Thousands of people in our World are wearing masks. Since a mask is usually a part of an identity, these mask-wearers are not necessarily phonies. However, some wear masks that pass off only one part of themselves as their entire identity. Those who show only a limited bit of themselves are not particularly sick or disturbed. They may or may not need psychotherapy; nevertheless they are living only partially. To speak of a whole society as lacking in mental health implies a controversial assumption contrary to the position of sociological relativism held by most social scientist today. They postulate that each society is normal inasmuch as it functions, and that pathology can be defined only in terms of the individual’s lack of adjustment to the ways of life in his or her society. To speak if a sane society implies a premise different from sociological relativism. It makes sense only if we assume that there can be a society which is not sane, and this assumption, in turn, implies that there are universal criteria for mental health which are valid for the human race as such, and according to which the state of health of each society can be judged. This position of normative humanism is based on a few fundamental premises. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The species of human can be defined not only in anatomical and physiological terms; its members share basic psychic qualities, the laws which govern their mental and emotional functioning, and the aims for a satisfactory solution of the problem of human existence. It is true that our knowledge of human beings is still so incomplete that we cannot yet give a satisfactory definition of human beings in a psychological sense. It is the task of the science of humans to arrive eventually at a correct description of what deserves to be called human nature. What has often been called human nature is but one of its many manifestations—and often a pathological one—and the function of such mistake definition usually has been to defend a particular type of society as being the necessary outcome of human’s mental constitution. Nonebing threatens humans as a whole, and therefore threatens one’s spiritual as well as one’s ontic self-affirmation. Spiritual self-affirmation occurs in every moment in which a person lives creatively in the various sphere of meaning. Creative, in this context, has the sense not of original creativity as performed by the genius but of living spontaneously, in action and reaction, with the contents of one’s cultural life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
In order to be spiritually creative one need not be what is called a creative artist or scientist or statesperson, but one must be able to participate meaningfully in their original creations. Such a participation is creative insofar as it changes that in which one participates, even if in very small ways. Some people wear the mask of Autocracy. They adopt a face and posture that say: “I want you to know m only as the leader, the boss, the one who runs the show.” They toss their weight around, give orders, interfere with the ongoing operations of things, veto group decision, or boast of their own single-handed accomplishments. These people who we have dubbed The Power People, are unwilling to acknowledge or display any other part of their personality. They deny any tenderness, concern, agreeableness, or sympathy. They consider the role of powerful, influential person to be adequate for them. It meets all their needs, or at least all those that concern them. It gets for them a certain amount of respect or fear, or even dislike; and for some, being disliked is a very important motivation. Why? Is it because they are full of guilt and seek out dislike as a form of punishment or penance? Possibly. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
Or do people like to be disliked because people are so full of dislike for others that they perceive dislike as the only acceptable emotion? Possibly. Or is it because they project their own dislike onto others and are justifying their negativisms by calling it protection against the hostility they find all about? Again, possibly. These are some of the motivation we find in the power people. Are some people born power-seeking? Is there an innate drive or gene for power-lust? The best evidence still supports the hypothesis that leaders and rulers and executives and despots are made, not born. Certainly, any careful study of the history of monarchies will show that some kings’ children have not been kingly material. Our conclusions are that for a variety of motives, some people ignore or eliminate all other sides to their personalities and present themselves to the World as powerful, born leaders, influential. Often, because of what sociologist call self-fulfilling prophecy, these people cause their wishes to come true. They play their roles so well that everyone, including themselves, believes the power exists—and gradually, it does. Against such reactionary use of the concept of human nature the Liberals, since the eighteenth century, have stressed the malleability of human nature and the decisive influence of environmental factors. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
True and important as such emphasis is, it has led many social scientists to an assumption that human’s mental constitution is a black piece of paper, on which society and culture write their test, and which has no intrinsic quality of its own. This assumption is just as untenable and just as destructive of social progress as the opposite view was. The real problem is to infer the core common to the whole human race from the innumerable manifestation of human nature, the normal as well as the pathological ones, as we can observe them in different individuals and cultures. The task is furthermore to recognize the laws inherent in human nature and the inherent goals for its development and unfolding. This concept of human nature is different from the way the term human nature is used conventionally. Just as humans transforms the World around them, so they transform themselves in the process of history. One is one’s own creation, as it were. However, just as one can only transform and modify the natural materials around one according to their nature, so one can only transform and modify oneself according to one’s own nature. “I know that it shall come to pass; and they sell themselves for naught; for, for the reward of their pride and their foolishness they shall reap destruction; for because they yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light, therefore they must go down to hell,” reports 2 Nephi 26.10. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
The point of view taken here is neither a biological nor sociological one if that would mean separating these two aspects from each other. It is rather one transcending such dichotomy by the assumption that the main passions and drives in humans result from the total existence of human beings, that they are definite and ascertainable, some of them conducive to health and happiness, others to sickness and unhappiness. Any given social order does not create these fundamental strivings but it determines which of the limited number of potential passions are to become manifest or dominant. Humans as they appear in any given culture are always a manifestation of human nature, a manifestation, however which in its specific outcome is determined by the social arrangements under which one lives. Just as the infant is born with all human potentialities which are to develop under favorable social and cultural conditions, so the human race, in the process of history, develops into what it potentially is. The creative transformation of language by the interdependence of the creative poet or writer and the many who are influenced by these individuals directly or indirectly and react spontaneously to one is an outstanding example. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Everyone who lives creatively in meanings affirms oneself as a participant in these meanings. One affirms oneself as receiving and transforming reality creatively. One loves oneself as participating in the spiritual life and as loving its contents. One loves them because they are one’s own fulfillment and because they are actualized through the individual. The scientist loves both the truth one discovers and oneself insofar as one discovers it. One is held by the content of discovery. This is what one can call spiritual self-affirmation. And if one has not discovered but only participates in the discovery, it is equally spiritual self-affirmation. Such an experience presupposed that the spiritual life is taken seriously, that it is a matter of ultimate concern. “And there are many churches built up which cause envyings, and strifes, and malice. And there are also secret combinations, even as in times of old, according to combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and works of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever. However, the Lord God worketh not in darkness. He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the World; for he loveth the World, even that he may draw all people unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation,” reports 2 Nephi 26.21-24. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
A spiritual life in which this is not experienced is threatened by nonbeing in the two forms in which it attacks spiritual self-affirmation: emptiness and meaninglessness. We use the term meaninglessness for the absolute threat of nonbeing to spiritual self-affirmation,and the term emptiness for the relative threat to it. They are no more identical than are the threat of death and fate. However, in the background of emptiness lies meaninglessness as death lies in the background of vicissitudes of fate.The anxiety of meaninglessness is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings. This anxiety is aroused by the loss of a spiritual center, of an answer, however, symbolic and indirect, to the question of the meaning of existence. The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of nonbeing to the special contents of the spiritual life. A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation in a sphere of culture, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is driven from devotion to one object to devotion to another and again on to another, because the meaning of each of them vanishes and the creative eros is transformed into indifference of aversion. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Everything is tried and nothing satisfies. The contents of the tradition, however, excellent, however praised, however loved once, lose their power to give content today. And present culture is even less able to provide the content. Anxiously one turns away from all the concrete contents and looks for an ultimate meaning, only to discover that is was precisely the loss of a spiritual center which took away the meaning from the special contents of the spiritual life. However, a spiritual center cannot be produced intentionally, and the attempt to produce it only producer deeper anxiety. The anxiety of emptiness drives us to the abyss of meaninglessness. Some people refuse to display any part of themselves except their intellect. In a college environment, The Intellectual often snows or frighten one’s opponents with one’s intellectual power. One is a master of rhetoric and backs one’s opponents into a corner without lifting a finger. When attacked for one’s aggressiveness, The Intellectual may shrug and say, “The illogic of one’s own argument defeated him or her,” or “That person does not have the capacity to follow my train of thought.” Thus, The Intellectual exhibits one’s superiority without every falling into the position of being labeled the aggressor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Some people play Intellectual because they find too many defects in portraying other aspects of themselves. They may not be adequate to compete athletically or in interpersonal effectiveness, so they razzle and dazzle ‘em with their footwork, only it is intellectual footwork. This is partly a mechanism identified as Compensation. Often a fragile, puny, undersized boy cannot play sports, cannot attract a female, and cannot make it socially or interpersonally. So, he buckles down to come the all-time Honors Student who wins admiration for his brainpower, if not for his musclepower or drinking skills. This is an important role for many people and is not to be interpreted as always unhealthy. Some people simply need one area to excel in and they pick the academic or intellectual arena. The unself-actualizing aspects consist of their unwillingness or inability to admit that this is what they are doing. The approach of normative humanism is based on the assumption that, as in any other problem, there are right and wrong, satisfactory and unsatisfactory solutions to the problem of human existence. Mental health is achieved if a person develops into full maturity according to the characteristics and laws of human nature. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Mental illness consists in the failure of such development. From this premise the criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all people, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. What is so deceptive about the state of mind of the members of a society is the consensual validation of their concepts. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Noting is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health. Just as there is a folie a deux there is a folie a millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. There is, however, an important difference between individual and social mental illness, which suggests a differentiation between two concepts: that of defect, and that of neurosis. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
If a person fails to attain freedom, spontaneity, a genuine expression of self, one may be considered to have a severe defect, provided we assume that freedom and spontaneity are the objective goals to be attained by every human being. If such a goal is not attained by the majority of member of any given society, we deal with the phenomenon of socially patterned defect. The individual shares it with many others; one is not ware of it as a defect, and one’s security is not threatened by the experience of being different, of being an outcast, as it were. What one may have lost in richness and in a genuine feeling of happiness, is made up by the security of fitting in with the rest of humankind—as one knows them. As a matter of fact, one’s very defect may have been raised to a virtue by one’s culture, and thus may give one an enhanced feeling of achievement. Emptiness and loss of meaning are expressions of the threat of nonbeing to the spiritual life. This threat is implied in a person’s finitude and actualized by an individual’s estrangement. It can be described in terms of doubt, its creative and its destructive function in a person’s spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
People are able to as because one is separated from, while participating in, what one is asking about. In every question an element of doubt, the awareness of not having, is implied. In systematic questioning systematic doubt is effective. This element of doubt is a condition of all spiritual life. The threat to spiritual life is not doubt as an element but the total doubt. If awareness of not having has swallowed the awareness of having, doubt has ceased to be methodological asking and has become existential despair. One the way to this satiation the spiritual life tries to maintain itself as long as possible by clinging to affirmation which are not yet undercut, be they traditions, autonomous conviction, or emotional preferences. And if it is impossible to remove the doubt, one courageously accepts it without surrendering one’s convictions. One takes the risk of going astray and the anxiety of this risk upon oneself. In this way one avoids the extreme situation—till it becomes unavoidable and the despair of truth becomes complete. Then people try another way out: Doubt is based on human’s separation from the whole of reality, on one’s lack of universal participation, on the isolation of one’s individual self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
So one tries to break out of this situation, to identify oneself with something transindividual, to surrender one’s separation and self-relatedness. One flees from one’s freedom of asking and answering for oneself to a situation in which no further questions can be asked and the answers to previous questions are imposed on one authoritatively. In order to avoid the risk of asking and doubting one surrenders the right to ask and to doubt. One surrenders oneself in order to save one’s spiritual life. One escapes from one’s freedom in order to escape the anxiety of meaninglessness. Now one is no longer lonely, not in existential doubt, not in despair. One participates and affirms by participation the contents of one’s spiritual life. Meaning is saved, but the self is sacrificed. And since the conquest of doubt was a matter of sacrifice, the sacrifice of the freedom of the self, it leaves a mark on the regained certitude: a fanatical self-assertiveness. Fanaticism is the correlate to spiritual self-surrender: it shows the anxiety which it was supposed to conquer, by attacking with discorporate violence those who disagree and who demonstrate by their disagreement elements in the spiritual life of the fanatic which one must suppress in oneself. Because one must suppress them in oneself one must suppress them in others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
One’s anxiety forces one to persecute dissenters. The weakness of the fanatic is that those who one fights have a secret hold upon one; and to this weakness one and one’s group finally succumb. It may be said that the person who is overwhelmed by a feeling of one’s own powerlessness and unworthiness, by unceasing doubt as to whether one is saved or condemned to eternal punishment, who is hardly capable of genuine joy, suffers from a severe defect. Yet this very defect was culturally patterned; it was looked upon us particularly valuable, and the individual was thus protected from the neurosis which one would have acquired in a culture where the same defect gave one a feeling of profound inadequacy and isolation. Many people are seized by one and the same affect by one object that one believes this object to be present even if it is not. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. However, if the greedy person think only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but as people who avoid human interaction by acting superior; generally one has contempt for them. However, factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as illness. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
God has unlimited goodness, knowledge, and power. The omnipotence of God requires that he should be able to do what we would understand as being logically impossible, and thus the eternal truths are dependent on God’s will. The concept of self-preservation as well our interpretative concept self-affirmation, if taken ontologically, posit a serious question. What does self-affirmation mean if there is no self, e.g. in the inorganic realm or in the infinite substance, in being-itself? Is it not an argument against the ontological character of courage that it is impossible to attribute courage to large sections of reality and to the essence of all reality? Is courage not a human quality which can be attributed even to higher beings only by analogy but not properly? Does this not decide for the moral against the ontological understanding of courage? In stating this argument one is reminded of similar arguments against metaphysical concepts in history of human thought. Concepts like the World soul, microcosmos, instinct, the will to power, and so on have been accused of introducing subjectivity into the objective realm of things. However, these accusations are mistaken. They miss the meaning of ontological concepts. It is not the functions of these concepts to describe the ontological nature of reality in terms of the subjective or the objective side of our ordinary experience. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
A human’s power is nothing in comparison to that of one’s maker. Indeed, a person is helpless to do anything expect sin unless one is assisted by the power and grace of God—God works in us both to will and to do. It is the function of an ontological concept to use some realm of experience to point to the characteristics of being-itself which lie above the split between subjectivity and objectivity and which therefore cannot be expressed literally in terms taken from the subjective or the objective side. Ontology speaks analogously. Being as being transcends objectivity as well as subjectivity. However, in order to approach it cognitively one must use both. And one can do so because both are rooted in that which transcends them, in being-itself. It is the light of this consideration that the ontological concepts referred to must interpreted. They must be understood not literally but analogously. This does not mean that they have been produced arbitrarily and can easily be replaced by other concepts. Their choice is a matter of experience and thought, and subject to criteria which determine the adequacy or inadequacy of each of them. This is true also of concepts like self-preservation or self-affirmation, if taken in ontological sense. It is true of every chapter of an ontology course. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
God knows what will come to pass, but his knowing does not cause anything to happen. Both Self-preservation and self-affirmation logically imply the overcome of something which, at least potentially, threatens or denies the self. There is no explanation of this something in the minds of some. If everything follows by necessity from the nature of the eternal substance, no being would have the power to threaten the self-preservation of another being. Every thing would be as if it is and self-affirmation would be exaggerated word for the simple identity of a thing with itself. Self-affirmation and self-preservation are powerful and part of growth. Therefore, the will does not strive for something it does not have, for some object outside of itself, but wills itself in the double sense of preserving and transcending itself. This is its power, and also its power over itself. Will to power is the self-affirmation of the will as ultimate reality. Life in this term is the process in which the power of being actualizes itself. However, in actualizing itself it overcomes that in life which, although belong to life, negates life. One could call it the will which contradicts the will to power. Life has many aspects, it is ambiguous. Its ambiguity most typically in the last fragment of the collection of fragments which is called the Will to Power. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
Courage is the power of life to affirm itself in spite of this ambiguity, while the negation of life because of its negativity is an expression of cowardice. We can develop a prophecy and philosophy of courage in opposition to the mediocrity and decadence of life in the period which is to come. It is your dearest Self, your virtue what is good. The Self has itself, but at the same time it tries to reach to itself. Life is that special substance. The truth of virtue is that the Self is in it and not an outward thing. Courage is the affirmation of one’s self it is virtue altogether. The self whose self-affirmation is virtue and courage is the self which surpasses itself. Life creates life loves and what is has created is the will to power which is more than life. Life, willing to surpass itself, is the good life, and the good life is the courageous life. It is the life of the powerful soul and the triumphant body whose self-enjoyment is virtue. Such a soul banishes everything cowardly; it says: bad—that is cowardly. However, in order to each such a nobility it is necessary to obey and to command and to obey while commanding. This obedience which is included in commanding is the opposite of submissiveness. The latter is the cowardice which does not dare to risk itself. The submissive self is the opposite of the self-affirming self, even if it is submissive to a God. It wants to escape the pain of hurting and being hurt. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
God’s views of all things from the perspective of eternity—the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life. In such a conception there is no suggestion of succession in time, and God must thus see all things in a manner similar to that in which we view things spread out in a given moment. The obedient self, on the contrary, is the self which commands itself and risks itself thereby. In commanding itself it becomes its own judge and its own victim. It commands itself according to the law of life, the law of self-transcendence. The will which commands itself is the creative will. It makes a whole out of fragments and riddles of life. It does not look back, it stands beyond a bad conscience, it rejects the spirit of revenge which is the innermost nature of self-accusation and of the consciousness of guilt, it transcends reconciliation, for it is the will to power. In doing al this the courageous self is united with life itself and its secret. One acts voluntarily and freely, then, in doing what one wills, prefers, or chooses. The unconscious is the master of every fate and the captain of every soul. The courage to look into the abyss of nonbeing in the complete loneliness of one who accepts the message that we have to manifest God in our daily lives has the experience of courage and proves to be an outstanding key for the ontological approach to reality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
God is not deceiver; hence, we may conclude that we are not systematically misled with respect to those things which we have a strong natural tendency to believe and, accordingly, we are not misled in supposing that there is both a part and an external World. One of the faults in the way most of us think is the strong tendency to dichotomize, to divide things up into mutually exclusive opposites. If work is viewed as a curse, not working is viewed as a blessing. Mainly we view work as a necessary evil and our leisure time and days off as the necessary and balancing good. Partly because we still hold onto the Work-Sin Ethic and partly because of this dichotomous way of thinking, play takes on the interesting character of being something earned, a reward for working so hard. Most of us do not know how to use leisure time or play in a creative and restorative way. For some the reward comes from sleeping late on days off, refusing to do anything in the way of labor, avoiding chores or tasks, and resenting people or things that interfere with just laying about the house. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
A few people occupy themselves with eating or drinking or smoking too much on their days off. Reward mechanisms take many forms, and for all that people may resent immature behavior, they fail to recognize that their work as rewardable at all is a juvenile attitude. Work in the general sense need not be such a drag as to engender this necessarily to escape into activities that are merely different without necessarily being pleasant or fun. Therefore, in order to discuss attitudes toward play, we must first consider attitudes toward work as play. There are lot of examples of work that must be considered nothing more than drudgery. However, it is possible to note that there are many people who are capable of finding enjoyment, even fun, it the most menial or tedious kinds of work. How? Possibly the answer, complex as it is, lies not in the nature of the work experience, but in the person doing the work. The person who brings to one’s work, ether ditch-digging or book-writing, a sense of personal expression is likely to enjoy one’s work. To actually be able to see work as an outgrowth of selfhood makes it more enjoyable. Many people report that their work is considered a chance to demonstrate their personal sense of selfhood. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
People who take their work as an expression of themselves find work that enables them to test out certain skills or that gives them an opportunity to explore other, often hidden, skills. They take on new tasks, or do old tasks in new ways, because it is a form of self-expression. Any job, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, becomes a challenge in some sense. There is an increasing tendency on the part of aware people to seek out work that is meaningful to them and to whomever they work for. Many are unwilling to take just any job simply to earn money or job security. They recognize that in a complex and highly varied society such as ours there are thousands of different kinds of work, with some of the less traditional jobs and the newer ones offering individuals new chances to explore and express their selfhood. However, how does playfulness enter into working? It can be artificially inserted by those who try to find aspects of the work that are enjoyable, stimulating, fun. Or the work or the particular task may be visualized as a game. One of the advantages of playing at work is that overly self-absorbed people can learn not to take themselves quite so seriously, to be so concerned about how they look, or what others think or feel about them that they literally sit in judgment on themselves. #RanolphHarris 8 of 10
People who criticize themselves for the type of work they do or let the judgments of others get to them about their personal job or career choice are demonstrating a lack of confidence or self-liking. They are too dependent on external validation of their selfhood to be in the same category with self-actualizing people. Better than artificially creating games or play is attitude-changing. Work and play are not absolute polar extremes. Most jobs are situations that include relaxation and drudgery, challenge and monotony, delight and disgust, exhilaration and tedium, inspiration and irritation, fulfillment and frustration, self-satisfaction and service. The creative, self-actualizing people is capable of experiencing all of these and growing from them. It is important to feel motivated and inspired in your career. Without the drive to excel, your performance will lack passion and, in turn, your company may suffer. Productivity allows one to work in the most efficient manner, which makes room for downtime and encouraged work-life balance. If one is passionate about one’s, one is likely to take an active interest in learning every aspect of the business. Many people are too afraid to follow their dreams and do what they love, but keep in mind it is important that we challenge ourselves so we can achieve our vision. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Testimony is personal knowledge, based up the witness of the Holy Ghost, that certain facts of eternal significance are true. The Holy Ghost is the messenger for the Father and the Son and the teacher of and guide to all truth. This, by the power of the Holy Ghost we may know the truth of all things. The knowledge and spiritual conviction we receive from the Holy Ghost are the results of revelation Seeking for and obtaining these blessings require a sincere heart, real intent, and faith in Christ. A personal testimony also brings responsibility and accountability. “Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every person,” report Doctrine and Covenants 84.85. Therefore, let naturally occurring times happen where one can have a conversation and testify of specific blessings one has received during the course of relatively routine activities of that day, which is one of the reasons Sunday Dinner is so important to many God loving families. The truth is the scripture has always been a source of direction for many and Sunday Dinner is a time the family uses to illuminate the needs and better understand each other in a supportive and secure environment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
Last night she lay on the bed for hours. She was whispering things. I could not hear her. She would not talk to me. She would not come out of it. She would not get dressed for bed, or take anything to eat or drink. I lay beside her—what you told me to do. I held her. I even sang to her. Sleep does many things for us. In sleep there is the obvious function of resting the tired cells of the body. They are not called upon to fire and react as much as during sleep as during the average day. Do the cells are allowed to go through a longer period of what we call absolute refraction. In the period they build up potentially for future use more easily and efficiently than when they might be called on for quick reactivity with short periods of rest. Also in sleep we have the chance to escape from conscious and direct involvement with the World around us. We can shut out some of the pressures we face in a waking state, and one good turn gets most of the blanket. Sleep can also be an exquisite personal, and spiritual experience. Falling asleep can be an experience to look forward to each night. In a state of slumber, we experience the process of surrendering. That is important because in order to really derive enjoyment and true peace in this sublime state of being, we must be relaxed. Relaxation does not begin until after we have completed the last thing on our list. It is cultivated in intervals during the day. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Going to bed early and getting up early will allow the mind and body to become rested. Another definite function of sleep seems to be to give us a chance to dream. Recently, dreams have been the subject of much research, and we now know a bit more than we used to about them. When, after passing through a narrow defile, one suddenly reaches a height beyond which the ways part and a rich prospect lies outspread in different direction, it is well to stop for a moment and consider whither one shall turn next. We are in somewhat the same position after we have mastered this first interpretation of the dream. We find ourselves standing in the light of discovery. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being played by the hand of a musician, is struck by some external force; the dream is not meaningless, not absurd, does not presuppose that one part of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awake. It is a perfectly valid psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfillment; it may be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic activities of the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. Dreams seem to play a very important part in preserving our mental health. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
When we are dreaming we are involved with what is called Rapid Eye Movement Sleep. REM Sleep comes right after a period of deep sleep during which no dreaming seems to take place. There may be four to six stages of REM sleep each night, lasting for only a few minutes. During this period the eye ball is actually moving underneath the closed eyelid, much as it does when it follows the ball in a tennis match. Subjects who are awakened when the recording instruments indicate they are in REM sleep report on their dreams, but they also give evidence that they are irritated by the interruption, leading dream experts to speculate that the dreaming is very important to them. Dr. Freud believe that dreams serve dynamic functions by protecting sleep and alleviating unconscious wishes. It is easy to show that the wish-fulfillment in dream is often undisguised and easy to recognize, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for example, a dream which I can evoke as often as I please, experimentally, as it were. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
If, in the evening, I eat anchovies, olives, or other strongly salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and therefore I wake. The waking, however, is preceded by a dream, which has always the same content, namely that I am drinking. I am drinking long draughts of water; it tastes as delicious as only a cool drink can taste when one’s throat is parched; and then I wake, and find that I have an actual desire to drink. The cause of this dream is thirst, which I perceived when I wake. From this sensation arises the wish to drink, and the dream shows me this wish as fulfilled. It thereby serves a function. I sleep well, and am not accustomed to being waked by a bodily need. If I succeed in appeasing my thirst by means of the dream that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to satisfy that this. It is thus a dream of convenience. The dream takes the place of action, as elsewhere in life. Unfortunately, the need of water to quench the thirst cannot be satisfied by a dream, as can my thirst can only be quenched if I get up and fetch a glass of water. I thus quite appropriately dreamt that my wife was giving me a drink from a vase; this vase was an Etruscan cinerary urn, which I had brought home from Italy, and had since given away. However, the water in it tasted so salt (apparently on account of the ashes) that I was forced to wake. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Another view holds that dreams simply express a need for some kind of cognitive activity, which is present during sleep as well as when awake. A third view suggests that dreams are more or less unimportant cognitive activities that express internal states during sleep. This would mean that intrinsic energy or tension is acted out through the symbolic content of the dream, regardless of the meaning of the content. All of these views are based on the research evidence we currently have concerning dreams. Whether we are aware of dreaming or not (and evidence suggests that we all do dream every night), sleep is an important part of our lives. We know from many studies that subjects will experience fantastic changes at all levels if they are deprived of it. Subject who have been kept awake experimentally for long periods of time report physical sensation they do not ordinarily have. Some subjects report tingling or numbness in the limbs. Some report headaches, nausea, dizzy feelings, and soreness in muscles. Others report mental confusion. A few have experienced hallucinations and delusions. All report a lowered threshold of tolerance for various stimuli. They have less patience, less ability to stand tension, less tolerance for bothersome noises. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
Obviously, we need sleep and we need it to be relatively uninterrupted. However, since sleep is a function of both individual needs and cultural attitudes toward it, the amount needed varies with each individual. The average or the mean is generally expressed as eight hours. If the average work day is eight hors and the average sleep time is eight hours, what do we do with the remaining eight hours a day? In many cases they are more important, for the person may use them in such beneficial ways as to enhance one’s work and enable the sleep to come more readily. People who get adequate sleep receives more flashed of inspiration and insight during the day. “Cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 88.124. It is well to be up before day-break, for such a habit contributes to health, wealth and wisdom. Connection have also been made between keeping an early schedule and mental and emotional health. To those who feel defeated and downtrodden, look to the early hours of the day for your rescue because the World is usually a more beautiful place early in the morning. Life is so much more calm. Much more can be accomplished in a shorter amount of time. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Store will be opened promptly at six a.m. and remain open until nine p.m. the year around. Store must not be opened on the Sabbath day unless absolutely necessary and then only for a few minutes. Any employee who is in the habit of smoking Spanish cigars, getting shaved at a barber shop, going to dances and other places of amusement, will most surely give his or her employer reason to suspect one’s integrity and all-around honesty. Each employee must attend Sunday school every Sunday. Men employees are given one evening a week for courting purposes, and two if they go to prayer meeting regularly. After fourteen hours of work in the store, the remaining leisure time must be spent in reading good literature. All God’s children will thrive from our growing knowledge, but to repeat this is only the beginning. We must have the courage to embrace the beauty of science in the name of the Lord. The image of God Incarnate, become Man out of fascination with His own Creation, will triumph in the Third Millennium as the supreme emblem of Divine Sacrifice and Unfathomable Love. It takes thousands of years to understand the Crucified Christ. Why, for example, did the Savior come down to live thirty-three years? Why not twenty? Why not twenty-five? You could ponder this stuff forever. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Why did Christ have to start as a baby? Who wants to be a baby? Was being a baby part of our salvation? And why choose that particular time in history? And such a place! Cosmic Energy is dominant and you do not possess the energy for the material World. You have the energy to pray and commune with God, and to inspire and guide others to elevate themselves so as to attain the spiritual heights and ecstasies of divine experience. Jesus was a perfect example of a soul with excessive cosmic energy (because of his evolution), which enabled him to achieve the most miraculous energy cures the World has ever seen. The spiritual path requires total renunciation. The more one treads the path, the more one is required to renounce. However, one is ready for the experience, the renunciation corresponding to the material World or emotional attachments, and the extreme discipline are not in comparison to all that is received on a higher plane. The renunciation occurs more on a mental and emotional level than on a purely physical plane. One would never be expected to renounce one’s children, for example. If one has children, they are one’s growth as one is theirs. One would not have to renounce a business if it is the only source of income for an individual and that person’s family. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
However, many individuals will totally dedicate their lives and every possible moment to spiritual practices and disciplines, which becomes their life mission, which is demanding. Because of the impact of Christianity on the Western World the revival of the ancient schools of thought at the beginning of the modern period was not only a revival but also a transformation. It is true of the renewal of the arts, of literature, of the theories of the state, and of the philosophy of religion that the rebirth of antiquity in the modern period started to actively shape the material realm. And while in some of the ancient World there was a tragic feeling toward existence that dominated though and life, especially the attitude toward history, the Renaissance started a movement which was looking at the future and the creative and new in it. Hope conquered the feeling of tragedy, and belief in progress the resignation to circular repetition. While the ancient World valued the individual not as an individual but as a representative of something universal, e.g. a virtue, the rebirth of antiquity saw the individual as an individual a unique expression of the Universe, incomparable, irreplaceable, and of infinite significance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
In human beings the ontological work is elaborated. Humans have the ontological foundation of ethical existence, including the courage to be. And, ss we look into the various areas of human experience, we find a great deal that does not seem to make sense. The above statement may seem humorous or it may seem tragic. It might make a socially conscious person furious. And yet, it represents not only the limited perspective once found widespread in this country, but also some of the attitudes still prevalent in our thinking about work and religion. Theoretically, if a person sleeps eight hours a day, one has eight hours left in the day for something else. It is in this eight hours of something that we are interested here. Also theoretically, we should have no trouble with those eight free hours. Yet, the simple fact is we do. Most of us have not gotten thoroughly used to the idea that leftover time is out own! A case in point: a colleague of ours find his teaching day ends at noon of Fridays. He is a hard-working man who puts in more hours during the week than his contract calls for. He is always prepared for his classes, spends plenty of time in conferences with students, serves on my committees, takes paperwork home almost every evening. He earns his salary and then some! #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
The courage to be is an expression of the essential act of everything that participates in being, namely self-affirmation. Decisive character is manifested in the evdeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, and is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question. The Latin word for endeavour is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis. The conatus makes a thing what it is, so that if it disappears the thing itself disappears. Striving toward self-preservation or toward self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is. This striving is the essence of a thing and also its power, in addition to being part of the mind it affirms and has the power to control actions. So we have the identification of actual essence, power of being, and self-affirmation. And more identifications follow. The power of being is identified with virtue, and virtue consequently, with essential nature. Virtue is the power of acting exclusively according to one’s true nature. And the degree of virtue is the degree to which somebody is striving for and able to affirm one’s own being. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Because of his upbringing (presumably under the Work-Sin Ethic) this teacher has a difficult time when Friday noon comes around and he finds an entire afternoon at his disposal. He confesses that he often feels like volunteering for some assignment that would full up his Friday afternoon. He invites students to confer with him after 12 o’clock on Friday, but those who are finished with their classes at 12 head for the beach or the billiard parlor or home. They are not troubled by any such deep guilt at finding free hours. The person who rigidly works a schedule eight hours a day for five or six days a week probably does not sympathize with our colleague. I remember hearing a bishop eloquently, and in his case sincerely, telling less affluent audience in England that he worked at least sixteen hours a day and asked for nothing better. “If I were a bishop, I would work sixteen hours a day, too, but eight hours of my work a day is quite enough for anybody” declared one workshop foreman in the audience. The assumption here, more prevalent than most people might suspect, is that people who do not punch time clocks do not work. This assumption is irrational and, individual variations on work habits to the contrary, simply invalid! The dictates of individual, corporate, discipline and/or social circumstances support an infinite number of work-habit variations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Nine-to-five-ism may be the lot of the majority, but this is just one more example of why occasionally majority does not rule, although it might like to. Our colleagues, who may work odd hors by a laborer’s standards and erratic hours by most people’s habitual, routinized system, does one’s job, earns one’s salary, and in comparison with many people far exceeds what is expected of him or her. By these modern-day standards alone, one deserves every moment of leisure one can come by. (Granted one’s compulsion is more complex; we hope to have people straightened very soon!) It is impossible to conceive of any virtue as prior to the striving to preserve one’s own being. Self-affirmation is, so to speak, virtue altogether. However, self-affirmation is affirmation of one’s essential being, and the knowledge of one’s essential being is mediated through reason, the power of the soul to have adequate ideas. Therefore to act unconditionally out of virtue is the same as to act under the guidance of reason, to affirm one’s essential being or true nature. Very well, we are attempting to make a strong case for a life of balance. The puritan attitude of Work or Sin should be euthanized, allowed or helped to reach oblivion. It is an ethic that denies humanness and makes workhorses or machines out of all organisms that have the potential for being replaced. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
People have a strength of the soul and power to be what they essentially are. Animositas, derived from anima, soul, is the courage in the sense of a total act of the person. By courage I mean the desire [cupiditas] whereby every person strives to preserve one’s own being in accordance solely with the dictates of reason. There is also a desire to join other people in friendship and support. This duality of an all-embracing and limited concept of courage corresponds with the whole development of the idea of courage to which we have referred. In a systematic philosophy of the strictness and consistency of this remarkable fact, we see the two cognitive motives which always determine the doctrine of courage: the universally ontological and the specifically moral. This has a very significant consequence for one of the most difficult ethical problems, the relation of self-affirmation and love toward others. Since virtue and the power of self-affirmation are identical, and since generosity is the act of going out toward others in a benevolent affect, no conflict between self-affirmation and love can be thought of. This of course presupposes that self-affirmation is not only distinguished from but precisely the opposite of selfishness in the sense of a negative moral quality. Self-affirmation is the ontological opposite of the reduction of being by such affects as contradict one’s essential nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The right self-love and the right love of others are interdependent, and selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependent. Self-affirmation is participation in the divine self-affirmation. The power whereby each particular thing, and consequently human beings, preserves one being is the power of God. The participation of the soul in the divine power is described in terms of both knowledge and love. If the soul recognizes its sub aeternitatis specie, it recognizes its being in God. And this knowledge of God and of its being in God is the cause of perfect beatitude and consequently of a perfect love toward the cause of this beatitude. This love is spiritual (intellectualis) because it is eternal and therefore an affect, not subject to the passions which are connected with bodily existence. It is the participation in the infinite spiritual love with which God contemplates and loves oneself, and by loving oneself also loves what belongs to him, human beings. From the existence of God comes the existence of other contingent beings. God possesses objectively a supreme degree of reality because it is the idea of a Perfect Being; here its cause must possess formally a similar degree of reality. Therefore, God is indeed a perfect being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
God’s excellence is not merely indefinitely, but infinitely, great. This explains why self-affirmation is the essential nature of every being and as such its highest good. Perfect self-affirmation is not an isolated act which originating power in every individual act. In this idea the ontology of courage has reached its fundamental expression. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof,” Romans 6.12. In time, addictions enslave both the body and the spirit. Full repentance from addiction is best accomplished in this life, while we still have a mortal body to help us. As children of God, we should not let anything enter the body that might defile it. To allow sensors of sight, touch, or hearing to supple the brain with unclean memories is a sacrilege. We will cherish our chastity and avoid foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown us in destruction and perdition. We will flee these things; and follow after righteousness, Godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness—traits that edify the whole souls. An affect can be conquered only by affect, and the only affect which can overcome the affects of passion is the affect of the mind, the spiritual or intellectual love of the soul for its own eternal ground. Who are we? We are children of God. When your heart runs deeper than a ghost town gold mine, you just know you are bound to find that mother load. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
The omnipotence of God requires that he should be able to do even what we would understand as being logically impossible, and thus that the eternal truths are dependent on God’s will. God could have brought it about that two and two did not equal four; although, since God has not chosen that this should be so, it must be beyond our finite comprehension how it might have been so. God is an efficient cause himself. Our potential is unlimited. Our inheritance is sacred. This affect is an expression of the participation of the soul in the divine self-love. The courage to be is possible because it is participation in the self-affirmation of being-itself. However, why is it that the way of salvation (salus) which God has shown us in the Bible being neglected by almost every? Because it is difficult and therefore rare, like everything sublime. Our inheritance is sacred. May we always honor that heritage—in every thought and deed. The stronger the foundation of our identity is rooted in being a child of God, the stronger our self-worthy becomes. The stronger our sense of self-worth becomes, the less insecure, defensive, and fearful we are. If we are willing to shed our less important identities and place our divine origins at the very forefront of our self-perception, we can be more confident, happy, and content human beings. “And now may God grant unto these, my people, that they may sit down in the Kingdom of God,” reports Alma 29.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
