the principle needs to be applied to the population as a whole. Schooling, be it transmission of knowledge or formation of character, it only one part, and perhaps not the most important part of education; using education here in its literal and most fundamental sense of e-ducere = to being out, that which is within mortals. Even if mortals have knowledge, even if one performs one’s work well, if one is decent, honest, and has no worries with regard to one’s material needs—one is not and cannot be satisfied. “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 13 of 13
Within my heart I feed a human flame that it may never completely go out, and it is the heat of this flame which distracts me now and renders me so powerless in your presence. The Lord uses symbols to teach eternal truths in the temple. God’s ways are ancient and rich with symbolism. We can learn much by pondering the reality for which each symbol stands. A gospel symbol can be an object, event, action, or teaching that represents a spiritual truth. The bread and water of the sacrament, for example, represent the body and blood od Jesus Christ. Symbolism as a mode of teaching is as ancient as Adam. “Behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the Heavens above, and things which are on the Earth,” Moses 6.63. Symbols are the universal tongue. Symbols bring color and strength to language, while deepening and enriching our understanding. Symbols enable us to give conceptual forms to ideas and emotions that may otherwise defy the power of words. They take us beyond words and grant us eloquence in the expression of feelings. Symbolic language conceals certain doctrinal truths from the wicked and thereby protects sacred things from possible ridicule. At the same time, symbols reveal truth to the spiritual alert. Symbols are the language in which all gospel covenants and all ordinances of salvation have been revealed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The symbols of faith do not appear in isolation. They appear in united stories of the gods, which is the meaning of the Greek word mythos—myth. The gods are individualized figures, analogous to human personalities, sexually differentiated, descending from each other, related to each other in love and struggle, producing World and mortal, acting in time and space. They participate in human greatness and misery, in creative and destructive works. They give mortals cultural and religious traditions, and defend these sacred rites. They help and threaten the human race, especially some families, tribes, or nations. They appear in epiphanies and incarnations, establish sacred places, rites and persons, and this create a cult. However, they themselves are under the command and threat of a fate which is beyond everything that is. This is mythology as developed most impressively in ancient Greece. However, many of these characteristics can be found in every mythology. Usually the mythological gods are not equals. There is a hierarchy, at the top of which is a ruling god, as in Greece; or a trinity of them, as in India; or a duality of them, as in Persia. There are savior-gods who mediate between the highest gods and mortals, sometimes sharing the suffering and death of mortals in spite of their essential immortality. This is the World of the myth, great and strange, ultimate concern symbolized in divine figures and actions. Myths are symbols of faith combined in stores about divine-human encounters. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Myths are always present in every act of faith, because the language of faith is the symbol. They are also attacked, criticized and transcended in each of the great religions of humankind. The reason for this criticism is the very nature of the myth. It uses material from our ordinary experience. It puts the stories of the gods into the framework of time and space although it belongs to the nature of the ultimate to be beyond time and space. Above all, it divides the divine into several figures, removing ultimacy from each of them without removing their claim to ultimacy. This inescapably leads to conflicts of ultimate claims, able to destroy life, society, and consciousness. The criticisms of the myth first rejects the division of the divine and goes beyond it to one God, although in different ways according to the different types of religion. Even one God is an object of mythological language, and if spoken about is drawn into the framework of time and space. Even one loses one’s ultimacy if made to be the content of concrete concern. Consequently, the criticism of the myth does not end with the rejection of the polytheistic mythology. Monotheism also falls under the criticism of the myth. It needs, as one says today, “demythologization.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The word demythologization has been used in connection with the elaboration of the mythical elements in stories and symbols of the Bible, both of the Old and the New Testaments—stories like those of the Paradise, of the fall of Adam, of the great Flood, of the Exodus from Egypt, of the virgin birth of the Messiah, of one’s expected return as the judge of the Universe. In short, all the stores in which divine-human interactions are told are considered as mythological in character, and objects of demythologization. What does this negative and artificial term mean? It must be accepted and supported if it points to the necessity of recognizing a symbol as a symbol and a myth as a myth. It must be attacked and rejected if it means the removal of symbols and myths altogether. Such an attempt is another step in the criticism of the myth. It is an attempt which never can be successful, because symbol and myths are forms of the human consciousness which are always present. One can replace one myth by another, but one cannot remove the myth from mortal’s spiritual life. For the myth is the combination of symbols of our ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
A myth which is understood as a myth, but not removed or replaced, can be called a broken myth. Christianity denies by its nature any unbroken myth, because its presupposition is the first commandment: the affirmation of the ultimate as supreme and the rejection of any kind of idolatry. All mythological elements in the Bible, and doctrine and liturgy should be recognized as mythological, but they should be maintained in their symbolic form and not be replaced by scientific substitutes. For there is no substitute for the use of symbols and myths: they are the language of faith. The radical criticism of the myth is due to the fact that the primitive mythological consciousness resists the attempt to interpret the myth of myth. It is afraid of every act of demythologization. It believes that the broken myth is deprived of its truth and of its convincing power. Those who live in an unbroken mythological World feel safe and certain. They resist, often fanatically, any attempt to introduce an element of uncertainty by breaking the myth, namely, by making conscious its symbolic character. Such resistance is supported by authoritarian systems, religious or political, in order to give security to the people under their control and unchallenged power to those who exercise control. The resistance against demythologization expresses itself in literalism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The symbols and myths are understood in their immediate meaning. The material, taken from nature and history, is used in its proper sense. The character of the symbol to point beyond itself to something else is disregarded. Creation is taken as a magic act which happened once upon a time. The fall of Adam is localized on a special geographical point and attribute to a human individual. The virgin birth of the Messiah is understood in biological terms, resurrection and ascension as physical events, the second coming of the Christ as a telluric, or cosmic, catastrophe. The presupposition of such literalism is that God is a being, acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the Universe. Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty. It draws him down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite and conditional. In the last analysis it is not rational criticism of the myth which is decisive but the inner religious criticism. Faith, if it takes its symbols literally, becomes idolatrous! It calls something ultimate which is less than ultimate. Faith, conscious of the symbolic character of its symbols, gives God the honor which is due him. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
One should distinguish two stages of literalism, the natural and the reactive. The natural stage of literalism is that in which the mythical and the literal are indistinguishable. The primitive period of individuals and groups consists in the inability to separate the creations of symbolic imagination from the facts which can be verified through observation and experiment. This stage has a full right of its own and should not be disturbed, either in individuals or in groups, up to the moment when mortal’s questioning mind breaks the natural acceptance of the mythological visions as literal. If, however, this moment as come, two ways are possible. The one is to replace the unbroken by the broken myth. It is the objectively demanded way, although it is impossible for many people who prefer the repression of their questions to the uncertainty which appears with the breaking of the myth. They are forced into the second stage of literalism, the conscious one, which is aware of the questions but represses them, half consciously, half unconsciously. The tool of repressions is usually an acknowledge authority with sacred qualities like the Church or the Bible, to which one owes unconditional surrender. This stage is still justifiable, if the questioning power is weak and can easily be answered. It is unjustifiable if a mature mind is broken in its personal center by political or psychological methods, split in one’s unity, and hurt in one’s integrity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The enemy of a critical theology is not natural literalism but conscious literalism with repression of and aggression toward autonomous thought. Symbols of faith cannot be replaced by other symbols, such as artistic ones, and they cannot be removed by scientific criticism. They have a genuine standing in the human mind, just as science and art have. Their symbolic character is their truth and their power. Nothing less than symbols and myths can express our ultimate concern. One more question arises, namely, whether myths are able to express every kind of ultimate concern. For example, Christian theologians argue that the word myth should be reserved for natural myths in which repetitive natural processes, such as the seasons, are understood in their ultimate meaning. They believe that if the World is seen as a historical process with beginning, end and center as in Christianity and Judaism, the term myth should not be used. This would radically reduce the realm in which the term would be applicable. Myth could not be understood as the language of our ultimate concern, but only as a discarded idiom of this language. Yet history proves that there are not only natural myths but also historical myths. If the Earth is seen as the battleground of two divine powers, as in ancient Persia, this is an historical myth. If the God of creation selects and guides a nation through history toward an end which transcends all history, this is an historical myth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
If the Christ—a transcendent, divine being—appears in the fullness of time, lives, dies and is resurrected, this is an historical myth. However, Christianity speaks the mythological language like every other religion. It is a broken myth, but it is a myth; otherwise Christianity would not be an expression of ultimate concern. God made from out of chaos and we have made chaos out of form, and it is a rare human being who is not, in some secret place in his or her heart, scared to death that we shall not be able to turn chaos into form again before it is too late. However, our anxiety can be easily enough hushed up by all the excitement and glamor of standing on the brink of a new age, a Garden of Eden in which there never will be any snakes. We are bombarded with advertising which tells us that a new World is possessed at the end of every plane ticket and every endowment policy. We are promised every hour on the hour (in the commercial spot) our daily blessing, told of the tremendous power available in the harnessing of our computers, in the techniques of mass communication, in the new electronic age which will re-form our brain waves and make us see and hear in new ways, and in cybernetics, in the guaranteed income, in art for everyone, in new and ever-more amazing forms of automatic education. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
There are now chemical techniques which remake personality and expand the mind and releases the tremendous potential that was once hoped for from psychoanalysis but now—thanks to an accidental discovery—can be achieved much more effortlessly and quickly in medication. We have developed plastic organs which replace worn-out hearts and kidneys, and now know how to prevent nerve fatigue so that one can live on almost indefinitely, and so on ad infinitum. And it is not surprising that the listener is confused at times as to whether he or she is the anointed one, the recipient of all the blessings from these genii—or just a dumb fall-guy or fall-girl? And of course he or she is both. In almost all of these promises of great power and freedom, a passive role is expected of the citizen who is to be recipient. Not only in the medium of advertising, but in matter of education, health, and medication, things are done to and for us by the new inventions; our role, however subtly put, is to submit, accept the blessing, and be thankful. This is obvious in the area of atomic power and in the vast space explorations which may unite new planets to ours: you and I as individual persons have nothing whatever to do with the achievements except pay our taxes through anonymous, labyrinthine channels and watch the space fights on TV. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
However, democracy cannot work in an alienated society, and the way our democracy is organized contributes to the general process of alienation, which is why President Trump has shut the government down. If democracy means that the individual expresses his or her conviction and asserts one’s will, the premise is that one has a conviction, and that one has a will. The facts, however, are that the modern, alienated individual has opinions and prejudices but no convictions, has likes and dislikes, but no will. One’s opinions and prejudices, likes and dislikes, are manipulated in the same way as one’s taste is, by powerful propaganda machines—which might not be effective were one not already conditioned to such influences by advertising and by one’s whole alienated way of life. The average voter is poorly informed too. While many read their newspaper and watch the over air TV news, the whole World is so alienated from one that noting makes real sense or carries real meaning. People read and hear that billions of dollars being spent, of millions of people being exterminated; figures, abstractions, which are in no way interpreted in a concrete, meaningful picture of the World. The science fiction one reads is little different from the science news. Everything is unreal, unlimited, impersonal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Facts are elements on which one’s life and that of one’s children depends. It is indeed a sign of resilience and basic sanity of the average human being, that in spire of these conditions, political choices today are not entirely irrational, but that to some extent sober judgement finds expression in the process of voting. In addition to all this, one must not forget that the very idea of majority vote lends itself to the process of abstractification and alienation. Originally, majority rule was an alternative to minority rule, the rule by the kind or feudal lords. It did not mean that the majority was right; it meant that it is better for the majority to be wrong than for a minority to impose its will on the majority. However, in our age of conformity the democratic method has more and more assumed the meaning that a majority decision is necessarily right, and morally superior to that of the minority, and hence has the moral right to impose its will on the minority. Just as a nationally advertised product claims, “Ten million Americans cannot be wrong,” so the majority decision is taken as an argument for its rightness. This is obviously an error; in fact, historically speaking, all right ideas in politics as well as in philosophy, religion or science, were originally the idea of minorities. If one had decided the value of an idea on the basis of numbers, we would still be dwelling in caves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The voter simply expresses preferences between two candidates competing for one’s vote. One is confronted with various political machines, with a political bureaucracy which is torn between good will for the best for the country, and the professional interest of keeping in office, or getting back into it. This political bureaucracy, needing votes is, of course, forced to pay attention to the will of the voter to some extent. Any signs of great dissatisfaction force the political parties to change their course of action will induce them to continue it. In this respect even the non-democratic authoritarian regime is to some extent dependent on the popular will, except that by its coercive methods it can afford for a much longer time to pursue an unpopular course. However, aside from the restricting or furthering influence which the electorate has on the decisions of the political bureaucracy, and which is more an indirect than a direct influence, there is little the individual citizen can do to participate in the decision making. Once one has cast one’s vote, one has abdicated one’s political will to one’s representative, whom exercises it according to the mixture of responsibility and professional interest which is characteristic of one, and the individual citizen can do little except vote at the next election, which gives one a chance to continue one’s representative in office or to throw the rascals out. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The voting process in the great democracies has more and more the character of a plebiscite, in which the voter cannot do much more than register agreement or disagreement with powerful political machines, to one of which one surrenders one’s political will. The progress of the democratic process is one of the enlargement of franchise, which has by now led to the general acceptance of unrestricted universal suffrage. However, even the fullest franchise is not enough. The further progress of the democratic system must take a new step. In the first place, it must be recognized that true decision cannot be made in an atmosphere of mass voting, but only in the relatively small groups corresponding perhaps to the old Town Meeting, and comprising not more than let us say five hundred people. In such small groups the issues at stake can be discussed thoroughly, each member can express one’s ideas, can listen to, and discuss reasonably other arguments. People have personal contact with each other, which makes it more difficult for demagogic and irrational influences to work on their minds. Secondly, the individual citizen must be in the possession of vital facts which enable one to make a reasonable decision. Thirdly, whatever one, as a member of such a small and face-to-face group decides, must have a direct influence on the decision making exercised by a centrally elected parliamentary executive. If this were not so, the citizen would remain as politically unaware as some are today. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
The question arises whether such a system of combining a centralized form of democracy, as it exists today, with a high degree of decentralization is possible; whether we can reintroduce the principle of the Town Meeting into modern industrialized society. I do not see any insoluble difficulty in this. One possibility is to organize the whole population into small groups of say five hundred people, according to local residence, or place of work, and as far as possible these groups should have a certain diversification in their social composition. These groups would meet regularly, let us say once a month, and choose their officials and committees, which would have to change every year. Their program would be the discussion of the main political issues, both of local and of national concern. According to the principle mentioned above, any such discussion, if it is to be reasonable, will require a certain amount of factual information. How can this be given? It seems perfectly feasible that a cultural agency, which is politically independent, can exercise the function of preparing and publishing factual data to be used as material in these discussions. This is only what we do in our school system, where our children are given information which is relatively objective and free from the influence of fluctuating government. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
One could imagine arrangements, for instance, by which personalities from the fields of art, sciences, religion, business, politics, whose outstanding achievements and moral integrity are beyond doubt, could be chosen to form a non-political cultural agency. They would differ in their political views, but it can be assumed that they could agree reasonably on what is to be considered objective information about facts. In the case of disagreement, different sets of facts could be presented to the citizens, explaining the basis for the difference. After the small face-to-face groups have received information and have discussed matters, they will vote; with the help of the technical devices we have today, it would be very easy to register the over-all result of these votes in a short time, and the problem would be how decisions arrived at in this way could be channeled into the level of the central government and made effective in the field of decision making. There is no reason why forms for this process could not be found. In the parliamentary tradition we have usually two parliamentary houses, both participating in the decision making, but elected according to different principles. The decision of the face-to-face groups would constitute the true House of Commons, which would share power with the house of universally elected representatives and a universally elected executive. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
In this way, decision making would constantly flow, not only from above to below, but from below to above, and it would be based on an active and responsible thinking of the individual citizen. Through the discussion and voting in small face-to-face groups, a good deal of the irrational and abstract character of decision making would disappear, and political problems would become in reality a concern for the citizen. The process of alienation in which the individual citizen surrenders one’s political will by the ritual of voting to powers beyond one would be reversed, and each individual would take back into oneself one’s role as a participant in the life of the community. We need to channel the Victorianism that “I am the captain of my soul,” that nothing can occur unless I forced it to happen with my own efforts and muscles—a voluntaristic affirmation which, indeed, shrink because of our experience in modern times, which suffocates our feelings. We have to allow ourselves to be turned on to the greater reality, that means to open up to the spontaneity of letting ourselves be stimulated, be grasped, be receptive. However, it is no accident that it is also the phrase we use when we “turn on” our electricity, our motor cars, our TVs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The contradiction in modern society is clear: we moved from the Victorian will power and rigid self-control that produced the prosperous industrial civilization and rules and regulations against which the many of the millennials and politicians are now revolting against in the age of information, to a freedom that may not be a new expansion of consciousness at all but a making ourselves over into the image of the machines in a more powerful and subtle forms. Are you making your decisions based solely on what you hear, on popular opinion, out of fear? Have you even taken the time to figure out what you want in terms of life and politics? For example, Leo, with his golden hair and beautiful gray eyes, is the age of two. He has been watching the toddler’s soap opera Paw Patrol for months and since seeing the show, he started marching around the house demanding, “I want a coconut, I want a coconut, I want a coconut.” So, his parents fly their beautiful baby to Hawaii so he could have his first coconut. When Leo got to Hawaii, he actually picked a petite banana over the coconut. Leo thought he wanted a coconut because the character on the show made it seem so appealing. Being able to think things through is the remedy for a stifling nonpersonal civilization of machines, news, and TV shows. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It is just amazing that our curious predicament is that the same processes which makes modern mortals so powerful—the magnificent development of new sources of energy and other kinds of technical energy—are the very processes which render us powerless. Even though this is the age of social media, where we can choose what information we want to receive, many people are still be indoctrinated by the television, and this can render our wills to be undermined. We are told by many people the will is an illusion anyway, but that is not true. There are other mediums to get programming, but one of the all time favorite, and most powerful is that television. The dilemma is sharpened, furthermore, by the fact that just when we feel most powerless in the face of the juggernaut of impersonal power of society that surrounds of and molds us, we turn on the TV to get power. We want to find out What Would Dolly Do? or how AJ Cook saved a life on Criminal Minds or what is Paw Patrol enticing its audience to desire this week or what accent pieces did Todd Talbot and Jillian Harris on Love it or List it Vancouver select to go with the renovated Victorian and did they keep the wall or add more windows to give the house that ethereal feeling? We are called on to take responsibility for much vaster and more portentous choices. And considering the matter of increased leisure, choices will be necessary for the growing masses of people who will be working only four or six hours of the day. We have the gift of freedom, yes; but the dilemma placed on the individual is tremendous indeed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Why give up an opportunity to see her again? There was not any harm in just seeing her. The more we come to terms with our soul tendencies, the more we find ourselves conceiving and living by a universal structure of reality. A friend of mine with whim I was having lunch seemed depressed. The lunch was not far along when he told me that he was preoccupied over some event of the weekend. His three children, aged twelve to twenty-three, had devoted several pithy hours to pointing out how he had been, if not responsible for, at least a prime contributor to, their problems. The upshot of their attack was that he had not made enough clear decisions in his relation to them, had not take a firm enough stand or set a strong enough structure. However, it is important that his children felt comfortable enough to communicate their issues with him, because some adult children stay respectful to their parents out of necessity and you never may know how they feel about the things you did and know you are responsible for doing that caused extreme hardship in their lives, when you know it is your fault, regardless of if you are in denial or not. Nonetheless, my friend, a sensitive, imaginative man who was a considerable success in his own life and work, had been brought up by strict inner-directed parents. However, he had known that he could never raise his children on that Victorian will-power pattern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
At the same time, my friend and his wife had also never been devotees of the popular over permissiveness which filled the vacuum when Victorianism was routed. What struck me with poignancy as he talked was my awareness that almost every parent these days seems to express in some form the same pain and perplexity that infused his question, “How does a parent make decisions about his children? How should a father asset his will?” This crisis of will affects the neurotic and normal alike—the patient on the couch as well as the psychiatrist or psychologist in the chair listening to him. The man I referred to was not in treatment for neurosis; yet he was experiencing the same contradiction in will and decision that is an inescapable expression of the psychological upheaval of the transitional age in which we live. The inherited basis of our capacity for will and decision has been irrevocably destroyed. And, ironically if not tragically, it is exactly in this portentous age, when power has grown so tremendously and decisions are so necessary and so fateful, that we find ourselves lacking any new basis for will. That Victorian will power is a faculty by which people make resolutions and then direct their lives down the rational and moral road that the culture dictates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
However, most of what motives us and our behaviors—whether in bringing up children or participating in pleasures of the flesh or running a business—are determined by unconscious urges, anxieties, fears, and the endless host of bodily drives and instinctual forces. The deeply rooted belief in psychic freedom and choice is quite unscientific and must be given ground before the claims of a determinism which governs mental life. Loss of individual will and responsibility is due to the fact the people no longer reflect on what is emerging from the depths of their soul or culture, and then they reflect and interpret and mold what they find without pondering why. In effect, this is a mutilation of one’s own consciousness, and it forfeits the chance to pus through the crisis to a new place of consciousness and integration. And in the process, one’s image of oneself will never be the same again; our only choice is to retreat before this destruction of our vaunted will power or to push on to the integration of consciousness on new levels. I do not wish or choose to do the former; but we have not yet achieved the latter; and our crisis of will is that we are now paralyzed between the two. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13
The dilemma arising from the undermining of will has become a thorny problem. Among the sophisticated use of the term will power has become perhaps the most unambiguous badge of naivete. It has become unfashionable to try, by one’s unassisted efforts, to force one’s way our of a condition of neurotic misery; for the stronger the will the more likely it is to be labeled a counter-phobic maneuver. The unconscious is heir to the prestige of will. As one’s fate formerly was determined by will, now it is determined by the repressed mental life. Knowledgeable moderns put their backs to the couch and in so doing may fail to put their shoulders to the wheel. As will has been devalued, so had courage; for courage can exist only in the service of will, and can hardly be valued higher than that which it serves. In our understanding of human nature we have gained determinism, lost determination. The tendency to see ourselves as the spawns of determinism has spread, in late decades, to include contemporary mortal’s conviction that one is the helpless object of scientific forces in the form of atomic power. The helplessness is, of course, vividly represented by the nuclear bomb, about which the typical citizen feels powerless to do anything. Many intellectuals saw this coming and asked in their own terms whether modern mortals are obsolete. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
However, the important development in our present decade is that this is the common awareness of all who even watch TV or go to the movies, the modern era has destroyed mortal’s faith in one’s ability to influence what happens to him or her. Indeed, the central core of modern mortal’s neurosis, it may be fairly said, is the undermining of one’s experience of oneself as responsible, the sapping of one’s will and ability to make decisions. The lack of will is much more than merely an ethical problem: the modern individual so often has the conviction that even if one did exert one’s will—or whatever illusion passes for it—one’s actions would not do any good anyway. It is this inner experience of impotence, this contradiction in will, which constitutes our critical problem. Our ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because emblematic language alone is able to express our supreme concern. Symbols have one characteristic in common with signs; they point beyond themselves to something else. The red sign at the street corner points to the order to stop the movement of cars at certain intervals. A red light and the stopping of cars have essentially no relation to each other, but conventionally they are untied as long as the convention lasts. The same is true of letters and numbers and partly even words. They point beyond themselves to sounds and meanings. They are given this special function by convention within a nation or by international conventions, as mathematical signs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Sometimes such signs are called symbols; but this is unfortunate because it makes the distinction between signs and symbols more difficult. Decisive is the fact that signs do not participate in the reality of that to which they point, while symbols do. Therefore, signs can be replaced for reasons of expediency or convention, while symbols cannot. This leads to the symbol: It participates in that to which it points: the flag participates in the power and dignity of the nation for which it stands. Therefore, it cannot be replaced except after an historic catastrophe that changes the reality of the nation which it symbolizes. An attack on the flag is felt as an attack on the majesty of the group in which it is acknowledged. Such an attack is considered blasphemy. Another characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us. All arts create symbols for a level of reality which cannot be reached in any other way. A picture and a poem reveal elements of reality which cannot be approached scientifically. In the creative work of art we encounter reality in a dimension which is closed for us without such works. The symbol’s characteristic not only opens up dimensions and elements of reality which otherwise would remain unapproachable but also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
We never know we go—when we are going. We jest and shut the door; fate following behind us bolts it, and we accost no more. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being. Thus we are able to receive what the play reveals to us in reality. There are within us dimensions of which we cannot become aware except through symbols, as melodies and rhythms in music. Symbols cannot be produced intentionally—this is further characteristic. They grow out of individual or collective unconscious and cannot function without being accepted by the unconscious dimension of our being. Symbols which we have an especially social function, as political and religious symbols, are created or at least accepted by the collective unconscious of the group in which they appear. Additionally, a consequence of the fact that symbols cannot be invited, like living beings, they grow and die. They grow when the situation is ripe for them, and they die when the situation changes. The symbol of the king grew in a special period of history, and it died in most parts of the World in our period. Symbols do not grow because people are longing for them, and they do not die because of scientific or practical criticism. The die because they can no longer produce response in the group where they originally found expression. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
These are the main characteristics of every symbol. Genuine symbols are created in several sphere of mortal’s cultural creativity. The built environment reflects the natural World and the conception of the people who inhabit it of their place within the natural scheme of things. A building’s form might echo the World around it, or might contrast with it—but, in each case, the choices builders make reveal their attitudes toward the World around them. The architecture of the vast majority of early civilizations was designed to imitate natural forms. The significance of the pyramids of Egypt is the subject of much debate, but their form may well derive from the image of the god Ra, who in ancient Egypt was symbolized by the rays of the Sun descending to Earth. A test in one pyramids reads: “I have trodden these rays as ramps under my feet.” I believe that inscription is in one of the Pyramids of Mycerinus (circa 2470 BCE). As one approached the mammoth pyramids, covered in limestone to reflect the light of the Sun, the eye was carried skyward to Ra, the Sun itself, who was in the desert the central fact of life. Human’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically! One may ask: Why can it not be expressed directly and properly? If money, success or the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, can this not be said in a direct way without symbolic language? It is not only those cases in which the content of the ultimate concern is called “God” that we are in the realm of symbols? #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
The answer is that everything which is a matter of unconditional concern is made into a god. If the nation is someone’s ultimate concern, the name of the nation becomes a sacred name and the nation receives divine qualities which far surpass the reality of being and functioning of the nation. The nation then stands for and symbolizes the true ultimate, but in an idolatrous way. Success as ultimate concern is not the natural desires of actualizing potentialities, but is readiness to sacrifice all other values of life for the sake of a position of power and social predominance. The anxiety about not being a success is an idolatrous form of the anxiety about divine condemnation. Success is grace; lack of success, ultimate judgment. In this way concepts designating ordinary realities become idolatrous symbols of ultimate concern. The reason for this transformation of concepts into symbols is the character of ultimacy and the nature of faith. That which is the true ultimate transcends the realm of finite reality infinitely. Therefore, no finite reality can express it directly and properly. Religiously speaking, God transcends one’s own name. This is why the use of one’s name easily becomes an abuse or a blasphemy. Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has a symbolic meaning. It points beyond itself while participating in that to which it points. In no other way can faith express itself adequately. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
The language of faith is the language of symbols. If faith were what we have shown that it is not, such an assertion could not be made. However, faith, understood as the state of being ultimately concerned, has no language other than symbols. When saying this I always expect the question: Only a symbol? One who asks this question shows that one has not understood the difference between signs and symbols nor the power of symbolic language, which surpasses in quality and strength the power of any nonsymbolic language. One should never say “only a symbol,” but one should say, “not less than a symbol.” With this in mind we can now describe the different kinds of symbols of faith. The fundamental symbol of our ultimate concern is God. In the 1432 portrait of God by Jan van Eyck, God is celebrated in a materialism that is the proper right of benevolent kings. Behind God’s head, across the top of the throne, are Latin words that, translated into English, read: “This is God, all power in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his infinite generosity.” God’s mercy and love are indicated by the pelicans embroidered on the tapestry behind him, which is Christian tradition symbolize self-sacrificing love, since pelicans were believed to wound themselves in order to feed their young with their own blood if other food was unavailable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
A symbol of God is always present in any act of faith, even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God. One God can deny the other one. Ultimate concern cannot deny its own character as supreme. Therefore, it affirms what is meant by the word “God.” Atheism, consequently, can only mean the attempt to remove any ultimate concern—to remain unconcerned about the meaning of one’s existence. Indifference toward the ultimate question is the only imaginable form of atheism. Whether it is possible is a problem which must remain unsolved at this point. In any case, one who denies God as a matter of ultimate concern affirms God, because one affirms ultimacy in one’s concern. God is the fundamental symbol for what concerns us ultimately. Again it would be completely wrong to ask: So God is nothing but a symbol? Because the next question has to be: A symbol for what? And then the answer would be: For God! God is a symbol for God. This means that in the notion of God we must distinguish two elements: the element of ultimacy, which is a matter of immediate experience and not symbolic in itself, and the element of concreteness, which is taken from our ordinary experience and symbolically applied to God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
The mortal whose ultimate concern is a sacred tree has both the ultimacy of concern and the concreteness of the tree which symbolizes one’s relation to the ultimate. The person who adores Apollo is ultimately concerned, but not in an abstract way. One’s ultimate concern is symbolized in the divine figure of Apollo. The mortal who glorifies Jahweh, the God of the Old Testament, has both an ultimate concern and a concrete image of what concerns one ultimately. This is the meaning of the seemingly cryptic statement that God is the symbol of God. In this qualified sense God is the fundamental and universal content of faith. It is obvious that such an understanding of the meaning of God makes the discussion about the existence or non-existence of God meaningless. It is meaningless to question the ultimacy of a supreme concern. This element in the idea of God is in itself certain. The symbolic expression of this element varies endlessly through the whole history of humankind. Here again it would be meaningless to ask whether one or another of the figures in which an ultimate concern is symbolized does exist. If existence refers to something which can be found within the whole of reality, no divine being exists. The question is not this, but: which of the innumerable symbols of faith is most adequate to the meaning of faith? #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
In other words, which symbol of ultimacy expresses the ultimacy without idolatrous elements? This is the problem, and not the so-called existence of God—which is in itself an impossible combination of words. God as the ultimate in mortal’s ultimate concern is more certain than any other certainty, even that of oneself. God as symbolized in a divine figure is a matter of daring faith, of courage and risk. God is the basic symbol of faith, but not the only one. All the qualities we attribute to him, power, love, justice, are taken from finite experiences and applied symbolically to that which is beyond finitude and infinite. If faith calls God “almighty,” it uses the human experience of power in order to symbolize the content of its infinite concern, but it does not describe a highest being who can do as one pleases. So it is with all the other qualities and with all the actions, past, present, and future, which mortals attribute to God. They are symbols taken from our daily experiences, and not information about what God did one upon a time or will do at sometime in the future. Faith is not the belief in such stories, but it is the acceptance of symbols that express our ultimate concern in terms of divine actions. Another group of symbols of faith are manifestations of the divine in things and events, in persons and communities, in words and documents. This whole realm of sacred objects is a treasure of symbols. Holy things are not holy in themselves, but they point beyond themselves to the source of all holiness, that which is of ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
It was unspeakable to need someone in this way. I closed my eyes and listened to the night. Ravenous, repulsive creatures singing magnificently. If the workers and employees of an enterprise were exclusively concerned with their enterprise, the alienation between mortals and their social forces would remain unchanged. The narcissistic, alienated attitude would only have been extended from one individual to the team. It is therefore not an incidental but an essential part of workers’ participation that they looked beyond their own enterprise, that they be interested in and connected with consumers as well as with other workers in the same industry, and with the working population as a whole. The development of a kind of local patriotism for the firm, of an esprit de corps similar to that of college and university students, as recommended by British social psychologists, would only reinforce the asocial and egotistical attitude which is the essence of alienation. All such suggestions in favor of team enthusiasm ignore the fact that there is only one truly social orientation, namely the one of solidarity with humankind. Social cohesion within the group, combined with antagonism to the outsider, is not social feeling but extended egotism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
All suggestions in the direction of the humanization of work do not have the aim of increasing economic output nor is their goal a greater satisfaction with work per se. They make sense only in a totally different social structure, in which economic activity is a part—and a subordinate part—of social life. One cannot separate work activity from political activity, from the use of leisure time and from personal life. If work were to become human, no real change would occur. In fact, it could not become interesting. It is the very evil of present-day culture that it separates and compartmentalizes the various spheres of living. The way to sanity is possessed in overcoming this split and in arriving at anew unification and integration within society and within the individual human being. The hostility in industry should give way to a feeling of participation in a joint endeavour. How is this to be achieved? The most direct and easily exploitable line of advance is in the direction of joint consultation. Much fruitful work has been done in this sphere, and it is now clear that something more is needed than joint production committees on the present model—some more radical effort to give the worker a sense of participation in the making of decisions. A few progressive firms have already made bold advances, and the results are encouraging. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
It could be advantageous to alter the legal structure of company ownership as to substitute for shareholders’ sole control a constitution which explicitly defines the responsibilities of the firm to worker, consumer and community; workers would become members of the company, and have their representatives on the board of directors. Ownership enterprises, when it passes from wealthy individuals, should go, not to the state, but to less remote public bodies, and should permit greater diffusion of power and encourage people of all sorts to play a more active part in the work and control of pubic and voluntary organizations. Consultation is less successful the further it recedes from face-to-face discussion on the job; and the size and structure of industrial units and the degree to which they can exercise independent initiative and therefore seen as matters of supreme importance. What is finally required for policy decisions and for an executive authority willingly accepted by all the members of an industry. There must be some exit process by which all those employed in an industry are enabled to participate in policy decisions; either through directly elected representative on the board or through a hierarchical system of joint consultation wit considerable powers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In either case there must also be an increasing participation in the process of interpreting policy and of making decisions at subordinate levels. The creation of a feeling of common purpose in the activities of industry still remains, therefore, one of the outstanding objectives of Capitalism. After all, what is the matter with joint stock company is the irresponsible dictatorship exercised over it, nominally by its shareholders, actually in many cases by one or two self-appointing and self-perpetuating directors. Make public companies directly responsible both to the community and to the whole body of those engaged in their activities, and they would become institutions of a very different kind. Also, it has been noted throughout history, in France and Germany, after the war that transferring of property rights from the private capitalist to society of the state has, in itself, only a negligible effect on the situation of the worker, and the central problem of why people cannot afford to rent and buy in the cities they live lies in the change of the work situation. Our whole industry is built upon the existence of an ever-widening inner market. Each enterprise wants to sell more and more in order to conquer an ever-widening share of the market. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The result of this economic situation is that industry uses all means within its power to whet the buying appetite of the population, to create and reinforce the receptive orientation which is so detrimental too mental sanity. As we have seen, this means that there is a craving for new but unnecessary things, a constant wish to buy more, even though the standpoint of human, unalienated use, there is no need for the new product. (The automobile industry, for instance, spent some billion dollars on the changes for the new 2019 models, BMW alone some hundred million dollars to compete with Mercedes-Benz. Without doubt, the older BMW was an excellent car, and the fight between BMW and Mercedes-Bens has not primarily the effect of giving the public a better car, but of making them buy a new car when the old one would have done for another generation or so). Another aspect of the same phenomenon is the tendency to waste, which is furthered by the economic need for increasing mass production. Aside from the economic loss implied in this waste, it has also an important psychological effect: it makes the consumer lose respect for work and human effort; it makes the makes one forget the needs of the people within one’s own and in less affluent lands, for whom the product one wastes could be a most valuable possession; in short, our habits of waste show an immature disregard for the realities of human life, for the economic struggle for existence which nobody can evade. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
It is quite obvious that in the long run no amount of spiritual influence can be successful if our economic system is organized in such a way that a crisis threatens when people do not want to buy more and more newer and better things. Hence if our aim is to change alienated into human consumption, changes are necessary in those economic processes which produce alienated consumption. It is the task of economists to devise such measures. Generally speaking, it means to direct production into fields where existing real needs have not yet been satisfied, rather than where needs must be created artificially. This can be done by means of credits through state-owned banks, by the socialization of certain enterprises, and by drastic laws which accomplish a transformation of advertising. Closely related to this problem is that of economic help from the industrialized societies to the economically less developed part of the World. It is quite clear that the time of colonial exploitation is over, that the various parts of the World have been brought together as closely as one continent was a hundred years ago, and that peace for the wealthier part of the World is dependent on the economic advancement of the less affluent part. Peace and liberty in the Western World cannot, in the long run, coexist with hunger and sickness in African and China. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Reduction of unnecessary consumption in the industrialized counties is a must if they want to help the nonindustrailized countries, and they must want to help them, if they want peace. A World development program covering fifty years would increase agricultural production to the point where all persons would receive adequate nutrition and would lead to an industrialization of the now undeveloped areas similar to the prewar level of Japan. The yearly outlay for the Untied States for such a program would be between four and five billion dollars each for the first thirty years, and afterward les. When we compare this to our national income, to our present federal budget, to the funds required for armament, and to the cost of waging war, the amount required does not appear to be excessive. When we compare it to the potential gains that can result from a successful program, it appears even smaller. And when we compare the cost with that of inaction and to the consequences of maintaining the status quo, it is indeed insignificant. The foregoing problems is only part of the more general problem as to what extent the interest of profitable capital investment may be permitted to manipulate the public needs in a detrimental and unhealthy way. The most obvious examples are our movie industry, the comic-book industry and the crime pages of our newspaper. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
In order to make the highest profit, the lowest instincts are artificially stimulated and the mind of the public is poisoned. The Food and Drug Act has regulated the unrestricted production and advertising of harmful food and drugs; the same can be done with regard to all other vital necessities. If such laws should prove to be ineffective, certain industries, such as the film industry, must be socialized, or at least competing industries must be created, financed with public funds. In a society in which the only aim is the development of mortals, and in which material needs are subordinated to spiritual needs, it will not be difficult to find legal and economic means to insure the necessary changes. As far as the economic situation of the individual citizen is concerned, the idea of equality of income has been the aim that the capitalistic society has tried to reach. What Americans need is an income which will be the basis for a dignified human existence. As far as inequalities of income are concerned, it seems that they must not transcend the point where differences in income lead to differences in the experience of life. The mortal without an income of millions, who can satisfy any whim without even thinking about it, experiences life in a different way from the mortal who to satisfy one costly wish has to sacrifice another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The mortal who can never travel beyond his town, who can never afford any luxury (that is to say, something that is not necessary), again has a different life experience from one’s neighbor who can do so. However, even within certain differences of income the basic experience of life can remain the same, provided the income differences does not exceed a certain margin. What matters is not so much the greater or lesser incomes as such, but the point where quantitative differences of income are transformed into a qualitative difference of life experience. Needless to say, the system of social security, as it exists now in Great Britain and the United States of America for instance, must be retained. However, this is not enough. The existing social-security system must be extended to a universal subsistence guarantee. Each individual can act as a free and responsible agent only if one of the main reasons for present-day un-freedom is abolished: the economic threat of starvation which forces people to accept working conditions which they would otherwise not accept. We are no longer at the point where we can live off the land. Therefore, the owners of capital can enforce their will on the mortal who owns only one’s life, because without capital, we have no work except what the capitalist offers us. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
One hundred and fifty years ago, it was a widely accepted belief that no one had the responsibility for one’s neighbor. It was assumed—and scientifically proved by economists—that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of less affluent and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to voice this principle any longer. It is generally accepted that nobody should be excluded from the wealth of the nation, either by laws of nature, or by those of society. The rationalizations which were current a hundred years ago, that the less affluent owed their condition to their ignorance, lack of responsibility—briefly, to their sins—are outdated. In all Western industrialized countries a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum for subsistence in case of unemployment, sickness and old age. It is only one step further to postulate that, even if these conditions are not present, everyone has a right to receive the means to subsist. Practically speaking, that would mean that every citizen can claim a sum, enough for the minimum of subsistence even though one is not unemployed, sick or aged. One can demand this sum if one has quit one’s job voluntarily, if one wants to prepare oneself for another type of work, or for any personal reason which prevents one from earning money, without falling under one of the categories of the existing insurance benefits; shortly, one can claim this subsistence minimum without having to have any reason. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Some say it should be limited to two years, so as to avoid the fostering of a neurotic attitude which refuses any kind of social obligation. This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so would our insurance system have sounded to people one hundred and fifty years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were entitled to receive minimum support, people would not work. This assumption rests upon the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature; actually, aside from neurotically lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work. However, the suspicious against a system of guaranteed subsistence minimum are not unfounded from the standpoint of those who want to use ownership of capital for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced any more to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently interesting and attractive to induce one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possibly only if both parties are free to accept and reject it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
However, such a system would be not only the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees; it would also enhance tremendously the sphere of freedom in interpersonal relationships between person and person in daily life. Let us look at some examples. A person who is employed today, and dislikes one’s job, is often forced to continue in it because one does not have the means to risk unemployment even for one or two months, and naturally if one quits the job, one has no right to unemployment benefits. However, actually the psychological effects of this situation go much deeper; the very fact that one cannot risk being fired, tends to make one afraid of one’s boss or whomever one is dependent on. One will be inhibited in answering back; one will try to please and to submit, because of the constantly present fear that the boss could fire one if one asserted oneself. Or let us take the mortal who at the age of forty decides the he or she wants an entirely different kind of job, for which it will take one or two years to prepare oneself. Since under the conditions of a guaranteed existence minimum this decision would imply having to live with a minimum of comfort, it would require great enthusiasm for and interest in one’s newly chosen field, and thus only those who were gifted and really interested would make the choice. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Or let us take a woman living in an unhappy marriage, whose only reason for not leaving her husband is the inability to support herself for the time necessary to be trained for a job. Or let us think of an adolescent living in severe conflicts with a neurotic or destructive father, whose mental healthy would be saved if he were free to leave his family. Briefly, the most fundamental coercion on economic grounds in business and private relations would be removed and the freedom to act would be restored to everybody. What about costs? Since we already have adopted the principle for the unemployed, the sick and aged, there would only be a marginal group of additional people who would make use of this privilege, the ones who are particularly gifted, those who find themselves in a temporary conflict, and the neurotic ones who have no sense of responsibility, or interest in work. Considering all factors involved, it would seem that the number of people using this privilege would not be extraordinarily high, and by careful research an approximate estimate could even be made today. However, it must be emphasized that this proposal is to be taken together with the other social changes suggested here, and that in a society in which the individual citizen actively participates in one’s work, the number of people not interested in work would only be a fraction of what it is under present-day conditions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Whatever their number, it seems that the cost for such a scheme would hardly be more tan what big states have spent for the maintenance of armies in the last decades, not taking into consideration the cost of armaments. It should also not be forgotten that in a system which restores interest in life and in work to everybody, the productivity of the individual worker would be far above that reported today as a result of even a few favorable changes in the work situation; in addition, our expenses due to criminality, neurotic or psychosomatic illness would be considerably less. Less dramatic illustrations of the loss of the sense of power of the self are present all around us in contemporary society, and, indeed, are so common that we generally take them for granted. For example, there is the curious remark made regularly nowadays at the end of radio programs, “Thanks for listening.” When you come to think of it, this remark is quite amazing. Why should the person who is doing the entertaining, who is giving something ostensibly of value, thank the recipient for taking it? To acknowledge applause is one thing, but thanking the recipient for deigning to listen and be amused is a quite different thing. It betokens that the action is given its value, or lack of value, by the whim of the consumer, the receiver—in the case of our illustration the consumer being their majesties, the public. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Imagine Kreisler, after playing a concerto, thanking the audience for listening! The parallel suggested by the radio announcer’s remark is the court jester, who not only had to perform but at the same time to beg the majesties who watched to deign to be amused—and proverbially the court jester was in as humiliating a position as a human being could occupy. Obviously we are not criticizing radio announcers as such. This remark merely illustrates an attitude which runs through our society: so many people judge the value of their actions not on the basis of the action itself, but on the basis of how the action is accepted. It is as though one has always to postpone one’s judgment until one looked at one’s audience. The person who is passive, to whom or for whom the act is done, as the power to make the act effective or ineffective, rather than the one who is doing it. Thus we tend to be performers in life rather than persons who live and act as selves. The alternative of having versus being does not appeal to common sense. To have, so it would seem, is a normal function of our life: in order to live we must have things. Moreover, we must have things in order to enjoy them. In a culture in which the supreme goal is to have—and to have more and more—and in which one can speak of someone as being worth a million dollars, how can there be any alternative between having and being? #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
One the contrary, it would seem that the very essence of being is having; that if one has nothing, one is nothing. Yet the great Masters of Living have made the alternative between having and being a central issues of their respective systems. In order to arrive at the highest state of human development, we must not crave possession. “For whosoever will save one’s life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose one’s life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a mortal advantaged, if one gains the whole World, and loses oneself, or be cast away?” reports Luke 9.24-25. To have nothing and make oneself open and empty, not letting one’s selfishness get in one’s way, is the condition for achieving spiritual wealth and strength. Luxury can be as much as a nice as poverty, depending on what one does to obtain it. Having and being are two fundamental modes of experience, the respective strengths of which determine the differences between the character of individuals and various types of social character. The force of life is stronger than the force of mere intellectual curiosity. The difference between being and having is not essentially that between East and West. The difference is rather between a society centered around persons and one centered around things. The having orientation is characteristic of Western industrial society, in which greed for money, fame, and power has become the dominant theme of life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many modern people cannot understand the spirit of a society that is not centered in property and prosperity. Love becomes a goddess, an idol into which the mortal projects one’s loving; in this process of alienation one ceases to experience love, but is in touch only with one’s capacity to love by one’s submission to the goddess of Love. One has ceased to be an active person who feels; instead one has become an alienated worshiper of an idol, and one is lost wen out of touch with one’s idol. I have transformed my feeling into something I possess: the problem. However, problem is an abstract expression for all kinds of difficulties. I cannot have a problem, because it is not a thing that can be owned; it, however, can have me. That is to say, I have transformed myself into a problem and am now owned by my creation. This way of speaking betrays a hidden, unconscious alienation. To say I have a great love for you is meaningless. Love is not a thing that one can have, but a process, an inner activity that one is the subject of. I can love, I can be in love, but in loving, I have nothing. In fact, the less I have, the more I can love. To have is a deceptively simple expression. Every human being has something: a body, clothes, shelter—on up to the modern man or woman who has a car, a television set, a washing machine, and so forth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Living without having something is virtually impossible. Why, then, should having be a problem? Yet the linguistic history of having indicates that the word is indeed a problem. To those who believe that to have is a most natural category of human existence it may come as a surprise to learn that many languages have no word for to have. It is clear that some people do not understand the word for to have as it developed in connection with the development of private property, while it is absent in societies with predominately functional property, that is, possession for the use. And that is why Eastern philosophies are hard to understand or may lead people in Western society astray. Traditionally, the way mortals have overcomes the daimonic is by naming it. In this way, the human being forms personal meaning out of what was previously a merely threatening impersonal chaos. We need only recall the crucial importance historically knowing the particular name of the demon in order to expell him. In the New Testament, Jesus calls out “Beelzebub!” or “Legion!” or some other presumably accurate name, and the devils or devils leave the possessed unfortunate immediately. The priests who were successful at casting out devils in the Middle Ages were those who could divine the name of the demon, the pronouncing of which was sufficient to conjure the evil spirit out and away. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Randolph Harris II International Institute 