Innumerable molecular aggregates were produced at random in the probiotic soup and, by prolonged trial and error, evolved to form the basis for life. People have at all times set the greatest value on ethics, as though they expected that it in particular would produce especially important results. And it does in fact deal with a subject which can easily be recognized as the sorest spot in every civilization. If I cannot accept the suggestion and find it in conflict with my inner self, the experience is one of negative empathy or pain. It is a feeling of constraint or compulsion. The reason we have to repent is to be able to forgive ourselves and to be able to get in harmony again with the principles and laws of good living. When we surrender ourselves to harmony and find it in accord with our natural inclinations and needs, we experience a feeling of freedom. Where this freedom is possible, the object is beautiful. Where we are incapable of encountering ourselves in the object, the form is experienced as ugly and the contemplation of it involves an inward sense of compulsion or hindrance. The laws that indicate the conditions under which a definite echo in the mind of the perceiver will occur are objective. The subject must be aesthetically educated to the necessary surrender to aesthetic experience, however. We do not have to repent to earn God’s love, even though some scriptures portray God as being very angry with the sinner. Others portray God as angry with sin, not the sinner. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Sins do not trouble themselves enough about the fact of the mental constitution of human beings. Sins issue a command and do not ask whether it is possible to obey it. On the contrary, sin assumes that every person’s id is psychologically capable of anything that is required of it, and that the pleasure gained from sinning has unlimited mastery over the human will. To overcome sins of the past and restore free will is to make amends. People know when they have done wrong, but sometimes they are afraid to go to those whom they have wronged. They are too proud to admit their failures. However, when an individual has the courage to show remorse, one will find that a great reconciliation takes place. It is the offended person’s responsibility to react to one’s efforts to be reconciled. And when one cannot compensate a person for a wrong, when it is too late or impossible, then one can bless other people. We are brothers and sisters with the same Eternal Father; we belong to the same human community. Though one cannot repair the damage one may have done to some of God’s children, one has natural faculties or capacities to thin and to reason. We all have a desire for happiness and an aversion to misery, but these inclinations give one no knowledge or truth. However, there are eternal principles of morality, which people may come to know through the use of reason about experience. The past is only significant in terms of what it has made one become. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
We should be aggressive in our desire and effort to do what is right. Many people do wrong because they are fueled by their desires and demands and do not think about the laws of God, nor respect the rights of other human beings. They think they have a right to force themselves, their ways, and their views on to other people, regardless of what the law states or what the person wants. Some people are unprepared to live a righteous life because they do not define themselves, they are not honest about who they are, what they believe, or what values they hold. Particular people do not tell themselves why they believe in their values nor do they understand why they have become a part of them. Perceiving the operations of one’s own minds when one reflects, one is furnished with ideas of perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing and willing. All knowledge about what pain is to one who never felt it, all knowledge about the physics of light and color or sound refers back to what one perceives when one sees and hears it. It is in this sense, then, that people get all their ideas from sensation and reflection. Once the mind is furnished with ideas, it may perform various operations with them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Principles are not innate, unless ideas be innate. If the ideas which make up the truth that people live by are not based on the doctrines and covenants of God, then it is likely these people do not have righteousness based in their soul. Therefore, they are corrupt and cannot know what it means to be good. “God comes in awesome majesty. The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress,” reports Job 37.23. We must fall back upon the omnipotence and wisdom of God and the fact that our knowledge is suited to our purpose. Power is a necessary idea of reason, grounded in certain other experiences. Power is both passive and active. Whether or not matter has any active power, we have our idea of active power from the operation of the mind itself. We find it by direct observation that we have the power to begin, continue, or stop certain actions of our minds and motions of our bodies. This power we call will, and the actual exercise of this power, volition, or willing. Action is voluntary or involuntary insofar as it is or is not consequent upon the order or command of the mind. The idea of liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other. Where this power is absent, a person is under necessity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Freedom is one power of an agent and will is another; one power cannot be the power of another. As far as this power reaches, of acting or not acting, by the determination of one’s own thought preferring either, so far is a person free. Freedom is the absence of constraint. If we distinguish will from desire, we cannot make the mistake of thinking the will is free. What then determines the will with respect to action is some uneasiness in a person that may be called the uneasiness of desire. Good and evil work on the mind but do not determine the will to particular actions. The only thing that can overcome the uneasiness of one desire is the greater uneasiness of another. The removal of uneasiness is the first and necessary step to happiness. Since it is present desire that moves the will to action, good and evil contemplated and known in the mind can move us to action only when that knowledge is accompanied by a greater uneasiness than any other. Since we have many desires and can have knowledge of desired good in the future as well as feared evil, we can suspend the pursuit of any desire until we have judged it. Thus, government of our passions is possible whenever there is greater uneasiness in not doing so. This power is the ground on which we hold people responsible for their actions. Good and bad are nothing but pleasure or pain, present or future. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Error in choice is usually due to the greater strength of present pleasure or pain in comparison with future pleasure and pain. A true knowledge of what contributes to our happiness can influence a choice only when to deviate from that choice would give greater uneasiness than would any other action. Thus it is possible to change the pleasantness and unpleasantness of various actions by considerations, practice, application, and custom. It would seem that the will is not actually free and thus a person’s actions are determined, but at the same time we can suspend the execution of any desire by our judgment. “Be careful that no one entices you by riches; do not let a large bribe turn you aside. Would your wealth or even all your mighty efforts sustain you so you would not be in distress? Do not long for the night, to drag people away from their homes. Beware of turning to evil, which you seem to prefer to affliction. God is exalted in his power. Who is a teacher like him? Who has prescribed his ways for him, or said to him, ‘You have done wrong?’ Remember to extol his work, which people have praised in song. All humankind has seen it; people gaze on it from afar. How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out,” reports Job 36.18-26. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The mind is furnished with many simple ideas by the senses, and it observes by reflection that certain of them are constantly together. It then presumes that these belong to one thing and for convenience gives them one name. In this way the mind arrives at the complex idea of particular substances, such as gold, which we observe to be yellow and malleable, to dissolve in aqua regia, to melt, and not to be used up in fire. A substance so defined gives us only a nominal definition. Not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result; which therefore we call substance. This idea of a substratum is extremely vague, and it is a something we know not what. Our ideas do not reach, and we cannot have, a knowledge of the real essences of substances. Nonetheless, the real essences do exist, although our knowledge comes short of them. Our knowledge of corporeal substances consists of ideas of the primary and secondary qualities perceived by the senses and of the powers we observe in them to affect or be affected by other things. We have as clear an idea of spirit as of body, but we are not capable of knowing the real essence of either. We know little of how the parts of the body cohere as of how our spirits perceive ideas or move our bodies, since we know noting of either except our simple ideas of them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
If God wished, as far as we know, he could add to matter the power to think, just as easily as he could add to matter a separate substance with the power to think. Even our idea of God is based on simple ideas that are enlarged with the idea of infinity. God’s infinite essence is unknown to us. We can only know that he exists. “Now, behold, I say unto you, if I had not been born of God I should not have known these things; but God has, by mouth of his holy Angel, made these things known unto me, not of any worthiness of myself,” reports Alma 36.6. Sometimes when a person asks whether life has any meaning, what he or she wants to know is whether there is a superhuman intelligence that fashioned human beings along with other objects in the World to serve some end—whether their role is perhaps analogous to the part of an instrument (or player) in a symphony. People who ask whether history has a meaning often use the word in the same sense. When Macbeth exclaimed that, “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he was answering this cosmic question in the negative. His point evidently was not that human life is part of a scheme designed by a superhuman idiot, but that it is not part of any design. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
We find ourselves in a dreadful situation in which there is scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance, in a cosmic sense. On the other hand, when we ask whether a particular person’s life has or had any meaning, we are usually considered not with cosmic issues but with the question whether certain purposes are to be fond in one’s life. Thus, most of us would say that without hesitation that a person’s life had meaning if we knew that one devoted oneself to a cause (such as the spread of Christianity or capitalism, or the reform of mental institutions), or we would at least be ready to say that it acquired meaning once one became sufficiently attached to one’s cause. Whether we approve of what they did or not, most of us would be ready to admit—to take some random examples—that Aaliyah, Dorothea Dix, Pasteur, Lenin, Margaret Sanger, Th Empress Dowager, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Moctezuma Ilhyicamina, Prince Shotoku, Tupac Shakur, William Wirt Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, and Boy Hilton led meaningful lives. We seem to mean two things in characterizing such lives as meaningful: we asset, first, that the life in question has some dominant, over-all goal or goals which gave direction to a great many of the individual’s actions and, second, that these actions and possibly others not immediately related to overriding goals or that would have not been present if there had been no goal in their lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Let us assume that meetings between God and certain human beings do take place; let us also grant that activities commanded by God in these meetings acquire meaning by being or becoming means to the end of pleasing or obeying God. Granting all this, it does not follow that obedience of God is the only possible unifying goal. There have been devout people who were also attached to the advance of science, to the practice of medicine, or to social reform and who regarded these ends as worthy pursuing independently of any divine commandments. Occasionally it was suggested that humans were derived from special seeds or spores of life which always existed. It is well-known that the intense cold, ultraviolet radiation, and cosmic rays in outer space constitute a threat to all life. However, people still believe these germs of life came to Earth from outer space. These hypothetical germs (biospores, cosmozoa, astroplankton, panspermia) are assumed to have been carried either by meteorites or by bits of cosmic dust propelled by radiation pressure, light quanta, or other media. And we are virtually certain that the Earth has been able to support life for not more than the past three billion years. The Earth’s early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen, and there as no upper ozone layer to act as a shield against ultraviolet radiation. Hence, intense radiation reached the surface of the Earth, on which seas or pools of probiotic soup, rich in chemical elements, existed. #RandolphHaris 10 of 11
Inorganic photochemical and other reactions were set up, as a result of which organic compounds, including amino acids, were formed. Once they appeared on a sufficient scale, chemical selection would set in, because of differential utilization of available energy. Over a prolonged period, biochemical complexity and efficiency would build up in a small number of surviving systems, the immediate precursors (so-called eobionts) of living things. When there were systems that exhibited metabolism and the capacity of self-reproduction, living things themselves appeared. At this stage morphological evolution began to supersede chemical evolution. The altered physical conditions on the planet, including the presence of an oxygenic atmosphere, no longer allowed organic compounds to be formed by purely inorganic synthesis. Some scientists have contended that the origin of life can only be explained by postulating the action of a supernatural creator, or God. A living thing possess a series of attributes which sever it from the inorganic by a chasm across which there is no bridge. Hence, to account for life we are compelled to admit that at some definite point in past time it was placed upon the planet by the operation of an extramundane cause. That cause must have been living, intelligent, personal. However, this can only have been God. Life may well exist at many stations in the cosmos and not just on Earth. #RandolphHarris 11 or 11
Every experience and every science is possible only by means of certain nonempirical premises, such as the principles of real identity, of the continuity of existence, of constant causality or legality, and of the temporal continuity of becoming, or, in general, by means of fundamental a priori forms or principles, which constitute the organization of human cognitive powers but from whose transcendental validity by no means necessarily follows its transcendental reality. Is human life every worthwhile? Does (or can) human life have any meaning? What did freedom mean to a people who had endured and survived 250 years of enslavement in America? What did the future hold for nearly four million African Americans in 1865? True human life is part of a divinely ordained cosmic scheme and after death some human beings will be rewarded with eternal bliss, no matter what culture, race, gender they are. If we are asked to believe that all our striving is without final consequence, then life is meaningless and it scarcely matters how we live if we all end in the dust of death. According to Christianity, on the other hand, each action has vital significance. God’s grand design is life eternal for those who walk in the steps of Christ. Here is the one grand incentive to good living. As life is seen to have purpose and meaning, people find release from despair and the fear of death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9
Whatever meaning life acquires is derived from the encounter between God and human beings. Freedom meant many things to many people. However, to most people who had been enslaved, it meant that families would stay together. Freedom meant that women and men would no longer be sexually exploited. Freedom meant that moving around without having to obtain permission. Freedom meant that labor would produce income for the laborer and not the master. Freedom meant working without the sting of the whip, thrashing against your skin and drawing blood as an incentive to work harder, faster, better, stronger, longer. Freedom meant one could own land, cultivate it, and build their dream home. Freedom meant, if charged with a crime, a trial before jury. Freedom meant voting. Freedom meant citizenship and having the same rights as White people. Years after slavery ended, a Texas woman, who had once been enslaved, called Mrs. Margrett Nillin was asked if she preferred slavery or freedom. “Well, it is this way, in slavery I owned nothing and never owed anything. In freedom I own my home and raise my family. All that causes me worriment and in slavery I had no worriment, but I prefer freedom,” reports Mrs. Margrett Nillin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9
The meaning thus conferred upon human life cannot be understood in terms of some finite human purpose, supposedly more ultimate than the meeting itself. For what could be more ultimate than the Presence of God? It is true that God is not always near, but in times of Divine farness are by no means devoid of meaning. Times of Divine nearness do not light up themselves alone. Their meaning extends over all of life. There is a dialectic between Divine nearness and Divine farness and it points to an eschatological future in which it is overcome. Some people believed in the perishableness of all good things and the ultimate extinction of all their hopes and achievements in death. As slavery ended, the most urgent need for many freed people was finding family members who had been sold away from them. Slavery had not destroyed the African American family. Husbands, wives, and children went to great lengths to reassemble their families after the Civil War. For years and even decades after the end of slavery, advertisements appeared in the African American newspapers appealing for information about missing kinfolk. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9
The following notice was published in the Colored Tennessean on 5 August 1865: Saml. Dove wished to know of the whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah and Peggy, and his brother Edmond, who were owned by Geo. Dove of Rockingham County, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Sold in Richmond, after which Saml and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tennessee, by Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond. Respectfully yours, Saml Dove, Utica, New York. To be a moral individual is to be part of the human community and to be actively concerned in the life of other human beings. It is indeed undeniable that people frequently fail to bring about the ends of morally inspired acts or wishes, but phenomenological analysis discloses that the real moral value and meaning of an act does not depend on the attainment of the external goal. The good will is the moral intent or attitude. It is here that we find the existential meaning of life: Since that which is morally good contains its meaning and value within itself, it follows that it is intrinsically worth while. The existence of what is morally good is therefore better than its nonexistence. However, the existence of what is morally good is essentially connected with the existence of free moral individuals, and hence it follows that the existence of human beings as moral agents is better than their nonexistence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9
In North Carolina, a northern journalist met a middle-age African America man plodding along, staff in hand, and apparently very footsore and tired. The nearly exhausted freedman explained that he had walked almost six hundred miles looking for his wife and children who had been sold four years earlier. There were emotional reunions as family members found each other after years of separation. Ben and Betty Dodson had been apart for twenty years when Ben found her in a refugee camp after the war “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah,” he shouted as he hugged his wife. “This is my Betty, sure yes. I found you at last. I was haunted and haunted until I tracked you up here. I was bound to hunt until I found you if you were still alive.” The hunger for the love of their family and the faith of God sure was apparent. There was nothing more valuable than family to Americans at one time. Other searches had more heart-wrenching results, however. Husbands and wives sometimes learned that their spouses had remarried during the separation. Believing that his wife had died, the husband of Laura Spicer remarried—only to learn after the war that Laura was still alive. Sadly, he wrote to her, but refused to meet with her. “I would come and see you, but I know I could not bear it. I want to see you, but I do not want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 9
Tormented, he wrote again pledging his love. “Laura I do not think that I have changed any at all since I saw you last—I think of you and my children every day of my life. Laura, I do love you the same. My love to you never has failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry that I am. You feel and seem to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura.” The conclusion is inevitable: the best or least undesirable form of existence is reached when, finally, we descend benath the threshold of consciousness; for only there so we see individual pain entirely disappear. Sometimes people reach a negative answer on the ground that unhappiness usually or necessarily outweighs happiness. If the generative act were an affair of pure rational reflection, could the human race continue to exists? Perhaps few who have directly observed the worst agonies and tortures that may be the lot of human beings or animals would subscribe to this judgment, but we have to be careful not to play down the horrors of life because we have to correct the miseries of the human scene. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9
One freedman testified to the close relations that bound many enslaved families when he replied bitterly to the claim that he had a kind master who had fed him and never used the whip. “Kind! Yes, he gives men corn enough, and he gives me pork enough, and he never gives me one lick with the whip, but where is my wife?—Where are my Children? Take away the pork, I say; take away the corn, I can work and raise these for myself, but give me back my wife of my heart, and give me back my darling children, as they were sold away without my consent. Emancipation was also a traumatic experience for many former slave masters. A Virginia freedman remembered that Miss Polly died right after the surrender, she was so heart broken that her African America were going to leave her alone and lonely. Another former slave, Robert Falls, recalled that his master assembled the enslaved people to inform them they were free. “I hate to do it, but I must. You all are not my human capital anymore. You are free. Just as free as I am. Here I have raised you all to work for me, and now you are going to leave me. I am an old man, and I cannot get along without you. I do not know what I am going to do.” In less than a year, he was dead. Robert Falls attributed his master’s death to the end of slavery. “It killed him.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 9
Family bonds are formed in many ways. And, perhaps a lot goes unsaid, but the fact is that people need other people to survive. In preindustrial societies a kin group may live and work together, share economic resources, and conduct religious and social activities in common. However, declines in household size are becoming more common in both developed and developing countries, because of lower fertility, increased migration, and much greater numbers of persons living alone than at any time in the last. Today, with the exceptions of parents, siblings, and a handful of other close kin, many White, middle-class Americas see relatives rarely—typically at family reunions or holiday celebrations. Moreover, they do not expect much of their more distant relatives, nor do they feel particularly obligated to them. For those at the top of the stratification hierarchy also, such as the Cresleigh, Harris, Hearst, Hilton, and Winchester families, kinship networks are important and often provide their members with homes, jobs, and other support. The less affluent also maintain close bounds with relatives. There is a will to live, and that will is fueled by human concern and human companionship. It makes people feel good to know someone is concerned about them, one lady expressed that concern people have for her is the source of her will to live most eloquently. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9
Some people seem to have more social support than others. Some seniors lay in their beds for weeks in the hospital, and only medical personnel visit them. However, the fact that someone cares and their faith in God keeps them alive. “The things I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judged of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thy people, that they may also be filled with joy. For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst people, working mighty miracles, such a healing the sick, raising the dead, and causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of aliments. And he shall cast out the adversary, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of people,” reports Mosiah 3.2-6. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9
Doubt must be genuine, not feigned, and unless it is employed in good faith, one is likely to err in doubting real evidence, just as, without methodological doubt one is likely to err in allowing unwarranted belief. Accordingly, doubt has no privileged status over belief. Ability to attain truth as well as falsehood must underlie the quest for truth, and freedom is thus a condition of the possibility of knowing truth as well as of being mistake. “Better for one person to perish than for a nation to dwindle in unbelief,” reports 1 Nephi 4.13. Freedom is a double dilemma. Either causal necessity or freedom is a fundamental truth, and each doctrine must be asserted either necessarily or freely. If necessity is the true doctrine, my affirmation thereof is eo ipso necessary, but since neither doubt nor belief relative to evidence would function in that determination, doubt results. If necessity is true but I affirm freedom, then in addition to my inconsistency (for my affirmation is made necessarily), there is only a subjective foundation for knowledge and morality. Given the truth of determinism, erroneous as well as true judgments are necessary, and any supposed distinction between them is illusory. “Come to knowledge of true Messiah,” reports 1 Nephi 10.14. Stop listening to the tyranny of the natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13
According to the hypothesis of freedom, if I freely affirm global necessity I am fundamentally inconsistent. If I affirm freedom under the same hypothesis, not only is my affirmation consistent with the hypothesis but I have a foundation for knowledge and morality. Under the double dilemma, the only satisfactory alternative is freely to affirm freedom. Freedom is essentially the power to add some novel reality to the existing World. Causality must be explained through the freedom and not vice versa. The data that are present to given event of consciousness arise out of the past relative to that event; they are past actualities, but present potentialities for the internal character o that event of consciousness out of which a determining decision is made. Human consciousness is a succession of self-creative events, each of which is given its ancestor selves as well as other data, and each of which is partially causa sui, a dependent independence. Thus, the totality of causal conditions of any human experience does not make this experience necessary, but only possible, while internal decision makes it contingently actual. All choice-making contains some arbitrary. “Because people are redeemed from Fall, they have become free forever,” 2 Nephi 2.26. The Savior has set us free from sin. We must reply on this energy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13
In extending these doctrines to theology, and taking as axiomatic the concept that freedom, responsibility, and moral and religious values depends upon choice-decisions that an omniscient God need not know future contingents, since, in relation to any divine experience, they are not yet existent. To be knowable is to be determinate, and if all were known from eternity, then all would be eternally determinate, and time and choice-making would be illusions. Also since contingents are unequivocally in part causa sui, they are not wholly dependent on divine power. Far from viewing divine power as absolute total control, it is insisted that the only power worthy of God is the far greater one of creating self-creators. Real choice in the World is incompatible with all-embracing necessity, and it is neither metaphysically requisite nor religiously desirable that God be wholly immutable and eternal. God must have a temporal aspect in order to come to know contingents as they are realized; thus he remains always omniscient in knowingly all there is to know. This theology is thus that of an eternal-temporal being, his omniscience and omnipotence being relative to the irreducible contingency and self-creativity in the World. #RandolpHarris 3 of 13
The essence of the self is consciousness of action against the resistance and limitation of reality. This could be rendered: I will, or I strive, therefore I am. Thus, personality is existence as it is formed by the double cogito: hindered by obstacles, elevating itself by and towards value. People participates in absolute and transcendent value. Although value outruns one and is not wholly one’s creation, it is made determinate by one in a given, concrete situation. Reality, then, is at once the organ of self-creation and an obstacle to it. In a sense it degrades value, yet it actualizes value by making it determinate. We are, moreover, called back to awareness of the value-creating source in which we participate. This is a spiritual flow, or upsurge (essor). Some obstacle has to break the continuity of the upsurge before the self, concentrating upon it the body’s energy, begins to will. The willing self owes its being and consciousness to the obstacles it encounters. We participate in a World of absolute value and a World brute reality and create ourselves unceasingly through them. Therefore, our experiences, even the undesirable ones, make us who we are, even if it is not who we intended to be when we set foot on this journey in life. However, the important thing is to keep faith in God and follow his doctrines and covenants so we can like who we are and feel good about our lives. Because as long as we have faith, our dream will still come true. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13
Once we realize all that it cost God to forgive us, we will be held as a vise, constrained by the love God. The worth of a person does not consist in the truth one possesses, or thinks one possesses, but in the pains one has taken to attain that truth. For one’s powers are extended not through possession but through the search for truth. In this alone one’s ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes one lazy, indolent, and proud. If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left the everlasting striving after truth, so that I should always and everlastingly be mistaken and said to me, “Choose,” with humility I would pick on the left hand and say, “Father grant me that; absolute truth is for thee alone.” What is required of humanity is not to assent to the propositions of a creed, but sincerity, human love, and tolerance. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the less affluent by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. Though there are less affluent people in our society, the average American has enough food and clothing—at least enough so that these are not one’s only concerns in life. As one moves up the scale of motivations during one’s early childhood and concentrated more and more on the second level of the hierarchy, safety and security needs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13
Children are explorers, testers, discoverers for themselves. How else can I discover me? A small boy (five years old) called Trayvon told me, “I am smarter than people thing I am!” I asked him, “In which way?” His answer was….”I do dangerous things (like walking to the store by myself) and I do not get hurt!” I did not tell him that he should not nor that he should. How else can there be freedom? How else can there be joy? Naturally, it is important to teach a child how to avoid danger. However, in teaching this lesson, the adult must be sure the child does not also learn to fear the source of potential anger, in and of itself. We have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. As one grows through childhood, the individual moves from being dominated by the need to learn and maintain one’s safety and security to the stage of testing out one’s abilities in a more social area. However, we learn if we put our trust in human beings first, then end result will be our despair and hopelessness toward everyone. We must trust what God’s grace can do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13
Life, as we live it today, is more highly socialized, more urbanized, more—so far as external relationships are concerned—standardized than it used to be. The World has become uncomfortably small; we have not yet gained a complete control of our excessive procreational activity; so that there are far too many of us, and, being so closely crowded together, we have to adopt all sorts of new precautions to avoid friction and permit of the greatest amount of mutual freedom available within our unduly narrow frontiers. So many of the old traditional social taboos having become antiquated or no longer adequate, there has been a furious activity in making new laws and regulations, without a due recognition of the fact that old taboos can only be replaced by new taboos, and that mere legal enactments, enforced, or left unenforced, by paid officials or the police, to be effective mist themselves become taboos, printed on the fleshy tablets of the individual citizen’s heart. And as a supernatural miracle of God’s grace, we stand justified, not because we are sorry for our sins, or because we have repented, but because of what God has done. Through identification with God, we can be freed from sin and have God’s very righteousness imparted as a gift to us. “The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you,” Deuteronomy 30.7. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13
Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 8 of 13
Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 9 of 13
Managers are typically evaluated as to how effective and efficient they are. Managing effectively and efficiently requires certain skills—leadership, technical expertise, conceptual skills, analytical skills, and human relations skills. “The Lord’s power is over all inhabitants of the Earth,” reports 3 Nephi 4.1. It is important to commit organizational resources to develop innovative goods and services and expand internationally to obtain new customers for the organization’s products. Good managers must move quickly to take corrective action to deal with unexpected problems facing the organization from the external environment, such as a crisis like an oil spill, or from the internal environment, such as producing faulty good or services. “Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, bless is one that believes in the word of God,” reports Alma 32.16. For a business to stay afloat, one must allocate organizational resources among different functions and departments of the business; set budgets and salaries of middle and first-level managers. One must also work with suppliers, distributors, and labor unions to reach agreements about the quality and price of input, technical, and human resources; work with other organizations to establish agreements to pool resources to work on joint projects. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13
Healthy challenge is not an attack. It asserts, sometimes forcefully so, but does not aggress or violate. Nor does it shame the other, though it sometimes may—without trying to do so—elicit a healthy shame in the other that catalyzes their conscience regarding questionable behavior on their part, while helping draw forth the kind of vulnerability that makes heartfelt remorse possible. Managers must also be able to monitor, evaluate the performance of other managers and employees in different function and take corrective action to improve their performance; watch for changes occurring in the external and internal environment that may affect the organization in the future, and inform employees about changes taking place in the external and internal environment that will affect them and the organization; one must also communicate to employees the organization’s vision and purpose. “Turn to the Lord with full purpose in heart,” reports Mosiah 7.33. One must also be a competent spokesperson. A successful business has the ability to launch a national advertising campaign to promote new goods and services; give speeches to inform the local community about the organization’s future intentions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13
A good leader has the ability to influence employees to work toward organizational goals. Strong leaders manage and pay attention to the culture of their organizations and the needs of their customers. The intention of a healthy challenge, however fiery its expression might be, is not to dominate nor diminish others, but to clearly highlight and buttress life-giving possibilities, not leaving obstruction to well-being unaddressed. People tend to be more at ease with the delivery of this than with the reception of it, so sometimes the greater challenge is not to let one’s reactivity to being challenged get in the way of opening to it (assuming that such challenge is not abusive). Interpersonal cohesiveness is an important quality because the figurehead has to outline future organizational goals to employees at company meetings; open new corporate headquarters building; state the organization’s ethical guidelines and the principle of behavior employees are to follow in their dealings with customers and suppliers. Leader should possess the ability to provide an example for employees to follow; give direct commands and orders to subordinates; make decisions concerning the use of human and technical resources, and mobilize employee support for specific organizational goals. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13
Being a liaison is another quality one has to display. Coordinating the work of managers in different departments; establishing alliances between different organizations to share resources to produce new goods and services is a priority and must be done with good intentions. Of equal importance is that we do not exclude from our challenging of another—however strong that might be or might need to be—and that we remain as open as possible to however the challenge might be received. Much of our work here is not to armor ourselves with our challenge—giving—hiding behind its delivery—but rather to remain transparently present as we express it, not letting our passion or conviction obscure or dilute our sensitivity to our recipient. Our succinct, well-grounded intuition, in as fittingly assertive and skillful a form as possible. And there is often a vulnerable piece here: through such challenge, we sometimes might risk our relationship with others, even as we perhaps recognize that it is an even greater risk to not thus speak up. A healthy manager can be fierce and can be gentle. One have to be emotionally vital and emotionally muted. Great leaders can be powerful motivators because they demonstrate a great deal of trust and confidence in their employees. If we do not deliever, we drift on stagnant seas, removed from not just the reefs, but also the depths. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13
To these two eyes, weak as they may be, you are more beautiful than anybody I can think of. Do you make me happy? You make me happy in every way. When it comes to making a guy happy, you wrote the book. Feelings and spiritual qualities as inspiration, creative genius, virtue, and wisdom give emotions a place beside reason. There is an inner light, which allows God to satisfy the inner light of human beings. All experiences of human beings emerge against the background of the limited individual being, participation in the Absolute Being. By their relation to participation, which is constant and eternal, individual beings establish their relation to the World, and through the notions of essence and existence they establish their spiritual identity. The Absolute Beings is pure actuality, the infinite source of existential dynamism, and an endless reservoir of all possible forms of essences, from which individual beings receive their own limited existence. In spite of this direct and continuous dependence of the individual on God as the source, human freedom is safeguarded by the self-creativity of the individual. Indeed, from the human point of view, participation is a pursuit of an ideal which constantly moves ahead of our efforts. In this pursuit we create our spiritual self, and our experiences, moving onward, progressively acquire a unique form. Our effort in life is meant to discover this form, which has its prototype in the reservoir of Being and is our spiritual essence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10
The accomplishment of our essence at our departure from the mortal realm mean the radical passage from limited existence into the transfinite Being. Thus, participation appears as the means of a person’s ultimate redemption, toward which everything occurring in the Universe converges. The World is the interval which separates pure Act (Being) from the limited act of participation (human existence). Matter, in limiting the spirit, offers the resistance necessary for the self to transcend itself. The World comprises three modes of reality: the World of things, that of idea, and that of individual beings (consciousnesses). The material World plays the necessary role of separating beings; ideas give spiritual meaning to things. The World of individual consciousnesses is necessarily conscious because the essence of the Absolute Being from which they proceed is itself perfect inwardness; as such it is eternally fecund and intended to communicate the creative act to beings which, in turn, propagate it in self-creation. Freedom is the essence of human destiny. However, whereas the Absolute Act is synonymous with absolute freedom, human, the participating act, is limited by the natural spontaneity of the instinct. Consequently, the life of the spirit, which is the ideal of human life, is a fighting toward gradual liberation from the passivity peculiar to instinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10
We become fully human by subordinating natural spontaneity of instinct. We become fully human by subordinating natural spontaneity to reflection and rational discipline. Human freedom originates in this process; and this conversion of spontaneity into freedom is the real vehicle of participation. The spiritual being is endowed with potentialities for the accomplishment of its pre-established essence. Our vocation is to seek to make our actual selves coincide with the better part of ourselves, which represents these potentialities. This self-searching and self-controlling effort presupposes an act of consent to our vocation of the spirit. Everyday is a chance for us to rehabilitate our existence, as even the least significant instant is an opportunity for consent to the self-creative effort, and thereby, an opportunity for participation in the Absolute. Human communion is the ideal of wisdom as it is seen to be possessed in the union between a certain asceticism and everyday life and love. “And they arose from the Earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full,” reports 3 Nephi 17.20. We must remember God’s words of assurance, and be fully of courage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10
We ought to realize that no matter what we have done in life, no matter what we do, God and Christ will still love us just much as they did before we may not have reached our goal. God and Christ do not separate themselves from people who are learning, from the people who are still trying to express their faith. Love from God is not earned. It is not merited; if it is, it is justice and reciprocity and reward. Love comes from a loving heart, and God’s love is unconditional. And he loves the worst of us and the best of us equally. We cause God to suffer when we do wrong, when he sees us live our lives in ways that destroy us, and when he sees us hurting other people—this must cause him pain. Life, however, is always a discipline, even for the lower animals as well as for people; it can be so dangerous that only by submitting to some sort of discipline can we become equipped to live in any true sense at all. This disappearance of the discipline of the old external taboos thus imposes upon us, inescapably, the creation of a new self-discipline of internal and personal taboos. If we are not responsible to an outside order which we no longer regard as valid, then we are responsible before the inner tribunal of the self, which cannot but be valid for us so long as we are alive. “The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the Earth shall see the salvation of God,” reports 3 Nephi 17.20. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10
The fully knowledge of the World made available by an encyclopedia of human knowledge, as there already exist vast stores of experience held by groups of skilled workers, or by individuals, that are not fully utilized, if we collected and systematically arranged, and their full product was obtained for understanding, such an encyclopedia would be conducive to piety by bringing out the richness and variety in the World, and thus testifying to God’s wisdom and power. Many people desire a fuller knowledge of nature of things because it will increase piety and devotion to God. And so far from it being an easy and pleasant task, as some may at first have thought when they saw the old taboos melting away, it involves difficulties which their grandparents never knew. If it means the making of new and personal taboos, it involves a slow self-development and self-responsibility, which is not in itself a continual discipline, but runs the risk of conflict with others engaged in the same task and with the same sincerity. For what we may still term morals, since it has now become an individual outcome, will not be entirely the same for all individuals. All our moralities, indeed, cannot fail to be modifications of a common pattern because we all belong to the same community; but the differences involve a greater degree of mutual understanding and forbearance than when uniform taboos were imposed from outside. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10
It would seem that for many years there can be no common emotional or intellectual background which may be take for granted; and if in the result not a little of human’s power must be spent in creating one’s own scheme of values, still there is no immediate remedy, for it is in the nature of contemporary thinking that it demands an effort as individual as it must be unsparingly honest if it is to have any meaning for our generation. Although two persons need not have qualitatively the same sense experiences, they can and do communicate, and this communication somehow depends on the nature of the space relations underlying the congruity of each person’s perceptions. So if the people of the former generation now leaving the World are often shocked to see swept away the old rigid taboos they were brought up in, they ma leave it in peace. Life, after all, may not have been so hard for them, not so hard, perhaps, as for the younger generation. None the less, that younger generation, also, may continue to carry lightly it burden, on youthful shoulders, joyfully creating a New World. No two things can be alike, but in a material thing there is always something that bears the traces of its earlier state, so that it s cause can be discovered in it. This element is the mind, since matter itself is incapable of containing such traces. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10
From this point of view, God must be conceived as surveying all; the different possible Worlds and decreeing the existence of the one containing the greatest perfection. Here it must be remembered that what exists depends on God’s will, and unless possible demanded existence, God would have no reason for admitting any of them into existence. However, once this reason is given God, he can and does impose conditions of perfection. What God allows to exist, what he chooses as best, is chosen from natural characteristics, since to give us things what is not natural to them would involve a constant miracle. The natural tendency of a body moving in a curved path is to move along the tangent to the curve; bodies cannot naturally attract one another; matter is not naturally capable of thinking; there is a natural and not a merely arbitrary connection between our perceptions of secondary qualities and the bodily movements giving rise to these perceptions. God would not do anything merely because he willed it: if there were no objective reason to determine God’s will, he would not act at all. Obscenity is a permanent element of human social life and corresponds to a deep need of the human mind, or, for all we know to the contrary, of the mind. It is not confined to any nation or any stage of culture, low or high, naïve or highly educated. If you are unwilling to hear me because you do not like or respect people of my gender, race, profession, or background, then I am spilling my message onto unreceptive ground. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
Obscenity definitely exists and it recognized among the people of the World, it is even manifested by the greatest people of genius of all races. We forget that we are dealing with a fundamental and inevitable human impulse, and that it is our business to preserve those aspects of it which are good and to minimize those which are evil. When everything is obscene it becomes impossible to say what obscenity is. Hence the endless definitions of obscenity, and their absurdity. Some love darkness. That love of darkness is shrewd. For, if we think of it, any attempt whatever to define obscenity—once we have put aside the vague emotional terms of abuse, foul, filthy, lewd, disgusting, and so forth—in cool and precise terms cannot bring us to any crime against society. Influence through the mass communication need not be blatant—it can be very subtle indeed. Even when communicators are not making a direct attempt to sell us something, they can succeed in influencing the way we look at the World. Consciousness-raising is the process of making members of groups subject to discrimination aware of the ways in which they are being put down. It is impossible to estimate the social damage which has been done by outworn taboos of obscenity. Raising consciousness within the oppressed group is one thing, and raising consciousness among the oppressors is quite another. That is a job for God. “For the Earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea,” reports Habakkuk 2.14. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10
The human relation problems yet to be explored are immense, and the solution will come no more easily than did the others. It is important to communicate. It I want to not-communicate with you, all I have to do is to code my message in symbols or language you cannot possibly understand. If my intent is to confuse your, lose you, make you upset or angry, cause you to feel inferior or to dislike me, then I can select message symbols in such a way as to accomplish any of those exact results. Or I can simply keep my mouth shut and send non-verbal messages (tight mouth, glared looks, clenched fist, turned back), and claim innocence (“I was not sending that message!”). To me, one of the most baffling aspects of the behavior of men and women in highly-responsible positions in some segments of our society, is their comparative lack of concern for—perhaps it is lack of awareness of—the factor of communication, as such, in the problems and situations in which they all have to deal. It is communication that makes human society possible. Children use words to express how they feel; adults use words to hide how they feel. Sometimes every reality can prove a bitter disillusionment. Therefore, we must practice love towards humanity for solidarity and compassion, not just out of love of God, but out of a desire to combat the cruelty of destiny and of nature. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10
Necessity and simplicity of nature exclude the presence of arbitrary or miraculous forces, as well as the efficacy of magic and of those forces to which it appeals. For communication to take place, the receiver must also be receptive. That means more than just having clean ears. One must also want or need to get the message and be willing to decode and fit it into one existing pattern of ideas or associations. If a student receiver is asleep in class, even if the professor’s must exciting and beautiful message will not get through to him. Another important factor in communication is the context in which a communication is being attempted. Suppose you and I are at a noisy party. I want to enjoy myself and not talk shop. You want to ask me a whole group of interesting psychological questions. I may turn off and refuse to receive, in a way I probably would not do in the classroom, on the campus, or perhaps at a different kind of part. The setting, thus, will have a lot to do with the communication or non-communication that take place. Today, many people are becoming increasingly aware that if they use certain words or body language, they will be considered sexist when they are talking to others. In such a situation, these loaded words or symbols do not communicate what the person intends; they have a different meaning for the other party. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10
What is most interesting is that the mind alone is not enough to account for concrete experiences. Greek philosophy was concerned with abstract essences, conceived God as static and immutable, and proposed the life of pure contemplation as its ideal for humans. In contrast to such idealism or intellectualism, Christianity is presented as realism. Its concern is with the concrete life of action, and God himself is conceived as active, the living God of the Bible. Hence, the truth of Christianity cannot be reached by intellectual contemplation, as if it were something external to us. Such life, so that we grasp it only in living and in re-creating this truth in ourselves. These ideas about religious truth had already found expression in Paris, France in 1903, and the discovery reported that the doctrines of religion are to be understood not as general truths of the same kind as scientific truths but as concrete truths of the same kind as scientific truths but as concrete truths that must be brought into experience and realized if we are to understand them and know their value. “Oh, how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it. And he cometh into the World that he may save all people if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of every living creature, both men, women, an children, who belong to the family of Adam. And he suffereth this that the resurrection might pass upon all people, that all might stand before him at the great and judgment day,” reports 2 Nephi 9.20-21. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
If you here the word business as serious, you are in pretty good company. An estimated 80 percent of Americans, whatever their gender, ethnic background, social class, or religion, are more or less full-time participants in a life-style that is deeply involved with that attitude. The interesting thing is that one may live one’s whole life without ever knowing this attitude by name. It has simply become part of one’s consciousness, so embedded that you are not even aware of it because it colours your entire frame of reference. It is called many things: the Protestant Ethic, the Puritan Ethic, the Work-Sin Ethic. The Work-sin ethic is the attitude that if one works, one is good (moral), and if one does not, one is lazy, immoral. This foundational truth has been thoroughly planted in the consciousness of today’s liberated and conservative young people, whether they know it or not. No one can grow up in Eastern or Western culture without having the concept that they are going to have to do something while they are on this planet to make money. Nobody can cast stones. If one thinks there is going to be a tirade against the work-sin ethic and the capitalist economy, think again. The Devil finds work for idle hands! These attitudes and practices are so thoroughly ingrained in all our lives that nothing short of a massive revolutionary action, or the End of the World, will really eliminate them. And, possibly, we should not try. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
What benefits can come from the attitude that work is good? One is that many useful things will continue to be accomplished. Too, work will continue to provide satisfaction to those people whose products are sources of pride and pleasure. And the skills we possess not only create new work—as invention gives rise to advanced technology—but new work may also create new skills that enhance the creative process. Without doubt machines will be able to determine the means and the avenues to goals, but people will continue to set goals themselves. For what machine can ever apply the consideration of compassion and justice which, as human’s enlightenment spreads…will enter ever more into the decisions that affect one’s future…in the Universe. Many people need some sort of creative activity (whether it should be called work or not is debatable) to use up energy or restlessness. We may not believe the old wives’ tale that the devil finds work for idle hands, but work is useful in keeping people occupied and out of mischief. Many of us are so hung up on the work-sin notion that work seems like the natural order of things. For any normal human, work must be instinctive, built into their genes. Work is becoming suffused with leisure values. Executives on an expense account hardly know whether they are at leisure or at work; they assume it must be the latter since they are getting paid for what they do. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
The same executives, pushed into some time-consuming civic activity, have only somewhat melancholy reassurance of receiving no compensation to testify to this being leisure. The study of the foundations of mathematics comprises investigations, though probably not all possible investigations, that consist of general reflection on mathematics. The subject naturally proceeds by singling out certain concepts and principles as fundamental and concentrating attention on them, but of course the identification of fundamental concepts and principles is itself based on foundational research or my revised in the light of it. In the last hundred years an important role has been played by mathematical logic. We shall not give a detailed exposition of mathematical logic, but we hope that our discussion will give an idea of the relation between the logical problems and result and philosophical problems and an idea of some of the results of recent work in logic. The picture of finite sets can be extended in such a way that one might imagine an arbitrary infinite set independent of any predicate. Suppose it is to be a set S of natural numbers. We go through the natural numbers one by deciding for each n whether n is a member of S (n E S) or not. Although the determination takes infinitely long, it is determined for n whether n E S (Or we might imagine it is being done all at once by God.) “To be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God,” reports 2 Nephi 9.29. The test of math’s truth is whether it can be illuminating when brought to bear on the problems of life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
As machinery wears out, it is worth less (than it was). Accountants often estimate the decreasing value of aging equipment with linear depreciation, a method based on the equation of a line. Linear depreciation: A company buys a $12,500.00 computer with an estimated useful life of 6 years. After x years of use, the value y of the computer is linearly depreciated according to the equation y = 12,500 – 2000x. We have to find the value of the computer after 3.5 years. Find the economic meaning of the y-intercept. Find the economic meaning of the slope. Find the value of the computer at the end of its useful life. Solution: To find the computer’s value after 3.5 years, we substitute 3.5 x in the equation and solve for y. Therefore, y = 12,500 – 2000x; y = 12,500 – 2000(3.5); which equals 12,500 – 7000, and the sum is equal to 5500. Thus, when the computer is 3.5 years old, its value will be $5,500.00. However, we still are not done. The y-intercept is the point (0, 12,500). In this example, $12,500.00 is the value of a zero-year-old computer, which is the computer’s original cost. Each year, the value of the computer decreases by $2000.00, because the slope of the line is -2000. The slope of the depreciation line is the annual depreciation rate. To find the computer’s value at the end of its useful life, we substitute 6 for x in the equation and solve for y. So, y = 12,500 – 2000x; y = 12,500 – 2000(6) =12,500 – 12,000 = 500. After 6 year, the computer will be worth $500.00. This is the salvage value. However, if the information is valuable on the computer, and it is well maintained, it may be worth much more than the purchase price and appreciate in value, even as it gets older. Much like a classic car or house are worth a lot more than their original purchase prices in many cases. It could be worth $1 million or more. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
The human being can free oneself in thought from the particular mechanical conditions of phenomena. One has the capacity to separate some perceptions from others and, using them as symbols, to represent general properties of things. In one’s ability to abstract and generalize, the human being, although distinguished from all other things by this capacity, can be reported to be in contact with the whole Universe. The Universe can be discovered again in thought, but under a new condition, freedom. In addition, humans are free because one can select the means and ends of their activity by reference to ideas. Hence, through humans, the realm of final causes and the freedom which is its condition penetrate the organic and mechanical realm. Furthermore, without freedom it would be impossible to conceive of either mechanism or finality. Thus, the laws of efficient and final causality, upon which induction is founded, are themselves founded upon freedom—and freedom is the essential property of thought. Skill in playing the social game usurps the name and place of virtue. There is the possibility of satisfactory human relationships, speaking with attractive warmth of love and friendship. Some rationalists spend their whole life devoted to the cause of international communication and the dissemination of knowledge. This philosophical work corresponds to the recognition and promotion of an interdependent humanity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Our senses, feelings, and reason may lead to truth, but only accidentally. Certitude can be acquired only by common reason, that of the human race. One must therefore fuse one’s opinions with those of fellow people and find the solution to one’s problems in faith, authority, and common sense. Trust in one’s own insight is madness, as is eccentricity of behavior. However, if one asks whence comes the authority of the general reason, the answer is, from God. God has entrusted it to the church, which speaks through the pope. No individual philosopher can substitute one’s method for that based on revelation. God is infused with power, intelligence, and love and it is all interfused. Each realm of being reflected this triune nature, which is undemonstrable but demanded by the very nature of human thought. We are supposed to preach fraternity, freedom of association, and confidence in God and prayer. Go on to glory. Do not roam this dismal realm. Do not make this darkness your home when you can turn to the Light. DO not you wander here searching and moaning. You go on. Turn your back on this time and place and be for the gates to open. Go on, honey. The Light wants you. And here in this World, God will gather all your songs, every song you ever recorded, Aaliyah, and put them all together, and they will go out far and wide, Aaliyah, every single one, old and new, for always. Is that not a splendid thing to leave behind, all those wonderful songs and movies and videos that people love, that is your gift, Aaliyah. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I felt a force move the damp air around me. Someone having sinned in taking her life, God would give Aaliyah’s songs life forever. However, nothing changed for me in the agonized and straining apparition, expect that Aaliyah raised her right hand just a little, and her parted lips made just a small bit of a word. I could not hear it. It seemed she inclined towards me. And I inclined towards her—love me, love the way love must be, unsparing love, love Aaliyah!—across the perilous void I moved, as if stepping off the very World itself, and I kissed her lips, wet and sweet like cookies, and I felt a great current come from inside me, a spirit out of the deepest foundation of my soul in me that swept inexorably into her and carried her far, far, away, up and out, her form growing faint and immensely brilliant. Blackness. It is done. I am separate. I am here. I feel the grass beneath me. I am clawing the grass trying to get into the Earth. Aaliyah was in white leather, arms raised, blinding light, singing We Need a Resolution! Until the moss had reached our lips, and covered up our names. When I opened my eyes, I was laying on the ground, and except for Tomi who cradled my head in her hands, the night was quiet and empty. Aaliyah is gone, and my soul is weak! I have seen the feathered wings of Angels. Do I not deserve to sleep for this little while? You get out of here! “Listen…has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the World to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor,” reports James 2.5. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
One might advocate the ascetic life as a means of pleasing God and winning the eternal bliss of Heaven. Before the advent of the camera, illustration was the primary way that we recorded history, and today it provides visual interpretations of written texts, particularly in children’s books. Because it is so direct, tracing the path of the artist’s hand recorded directly on paper, artists also find drawing to be a ready-made means for self-expression. It is as if, in the act of drawing, the soul or spirit of the artist finds it way to paper. The young man in this picture seems to be doing the most ordinary thing in the World—drawing. We think of drawing as an everyday activity that everyone, artists and ordinary people, does all the time. You doodle on a pad; you throw away the marked-up sheet and start again with a fresh one. Artists often make dozens of sketches before deciding on the composition of a major work. However, people have not always been able or willing to causally toss out marked-up paper and begin again fresh. Before the late fifteenth century, paper was costly and expensive, and people wanted to preserve trees. The young man shown here is sketching on a wooden tablet that he would sand clean after each drawing. The artist who drew him at work, however, worked in pen and ink on rare, expensive paper. This work this represents a transition point in Western art—the point at which artists began to draw on paper before they committed their idea to canvas or plaster. This involves frustration of unfulfilled desires, and self-inflicted pain. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
I showed them the bedroom with the sealed-up window that was painted to look like a window. I showed them the steel plating on the door and the lock. I told them about the human guards twenty-four hours. They were to pull the curtains around the bed, and sleep in each other’s arms. No ray of Sun, no immortal, not mortal intruder, no one would bother them here. Of course they had a long time before Sunrise. Talk, talk, yes. They could wander. However, no spying on the Harris’, no. No probing for secrets, no. No searching for a lost child yet, no. No going home to the mansion, no. I told them I would meet them tomorrow at dusk. Now I had to leave, had to. Had to get out of here. Had to get out of there. Had to get out of everywhere. The open country. Near the Winchester Mansion. Distant rumble of trucks on the River Road. Smell of the River. Smell of the Grass. Walking. Grass wet. Field of scattered redwood evergreens. White clapboard house tumbling to ruin, the way they do in Louisiana, swaying walls and steeply pitched roof embraced and held suspended by the vines. Walking. I spun around. He was there. Technicolour ghost, black tailcoat, waling as I had been, through the grass, tossing aside the champagne glass, coming on. Stopped. I lunged at him, grabbed him before he could vanish, had him by the throat, fingers dug into what sought to be invisible, holding him, hurting what would be immaterial. Yeah, got you! You impudent phantom, look at me! #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
You think you can haunt me! I growled. You think you can do that to me! And just what crazy half-illuminated Afterlife are you from! What are your half-baked mystical promises! What are your half-baked mystical promises! Yeah, come on, what Other Side are you hawking, yeah, spill it, let us hear about Leo Winterland, yeah, testify, how many ectoplasmic Angels are on your side, give me the splendiferous images of your famous fabulous friggin’ self-created, self-sustained astral plane! Where the Hell were you going to take him! You going to tell me some Lord of the Universe sends spooks like you to take little boys to Heaven! (I was clutching nothing.) I was all alone. It was sweetly warm and there was a numbing quiet in the vibration of the distant trucks, a winking beauty in the passing headlights. Who missed the deep silence of so many past centuries? Who missed the deep darkness of the long pre-electric nights? Not me. When I reached Winchester Mansion, Randolph was standing on the terrace. Loose gray hair mussed, cotton pajamas, sashed robe, bare feet. A mortal could not have discovered him, standing in the shadows, waiting. An empathetic face, patient celibate alertness. Self-discipline is a genuine virtue, but it denies desire only when this is necessary to achieve an inclusive and harmonious satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Until the late fifteenth century, drawing was generally considered a student medium Copying a master’s work was the means by which a student learned the higher art of painting. Thus, in 1493, the Italian religious zealot Savonarola outlined the ideal relation between student and master: “What does the pupil look for in the master? I will tell you. The master draws from his mind an image which his hands trace on paper and it carries the imprint of his idea. The pupil studies the drawing, and tries to imitate it. Little by little, in this way, he appropriates the style of his master. That is how all natural things, and all creatures, have derived from the divine intellect.” Savonarola thus describes drawing as both the banal, everyday business of beginners and also as equal in its creativity to God’s handiwork in nature. For Savonarola, the master’s idea is comparable to divine intellect. The master is to the student as God is to humanity. Drawing is, furthermore, autographic: it bears the master’s imprint, his style. By the end of the fifteenth century, then, drawing had come into its own. It was seen as embodying, perhaps more clearly than even the finished work, the artist’s personality and creative genius. As one watched an artist’s ideas develop through a series of preparatory sketches, it became possible to speak knowingly about the creative process itself. By the time Giorgio Vasari wrote his famous Lives of the Painters in 1550, the tendency was to see, in drawing, the foundation of Renaissance painting itself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Giorgio Vasari had one of the largest collections of fifteenth-century—or so-called quattrocento—drawings ever assembled, and he wrote as if these drawings were a dictionary of the styles of the artists who had come before him. In Lives he recalls how, in 1501, crowds rushed to see Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and Infant St. John, a cartoon (from the Italian cartone, meaning paper), a drawing done to scale for a painting or a fresco. “The work not only won the astonished admiration of all the artists, but when finished for two days it attracted to the room where it was exhibited a crowd of men and women, young and old, who flocked there, as if they were attending a great festival, to gaze in amazement at the marvels he had created,” reports Giorgio Vasari. Though this cartoon apparently does not survive, we can get some notion of it from the later cartoon illustrated here. Giorgio Vasari’s account, at any rate, is the earliest recorded example we have of the public actually admiring a drawing. The two works shown here illustrate why drawing merits serious consideration as an art form in its own right. In Leonardo’s Study for a Sleeve, witness the extraordinary fluidity and spontaneity of the master’s line. In contrast to the stillness of the resting arm (the hand, which is comparatively crude, was probably added later), the drapery is portrayed as if it where a whirlpool or vortex. The directness of the medium, the ability of the artist’s hand to move quickly over paper, allows Leonardo to being this turbulence out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Through the intensity of his line, Leonardo imparts a degree of emotional complexity to the sitter, who is revealed in the part as well as in the whole. However, the drawing also reveals the movements of the artist’s own mind. It is s if the still sitter were at odds with the turbulence of the artist’s imagination, an imagination that will not hold still whatever its object of contemplation. Movement, in fact, fascinated Leonardo. And nothing obsessed him more than the movement of water, in particular the swirling forms of the Deluge, the great flood that would come at the end of the World. It is as if, even in this sleeve, we are witnesses to the artist’s fantastic preoccupation with the destructive forces of nature. We can see it also in his famous notebooks, where he instructs the painter how to represent a storm. Rustlings, as if the house was full of ghosts. Glance of the real true hateful Randolph was out of the corner of my eye. It was Leonardo who turned. Then Randolph on the other side, and then there was Aaliyah, and the sound of taffeta as though from an old-fashioned floor-length dress. Leonardo turned again. His blue eyes fastened on me. He was worn down yet immeasurably strong, proud of the house and mildly happy with the way I looked at it. The night outside beat hard on the windows, the song of the winged things, throb of the frogs, with the full authority of the big garden. Narrow hallway, soaring walls. Evil stairs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
Oh, what fearful noises were heard throughout the dark air as it was pounded by the discharged bolts of thunder and lightening that violently shot through it to strike whatever opposed their course. Oh, how many you might have seen covering their ears with their hands in abhorrence at the uproar….Oh, how much weeping and wailing! Oh, how many terrified beings hurled themselves from the rocks! Let there be shown huge branches of great oaks weighed down with men and borne through the air by impetuous winds…You might see herds of horses, oxen, goats and sheep, already encircled by waters left marooned on the high peaks of the mountains. Now they…huddled together with those in the middle clambering on top of the others, and all scuffling fiercely amongst themselves…The air was darkened by heavy rain that, driven aslant by the crosswinds and wafted up and down through the air, resembled nothing other than dust, differing only in that this inundation was streaked through by the lines drops of water makes as they fall. The alien fragrance again. However, more than that the smell of mortal death. How did I come by thus? Hand touching the newel post, sparked off it. Mortal tumbling down and down. Stairs made for the word headlong. These doors like temple doors rise up in protest to this domestic constriction. Added in 1868, everything just a little smaller in this room, but the best plasterwork in all the house. A wall of books, old leather. A magnificent ceiling. Tiny faces up there in the plaster medallion. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Red carpet, went to the long window that opened on the small side porch and peered out as though measuring the World specifically by these particular lace curtains. Peacocks in the lace curtains. Because we can see in the earlier drawing of the sleeve a fascination with swirling line that erupts in the later drawings of the Deluge, we feel we know something important not only about Leonardo’s technique but about what drove his imagination. More than any other reason, this was why, in the sixteenth century, drawings began to be preserved by artist and, simultaneously, collected by connoisseurs, experts on and appreciators of fine art. One might regard the ascetic life as a means to liberation from this World suffering. It would be unrealistic to deny that we all suffer from time to time and that there are those for whom life is mostly suffering. It would be equally unrealistic, however, to deny that for mist of us the evils we experience are more than balanced by the genuine values we enjoy. Granted the existence of evil, the obvious expedient is to improve our World rather than to make it even worse by adding the sufferings involved in ascetic practices. If escape were desirable, there is no guarantee that the ascetic life would actually lead to freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
Spontaneous creativity of the individual soul makes a work of art and that work of art is the human body. The soul forms a continuous spectrum, a rainbow in which the blue end is consciousness and the red end instinct. The body and consciousness together as both being soul manifestations. The body that the soul creates is the whole cosmos in microcosmic form. The display of the soul in the World, brought about through the act of human making, constitutes culture. Education in tis sense concerns the drawing out of soul to conjoin with World soul, and participation in culture consists of living in the unity of soul visible in the World. If we substitute for the World soul the word force, then we get just the principle which underlies the physics of the skies. The motive force is a soul; yet the force diminishes in proportion to distance, just as light diminishes in proportion to distance. This force must be something substantial—substantial not in the literal sense but in the same manner as we say that light is something substantial, meaning by this unsubstantial entity emanating from a substantial body. The impulse for learning originates in an alluring display of the beauty of the World, which evokes desire for intimate connection with the soul of the World. “Because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.26. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
The Heavenly machines is not a kind of divine, live being, but a kind of clockwork (and one who believes that a clock has a soul, attributes that maker’s glory to the work), insofar as nearly all manifold motions are caused by a most simple, magnetic, and material force, just as all motions of the clock are caused by a simple weight. These physical causes are to be numerical and geometrical expression. The Holy Ghost no longer merely fills the space between the motionless Sun and the fixed stars. It has become an active agent, a vis mortix that derives the planets. Nobody before had suspected the existence of such a force emanating from the Sun. The moving force of the Sun is similar with the light emitted by it. Things draw us to intimate knowledge as if they need us for their completion. Much like God—he needs humans for a reason. The beauty of the World draws the soul out of an inclination toward self-enclosing mastery of the World through disengagement and into engagement with reality. This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. “Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man or woman or child can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear,” reports Moroni 8.16. Loving the hand that sent it. Vanquished, my soul will know. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
This living desire to experience the World pulsing through the body wants to initiate in us a care for all things. When aspects of life are approached with the care of the soul, their Heavenly spirit shines forth. In the ancient World each thing was seen as inhabited by a supernatural force. What we see is not the God himself, but an emanation from him which is partly mortal, partly divine, and even this we do not see with our physical eyes, but with the eyes of our spirit, and it is an intermediary between the gods and the Earthly World, according to the reflective property, like is perceived by like. Learning the gospel is discipline required to awaken the astral or soul body, the capacity to perceive the other World as image. In modern times, humans have taken the nature out of life. In the past, people believe that thunder was God’s voice. The central task of learning is not accumulation of information, but learning to learn. This process consists of coming to realize the individual body in conjunction as container and reflector of soul. God is primordial being (Orweesn), the being without contrariety; he is the unity of all that exists. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
Though the light of the Sun cannot itself be the moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of moving force, it may perhaps represent a kind of vehicle, or tool, that the moving force uses. However, the first following considerations seems to contradict this. First, the light is arrested in regions that lie in shade. If, then, the moving force were to use light as a vehicle, darkness would bring the planets to a standstill. This kind of force, just like the kind of force that is light, can be regarded not as something that expands into the space between its source and the movable body, but something that the movable body, such as a planet. The answer to this is: although the moving force has no substance, it is aimed at substance, i.e., at the planet-body to be moved. Who will pretend that light has substance? Yet, nevertheless it acts and is acted upon in space, it is refracted and reflected, and it has quality, so that it may be dense or sparse and can be regarded as a plane where it is received by something capable of being lit up. The same thing applies to light as to our moving force: it has no present existence in space between the source and the object it lights up, although it has passed through that space in the past; it is not, it was, so to speak. Evil appears as the individual organism tears itself lose from the harmony of the whole. Finally, the organism achieves a loving reunion with other beings (human, for example, becomes reunited with Nature, Reason, Humanity, and God), and with the rediscovery of harmony, all evil is negated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Gravity is the mutual bodily tendency between cognate [i.e., material] bodies toward unity or contact (of which kind of the magnetic force also is), so that the Earth draws a stone much more than the stone draws the Earth. If the Earth and the Moon were not kept in their respective orbits by a spiritual or some equivalent force, the Earth would ascend toward the Moon 1/54 of the distance, and the Moon would descend the remaining 53 parts of the interval, and thus they would unite. However, this calculation presupposes that both bodies are of the same density. If the Earth ceased to attract the waters of the sea, the sea would rise and flow into the Moon. If the attractive force of the Moon reaches down to the Earth, it follows that the attractive force of the Earth, all the more, extends to the Moon and even farther. If two stones were placed anywhere in space near to each other, and outside the reach of force of a third cognate body, then they would come together, after the manner of magnetic bodies, at an intermediate point, each approaching the other in proportion to the other’s mass. After, however, the historical path leads downward, to a final involution which is both the ending of a career and the birth of a new nice. Since the transition is gradual, and older age may survive for a time in a newer age. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Each development, nevertheless, exhibits genuine, unforeseeable novelty. “On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day,” reports 2 Timothy 1.17. There were others species of human like beings, in the past, which coexisted with humans. Such a Neanderthals. However, their nature was extremely naïve and childlike. In ancient times, many died through clumsiness and accidents. Research suggests, however, they Neanderthals were telepathic, curious by nature and hardwired with a tremendous amount of basic historical and intellectual knowledge. It is born knowing all about the species itself, the island continent from which they came, and the places in the British Isles to which they migrated after the island was destroyed by the same volcanos. Some of these volcanoes must have also created land bridges, and perhaps these beings that moved about them did so with incredible speed because they were not all fully human. Remember Angels mated with humans and created Nephilim, which in many cases turned out to be giants. Some of them were as tall as street lights, according to ancient legends. They had an extraordinary reproductive advantage and that is what made them so dangerous. However, their naivete, simplicity and lack of aggression are were their vulnerabilities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
Just stop a moment; both St. Januarius and St. Augustine have something to do with the calendar. Will you recall the blood miracle? Do you not know about it? The blood of St. Januarius is preserved in a phial in a church in Naples, and on a certain holiday, a miracle takes place causing it to liquefy. The people think a great deal of this miracle, and become very excited if the liquefying process is retarded, as happened once during the French occupation. The General in command—or Garibaldi, if I am not mistaken—then took the priest aside, and with a very significant gesture pointed out to him the soldiers arrayed without, and expressed his hope that the miracle would soon take place. And it actually took place. Just think of the saints of the calendar, the liquefying of the blood on a certain day, the excitement if the event does not take place, and the distinct threat that the miracle must take place. “I have such a need of you. I come to you ashamed of my failures. I come to you as the Prince of Blood. I do not claim to be anything better or worse. Listen to me. Help me. Help me for the sake of others. I beg you. Hear my prayer.” I was in this dark frame of mind, along with this message, which engaged my soul completely, when I hear a step on the iron stairs outside. However, what was all this to me with my broken hear, and illegitimate soul? #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord and to nothing else. To find a tribe of tall beings, tender of bone, ancient, simple, tangled with my fledgling, unknown to the World of records, history and location essential to the sanity of those I love. Guidance. Mistake I have made with my fledgling spiraling out of control. Give to me your wisdom, your keen hearing, your vision Where are all the tall creatures? I am your loyal subject. More of less. I send my love. “And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you. Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hat been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. Ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not truth; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things,” reports Moroni 10.2-5. The only way is by allowing nothing of the old life to remain and by having only simple, perfect trust that we no longer want God’s blessings, but only want God Himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
The first natural impulses of the distressed heart often point out the best alleviation. You preach a doctrine which you know you do not believe, it is the way with you all. If you know that there is no Earthly happiness, why do you long to be a bishop or dean? Why do you want lands and income? Customers, employees, suppliers—all the participants in the World of Business—come in different ages, genders, races, and ethnicities, nationalities, and abilities, a truth that business has come to label diversity. Understanding this diversity means recognizing and accepting differences as well as valuing the unique perspectives such differences can bring to the workaday. For every advantage she imparts, Civilization holds a hundred evils in reserve. When managers speak of diversity, in the workforces, these experts typically mean differences in gender and race. While gender and race are important characteristics of diversity, others are also important. We can collect these differences into primary and secondary characteristics of diversity. Age, gender, race, ethnicity, abilities, and sexual orientation represent primary characteristics of diversity, which are inborn and cannot be changed. Secondary characteristics of diversity—work background, income, material statues, military experience, religious beliefs, geographic location, parental status, sexuality (who you are attracted to) and education—which can be changed. We acquire, change, and discard them as we progress through our lives. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
No bond unites congenial hearts more firmly than that of a common great aim. The American workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Once dominated by the mainstream culture, today’s workforce includes significantly more women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Veterans and the disabled, as well as senior citizens. As of 2014, women make up 51 percent of the workforce, and that is up from 47.9 percent in 2010, so clearly American is changing. The population in American is 75.1 percent European American, 12.3 percent African American, 0.9 percent American Indian, 3.6 percent Asian persons, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander, and 12.5 persons of Hispanic or Latino origin. However, it is estimated that within the next 50 years, Hispanics will represent 24 percent of the population, while African Americans will make up 9 percent, and Asians 9 percent. In the past, these groups may have faced some mild discrimination and higher unemployment rates and possibly were denied opportunities to assume leadership roles, in corporate America. Consequently, more and more companies are trying to improve Human Resources Management (HRM) programs to recruit, develop, and retain more diverse employees to better serve their diverse customers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
Some firms are providing special programs such as sponsored affinity groups, mentoring programs, and special career development opportunities. At US West, each manager’s contributions to the company’s diversity efforts are measure by a 16-point scorecard called the Diversity Accountability Tool. Managers implement the scorecard to rate their own efforts to foster diversity and then explain their score in a meeting with the company’s Chief Executive Officer. The manager receives an official diversity scores that is one factor in determining the manager’s annual bonus. Since the program was instituted, scores have jumped 60 percent. McDonald’s, Fannie Mae, Denny’s, Union Bank of California, Sempra Energy, Southern California-Edison, SBC Communications, Freddie Mac, PepsiCo, PNM Resources, and the Golden 1 Credit Union (the leading credit union in California) Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and Wal-Mart are known for effectively managing diversity in the Workforce by cultivating and valuing its benefits and minimizing its problems. They take customer concerns very seriously and are extremely professional. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
Success supposed endeavor. There are a number of benefits to fostering and valuing workforce diversity, including the following: More productive use of a company’s human resources and revenue. More harmony and fellowship among employees of different ethnicities, cultures, religions, and sexual orientations as they learn to respect each other’s differences; other benefits include more productive working relationships among diverse employees as they learn more about and accept each other. There is also increased innovation and creativity as diverse employees bring new, unique perspectives to decision-making and problem-solving tasks. There is also an increased ability to serve the needs of an increasingly diverse customer base. Make ambition your business and indifference your relaxation and you will fail; however, make indifference your business and ambition your relaxation and you will succeed. So impish are the ways of the gods. Nothing is so dangerous, especially to those who are not much accustomed to it, as a little success. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Success in projects is everything—companies that do not value their diverse employees are likely to experience greater conflict, as well as prejudice and discrimination. CBS13, in West Sacramento, California is a perfect example, they even slander their own employees; Tony Lopez is one of the worst offenders. However, no matter how many times you ask them to stop or report to their parent corporation, they will keep doing what they want and will even threaten to have you arrested or fired if you speak up. Among individual employees, for example, racial slurs and gestures, sexist comments, and other behaviors by co-workers harm the individuals at whom such behavior is directed. The victims of such behavior may feel hurt, depressed, or even threatened and suffer from lowered self-esteem, all of which harm their productivity and morale. No evil is insupportable, but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. In such cases, women and other employees may simply leave the firm, wasting the time, money, and other resources spent on hiring and training them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
When discrimination comes from a supervisor, employees may also fear for their career and life. A discriminatory atmosphere not only can harm productivity and increase turnover, but it may also subject a firm to costly lawsuits and negative publicity. The conscience is, like the spleen, a function whose uses are only to be understood in its derangement. A good conscience is the best of all narcotics. Astute businesses recognize that they need to modify their human resources management programs to target the needs of all their diverse employees, as well as the needs of the firm itself. These prestigious corporations realize the benefits of diversity are long term in nature and come only to those organizations willing to make the commitment. Most importantly, as workforce diversity becomes a valued organizational asset, corporations spend less time managing conflict and more time accomplish tasks and satisfying customers, which is, after all, the purpose of business. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
We live in a physical World whose properties are familiar, and, it is around us all the time. We cherish our own space. If you would have your son or daughter to walk honorably through the World, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his or her path, but tech your children to walk firmly over them—not insist upon leading a child by the hand, but let your child learn to go alone. Artists as reporters represent their World, and they even expect their work to have an impact on the World, to reveal hidden or universal truths. The work is about knowing and appreciating the beautiful, and that is how we can make the World a better place. Each photograph represents a particular intellectual, emotional, or expressive quality of the subject, they represent powerful emotions and feelings and passions. In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated that objects appear to be a certain color because they absorb and reflect different parts of the visible spectrum. Obviously, not all artists are able to utilize light as fully as architects. Architects, particularly, must concern themselves with light. However, especially if artist and photographers are interested in representing the World, they must learn to imitate the effects of light in their work. There is something called the atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective, and these rules state that the quality of the atmosphere (the haze and relative humidity) between us and large objects, such as mountains, changes their appearance. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
Objects further away from us appear less distinct, often cooler, or bluer in color, and the contrast between light and dark is reduced. Some of these photographs throw a veil of matchless color, that lucid interval of Morning dawn and dewy light on which the Eye dwells…and it is a sacrilege to pierce the mystic shell of color in search of form. With linear perspective one might adequately describe physical reality—a building, for instance—but through light one could reveal a greater spiritual reality. In this photograph, the light is much more expressive. It is, in large part, the dramatic play of light and dark in the photograph that contributes to this expressivity. The perspective system employed is used to focus our attention on the building, it is light that draws our attention to the grandeur and beauty. The Heavenly light surrounding the Capitol contrasts dramatically with the darkness of the rest of the composition. The building is symbolically offering you its body as nourishment. This purely spiritual act contracts with the gluttonous Worldly activity going on in the foreground, where a dog knaws at a bone, and a cat searches for leftovers. Light here symbolizes the spiritual World, and darkness our Earthly home. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
Light and dark have traditionally had strong symbolic meaning in Western culture. We have only to think of the Bible, and the first lines of the Book of Genesis, which very openly associates the dark with the bad and the light with good. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that is was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. In the history of art, this association of light or white with good and darkness or black with evil was first fully developed in the late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century color theory of the German poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For Goethe, colors were not just phenomena to be explained by scientific laws. They also had moral and religious significance, existing halfway between the goodness of pure light and the damnation of pure blackness. In Heaven, there is only pure light, but the fact that we can experience color—which, according to the laws of optics, depends upon light mixing with darkness—promises us at least the hope of salvation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
In the first, the figures are all passive, sleeping, or dead. In the second, the figures are bathed in an almost pure white light and barely recognizable at the top center of the painting. Figures swirl around him as if life itself is being born out of a vortex. Although this opposition between dark and light is taken for granted in our culture, many people of color, with reason, find such thinking offensive. They are especially offended by the use of the term value to describe gradations of light and dark, so that black is low, and white is high in value. Artists and art historians alike use the term as a part of a specialized descriptive vocabulary that, in itself, would seem to be art the furthest remove from issues of race and the relative worth of human beings. Nevertheless, it is clear that since Biblical times, Western culture has tended to associate blackness with negative qualities and whiteness with positive ones, and it is understandable why people might take offense at this usage. For this reason, we use the word key instead of value, substituting the musical metaphor for the moral and economic one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
If for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, blackness is not merely the absence of color, but the absence of good, for African Americans, blackness is just the opposite. Mighty drums echoing the voices of Spirits…these sounds are rhythmic, the rhythm of vitality, the rhythm of exuberance and the rhythms of Life. These are the sounds of blackness. Blackness—the presence of all color. When restoring some artwork, technicians found that the dull, somber hues always associated with Michelangelo were not the result of his palette, that is, the range of colors he preferred to use, but of centuries of accumulated dust, smoke, grease, and varnishes made of animal glue painted over the ceiling by earlier restorers. The colors are in fact much more saturated and intense than anyone had previously supposed. Some experts, in fact, find them so intense that they seem, beside the golden tones of the unrestored surface, almost garish. As a result, there has been some debate about the merits of the cleaning. However, it is not a controversy. It is a culture shock. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Therefore, agree with your adversary quickly. Do it quickly—bring yourself to judgment now. In moral and spiritual matters, you must act immediately. God is determined to have His child as pure, clean, and white as driven snow, and as long as there is disobedience, God will allow His Spirit to use whatever process it may take to bring us to obedience. The fact that we insist on proving that we are right is almost always a clear indication that we have some point of disobedience. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the last penny. God urged you to come to judgment immediately when He condemned you, but you did not obey. Then the inevitable process began to work, bringing its inevitable penalty. The moment you are willing for God to change your nature, His re-creating forces will begin to work. He will reach to the very limits of the Universe to help you take the right road. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but God tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with God. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. God wants you to be a living sacrifice. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison: the fear of death’s looks are more terrible than his stroke. Whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating. Religion is not about forcing our wills on others, it is about spreading kindness. Just because we have the right to do something, does not mean it is the right thing. Freedom is speech is not about putting someone’s life in danger, it is about having the freedom to peacefully express yourself. If you know a person well, you may be able to detect deception from expressive changes. However, do not count on it. Most people learn to maintain careful control over their facial expressions. A good example is smiling, so you will not hurt someone’s feelings when you receive a disappointing gift. Because of such control, deception is often best revealed by body language. Even a good con artist may be too busy attending to his or her words and face to control certain bodily clues. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
The reporter swears he is doing the community justice by sharing messages about cartoons. If you cannot touch his tongue to a hot knife, how else can you tell if he is lying? Most people assume that shifty eyes and squirming are clear signs of lying. However, neither of these clues increases when a person is fibbing. Also contrary to what you might expect, nervous movements such as hand rubbing, grooming, scratching, hair twisting, lip biting, chin stroking, and so on, are not consistently related to lying. On the other hand, illustrators (the gestures people use to illustrate what they are saying) may reveal lying. These gestures tend to decrease when a person is telling a lie. In other words, persons who usually talk with their hands may be much less animated when they are lying.Among the best clues to lying are the signs of strong emotion produced by the ANS. These include blinking, blushing, blanching, pupil dilation, rapid or irregular breathing, perspiration, frequent swallowing, speech errors, and a louder, higher pitched voice. All of these clues are hard for the liar to censor. However, such clues are like the polygraph: They reveal emotions; they do not always mean a person is lying. Remember, good liars can fool most people most of the time—and that is no lie. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
Most people agree that health is important—especially their own. Yet, almost one half of all deaths, in North America, are primarily due to unhealthy behavior. Health psychology aims to do something about deaths. Health psychologist use behavioral principles to promote health and prevent illness. Psychologists working in the allied field of behavioral medicine apply psychology to manage medical problems, such as diabetes or asthma. Their interest include pain control, helping people cope with chronic illness, stress-related diseases, self-screening for diseases (such as breast cancer), and similar topics. Behavioral risk factors—around the turn of the twentieth century, people primarily died from infectious diseases and accidents. Today, people generally die from lifestyle diseases, which are related to health-damaging person habits. Examples include heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Clearly, some lifestyles promote health, whereas others lead to illness and death. As the cartoon character Pogo out it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
What kinds of behavior are you referring to as unhealthy? Behavioral risk factors are behaviors that increase the chances of disease, injury, or early death. Each of the following is a major behavioral risk factor: high levels of stress, untreated high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and abuse of alcohol or other drugs, overeating, inadequate exercise, unsafe sexual behavior, exposure to toxic substances, violence, driving at excessive speeds, and disregarding personal safety. Protect your virginity. When many risk factors are present, a person is more likely to have medical problems. Many high school students in the United States of America engage in risky behaviors. As you can see, health-damaging behaviors are usually well established before adulthood. In addition to specific risk factors, a disease-prone personality type also exists. Such people tend to be chronically depressed, anxious, hostile, and…frequently ill. In contrast, people who are intellectually resourceful, compassionate, optimistic, and non-hostile tend to enjoy good health. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
Lifestyles—in your mind’s eye, fast-forward an imaginary film of your life all the way to old age. Do it twice—once with a lifestyle including a large number of behavioral risk factors, and again without them. It should be obvious that countless small risks can add up to dramatically raise the chance of illness. If stress is a frequent part of your life, visualize your body seething with emotion, day after day. If you smoke, picture a lifetime’s worth of cigarette smoke blown through your lungs in a week. If you drink, take a lifetime of alcohol’s assaults on the brain, stomach, and liver and squeeze them into a month: Your body would be poisoned, ravaged, and soon dead. If you eat a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet, fast-forward a lifetime of heart-killing plaque clogging your arteries. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
Although it may sound like it, discussion is not meant to be a sermon. It is merely a reminder that risk factors do make a difference. To make matters worse, unhealthy lifestyles almost always create multiple risks. That is, people who smoke are also likely to drink excessively. Those who overeat usually do not get enough exercise. And so on. Health-promoting behaviors—to prevent disease and promote well-being, health psychologists first try to remove behavioral risk factors. All the medicine in the World may not be enough to restore health without changes in behavior. We all know someone who has had a heart attack or lung disease who cannot or will not change the habits that led to their illness. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Beyond this, psychologists are also interested in getting people to increase behaviors that promote health. Health-promoting behaviors include such obvious practices as getting regular exercise, controlling smoking and alcohol use, maintaining a balanced diet, getting good medical care, and managing stress. Even something as simple as using seat belts in a car greatly ups life expectancy. Basic health practices should extend a person’s life. However, do they? A major study done in California provides an answer. People who get 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, have a balanced diet, do not some, use alcohol moderately or not at all and get physical exercise had death rates 4 times lower than people who do not live a healthy lifestyle. Happy are they who are blessed with the power of making happy. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
Have no motivation other than to know your Father in Heaven. As we increase our faith in God’s power to give rest unto our souls by forgiving our sins, redeeming imperfect relationships, healing the spiritual wounds that stifle growth, and strengthening and enabling us to develop the attributes of Go, we will more deeply appreciate the justice. Justice consists in treating equals equally and unequals unequally but in proportion to their relevant differences. This involves, first, the idea of impartiality; the honest judge considers only the features of the case that are relevant in law. Justice is no respecter of persons; wealth or status will influence judgment only if it makes a difference in law. Impartiality implies a kind of equality—not that all cases should be treated alike but the onus rests on whoever would treat them differently to distinguish them in relevant ways. It is not for a judge to decide the respect in which people are equal but to decide whether the respects in which they are unequal are relevant to the issues in the case. That is what is really meant by the right to equal consideration—to be treated alike unless relevant differences have been proved. During the coming weeks, find the time to review your life’s goals and your planes, and make sure they align with our Heavenly Father’s great plan for our happiness. If one needs to repent or change, then consider doing so now. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Justice is one of the most basic and potentially important social psychological areas of inquiry. Take the time to prayerfully think about what adjustments are needed in order to one keep focused on God’s glory. People care not only about the content of decisions; they also care about how the decisions are made. Much of psychological science and knowledge is significantly relevant to social justice. The goal is to decrease human suffering and to promote human vales of equality and fairness. A commitment to social justice has evolved as a more important value in the last few decades for psychology. An important goal is that we continue to find ways to agree or disagree in respectful manner regardless of where each of us stands on an issue. A number of studies showed that people will remain attached to their groups and satisfied with the authority figures as long as they think the authorities have followed fair procedures, even when they authorities have rendered a decision that adversely affects them. Research indicates that documented procedures communicate important information about social worth and value to involved parties. People need to feel they are valued and respected members of the group, and they need to take pride in their group membership. A just person is an individual in the right place, doing one’s best and giving the equivalent of what one has received. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
Justice considered as reciprocity is often held to require returning evil for evil as much as good for good (lex talionis). In this case punishment would be paying back what is due. However, if law can be too rigid to do justice, does this not imply some extralegal canons of justice, by which perhaps the rules of law themselves might be assessed? There are many people who seem to rely solely on the Lord’s mercy rather than on accomplishing their own repentance. The Lord may temper justice with mercy, but he will never supplant it. Mercy can never replace justice. God is merciful, but he is also just. “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a person does to others, one shall also reap the consequences,” reports Galatians 6.7. That is an eternal aspect of justice that has been declared by divine law. Justice is an unchanging law that brings consequences for actions. Because of the law of justice, one receives blessings when one obeys God’s commandments. The law of justice also demands that a penalty be paid for every sin a person commits. It requires that no unclean thing be permitted to dwell with God. Justice is preeminently a matter of significance for everyone, no matter what stage in the life-cycle, social circumstances or nationality. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
Justice assures personal and communal security, and is manifest in the way countries deal with crime, civil conflict and social strife within their borders or by agreement beyond. Justice is the maintenance of legal, social, or moral principles by the exercise o authority or power. The concept has a foundation at the core of moral philosophy and jurisprudence, and underpins the law that every community develops to fulfills their obligations and objectives. However, constitution such as courts and legal systems which start off sometimes with high and romantic origins, intents and aspirations, can, with passing of time, if we are not constantly alert and on guard, become disfigured, unreconisable and untrue to which benignant intentions which brought them into being. The of justice is to personalize the behaviour by making offenders more responsive to the human effects of their crimes. It also gives victim a role in the judicial procedure beyond laying the initial complaint and obliged judges to apply a remedial function on the court in helping to change the lives of offenders for the better. Justice and mercy are attributes of God They are also eternal principles. The Justice of God is a principle so fundamental that without it, God would cease to be God. On one hand, justice rewards righteousness. On the other hand, justice requires penalties as consequences of disobedience to the laws of God. “I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.31. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
The actions of a living being are regarded as having a special class of casual effects which determine one’s future spiritual condition, both in this life and in succeeding ones. These effects are known as the products of action. Good deeds lead to progress toward liberation.Each person will thus be judged according to his or her works. Although the degree of accountability varies according to the extent of each person’s knowledge and culpability. However, in the material World, ignorance of the law is not an excuse for not knowing the laws. We cannot reasonable expect people to respect our interests unless we are prepared to respect theirs. It would be generally agreed that doing justice means treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequalities. The Christian lives before God by faith alone. One’s awareness of God is always an awareness of one’s own infinite distance from God. Closure forms when one is in some way incomplete and through spiritual development becomes complete—it is like a circle with a small arch missing and then becomes a full circle. Humans are the supreme unification of Reason and Nature, for the possess the highest sort of mind joined to the highest sort of body. The individual souls that make up humanity are eternal, uncreated, immortal. Their number can neither be increased nor diminished. Humanity is thus complete at every moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
When people should strive for is the imitation of the divine life in their own inner lives and in their social organizations. God is good, and people should participate in this goodness. The inner union with God (Gottesinnigkeit), or fervor for the divine, is the foundation of ethics, and ethics is the heart of religion. However, individuals cannot achieve the moral life alone, since they are what they are only as parts of the whole. The community and its various institutions are thus indispensable. Ideally, the community is governed by Right, which is the organic whole of all of the internal and external conditions necessary for the completion of life that are dependent on freedom. This supernational law is grounded in the nature of the divine; it expresses the right of Humanity, not simply the right of the individual human beings. The rights of the individuals, groups, and nations can be recognized, but only as subordinate to the right of Humanity as a while. Humanity is divided into a series of social organisms. Human beings are inhabitants in many cosmic systems. These human beings are subdivided into nations, races, communities, families, and so forth. There is an aesthetic community, a scientific community, a religious community, and a moral community. Each community has rights, although the right of Humanity takes precedence. Though God contains the World, he is nevertheless other than and superior to it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
Since every person is part of nature and, hence, part of the divine, we share the basic impulses of all natural things, and have the urge to develop upward and outward, which is the striving for an ideal action. We spend our time praying for the best outcomes in life. To improve our vision, and increase our happiness, we have to make a plan so we have somewhere to place our hope. A plan will also help us to bring our Heavenly Father’s blessings into our lives. One early use of the word “golden” in English is “most excellent, important, or precious.” With reference to the rules or precepts it was used to mean of inestimable value, and the expression the golden rules was often specifically used wit reference to the precept in Matthew: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that people should do, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets,” (7.12). Thus, the principle that has come to be known as the golden rules has been so called presumably because it has been regarded as being of inestimable values or importance. This regard was not derived solely from the fact that it was set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. The golden rule has been widely accepted, in word if not in deed, by vast numbers of greatly differing peoples; it is a basic device of moral education and it can be found at the core of innumerable moral, religious, and social codes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
What the golden rule requires a person to do, then, is to take account of the wishes of others and accord them the respect and consideration one would want them to accord to them. In other words, what the golden rule requires of each of us is that we should treat others in accordance with same principles or standards that we would have others apply in their treatment of us. Thus, the golden rules, if this argument is sound, is compatible with differences in interests, needs, tastes, wishes, and desires, and does not presuppose that human nature is uniform in the sense specified. The golden rule has been said to provide just that element, the requirement of justice or fairness, that the World needs. It has also been claimed that the golden rule is a perfect guide to conduct and that the only thing needed to make the World perfect is for everyone to follow it. The nearly universal acceptance of the golden rule and its promulgation by persons of considerable intelligence, through otherwise of divergent outlooks, would therefore seem to provide some evidence for the claim that it is a fundamental ethical truth. By allowing ourselves to be drawn to God, we fulfill our nature and experience the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable. When we are uncertain of the future or our current situation, fear overrules our optimism and we find ourselves unhappy and a little sad. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
The personal unconscious consists of those associated webs of ideas and emotions named complexes, which have been repressed from consciousness because it finds them too painful to acknowledge, and also of those perceptions of reality which have never forced their way into consciousness. Each individual’s personal unconscious is thus to some extent explicable in terms of one’s own life history. Even the personal unconscious, however, has features which are common to every individual and do not derive from one’s personal history. The shadow of every human being is usually part of the personality they one usually rejects and imprisons because of its set of desires, emotions, and attitudes that we personify as unpleasant or hostile. The shadow is essentially infantile, for it is untouched by the process of maturation or education. The inability to acknowledge one’s shadow is always a potential danger to the personality, for the shadow unacknowledged and unrecognized is stronger and more wayward than the shadow recognized and accepted. Although every individual has a shadow, since the shadow is the product of what one’s particular consciousness has repressed, it belongs to the personal unconsciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Biological determinism, in part holds that there is an association between physical characteristics and such attributes as intelligence, morals, values, abilities, and even social and economic condition. In other words, some believe that cultural variation are inherited in the same manner as biological variations. It follows, the, that there are inherent behavioural and cognitive differences between groups. It is an old wives tale to be careful who you have kinds with because behaviour can be inherited. Early humans did not understand the mechanisms of inheritance, of DNA, or the translation of genetic information into morphology, physiology, or behaviour. However, they intuitively understood that inheritance shapes behaviour. Today, we easily recognize that both genes and the environment influence human behaviour. Genes, through their influences on morphology and physiology, creates a framework within which the environment acts to shape the behaviour of an individual. The environment can affect morphological and physiological development; in turn behaviour develops as a result of the person’s shaped internal workings. Genes also create the scaffold for learning, memory, and cognition, remarkable mechanisms that allow people to acquire and store information about their environment for use in shaping their behaviour. Instinctive, or hard-wired (genetically determined) behaviour is performed without thought and cannot be modified by learning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Examples of instinctive behaviour include simple behavioural patterns, displayed in response to a specific stimulus or within a specific context. To further highlight this illustration, Olivia Benson adopted a baby called Noah Porter-Benson, on a show called Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Although Noah was a good baby and as cute as can be, many people knew that he would be trouble as he grew up because his father Johnny Drake was spent 20 years as ruthless and unethical business man involved in the sale, distribution, and punishment of large numbers of human capital. And last night, on the show, Noah started acting unusual because he was not ready to go to bed. He laid down as he was told, after protesting his bed time, and when his adopted mother put the covers on him, he ripped them back off and had a cold look in his eye. She then covered him back up and told him a few times that she loved him, and he just laid there with a blank look in his eye. Oliva was shocked. When this happens the personality itself is in danger; it has been taken over and magnified into something that expresses not the individual person but the collective image. Although he has been loved and adored, Noah has some genetic behavioural traits that he inherited from his father. It is not like there is no hope for Noah, children can change if they want to and are taught at a young age to suppress their shadow. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to intelligence, although it is not possible to measure accurately the percentage of each contributes. Intelligence is the mental capacity; ability to learn, reason, or comprehend and interpret information, facts, relationships, and meanings; the capacity to solve problems, whether through the application of previously acquired knowledge or through insight. In order to demonstrate Godly behaviour, it is why it is recommended for people to go to church for a lifetime, so they learn the right ways to live, learn the love and fear of God, and follow the golden rule, even when they feel their shadow wanting to surface. Controlling inherited tendencies of psychic functioning contained in the collective unconscious is why people send their children to private schools, as it is a religious based curriculum and they teach the laws of God, righteous behaviour, and monitor the behaviour of the child more than they do in public schools. Therefore, there is additionally usually a higher moral code and dress code. “I know that he (God) loves his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things,” reports 1 Nephi 11.17. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
We know that the roots of happiness rest in the biology of the whole species and that the potential of the species can only be realized in a culture, in a social system. It is knowledge and the social system which give life or take it away, and in so doing change the gene frequencies and continue the million-year-old interaction of culture and biology. Human biology finds its realization in a culturally determined way of life, and the infinite variety of genetic combinations can only express themselves efficiently in a free and open society. So how do we push away fear to make room for hope? First, begin by acknowledging that God lives and sees all—that he is in charge and that he knows you. No matter what you are going through, Heavenly Father understands. Next, set goals. A clear plan will increase one’s hope in the future. A good idea is to start telling your Father in Heaven what your goal and intentions are. Motivation is the essential and irreplaceable element of success. When we are not motivated, we fail. Have we not all felt that mid-task slump? When we experience even small amounts of success, our brains release dopamine, which is connected to feelings of pleasure, learning and motivation. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people. “Spirit and body shall be reunited in perfect form,” reports Alma 11.34. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
When we feel the effect of dopamine, we are eager to repeat the actions that resulted in success in the first place. Neuroscientists refer to this as self-directed learning. This is why achieving small goals is such an effective way to stay motivated during long-term projects and processes. It is important to recognize our need, but stop longing and make it a matter of action. Have unquestioning faith, and the great miracle will become real. Keep in mind, although we have goals on Earth, to return to God’s presence and to receive the eternal blessings that come from making and keeping covenants are the most important goals we can set. A key to happiness rests in understanding what destinations truly matter—and then spending our time, effort, and attention on the things that constitue a sure way to arrive there. God, our Heavenly Father, has given us the perfect example of goal setting and planning. His goal is to being to past the immortality and eternal life of all men and women. His means to achieve it is the plan of salvation. Our beloved Heavenly Father’s plan includes giving us a growing, stretching, learning, physical mortality through which we can become more like him. Clothing our eternal spirits in physical bodies, our faith is being tested so we can prove God’s character trustworthy in our minds. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Wise goal setting includes the understanding that short-term foals are only effective if they lead to clearly understood long-term goals. It is good to hobbies and goals and plans for our careers, for our education, even for our golf game. The simpler and more straightforward the goal is, the more power it will have. When we can reduce the goal to one clear image or two powerful and symbolic words, that goal can then become part of us and guide virtually everything we think and do. Project must be mindful of the practical hurdles and limitations associated with analyzing their stakeholders’ psychological attributes. Both the internal and especially the external stakeholder community can be very large and complex in terms of, inter alia (for organization) their respective missions, interests, goals, priorities and culture and (for individuals, groups, communities) their social and cultural diversity, economic background, objectives, awareness, education and intelligence, family upbringing, norms, values and personal or shared experiences and so forth. The stakeholder psychological attribute analysis is only useful as the quality of information it is based on, meaning, in order for it to be useful the information must at least be accurate precise, complete, relevant, specific, up-to-date, reliable and actionable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Finding information which satisfies this set of criteria on all stakeholders, especially external ones, can be very difficult, time-consuming, costly and sometimes simply impossible to do. Powerful or influential stakeholders must hereby be prioritized as these can significantly affect the project in either the positive or negative sense. Sentiments towards project may change immensely and rapidly in response to project developments and such changes much be reflected in a prompt corresponding change in the project’s stakeholder management/engagement strategies. This implies that a situational or periodic repeat of the information collect task and stakeholder attributes analysis would be necessary, adding to the process complexity and cost. Hence, attempting to devise and implement effective and customized stakeholder management/ engagement strategies on the basis of the stakeholder attributes analysis can be highly challenging, tedious and expensive and offer no guarantee of success. Without qualified support, for instance in the form of a team of highly skilled, competent, creative and experienced analysts or hired consultants, such activities would exceed burden project managers and teams already heavily burdened with the arduous technical and administrative takes they typically encounter in the day to day operations of their project. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
All stakeholders have needs and wants. Satisfying these needs and wants is a key objective for them, regardless of whether stakeholders are individuals, groups, or associations of individuals, communities, or organizations. Projects offer stakeholders a potential opportunity to satisfy their general and specific needs and wants and the stakeholders are naturally interested in ascertaining if, how and to what extent this is possible. Faith being worked out into reality must experience times of unbroken isolation. Projects thus constitute a source of motivation for stakeholders; this is good for the project because the greater this motivational intensity is the more likely it is that stakeholders will view the project in positive light and, of course, vice versa. The practical implication in project perspective is that project owners, planners and executors must carefully research stakeholders motivations and seek to align their projects with their stakeholder needs and wants to the maximum extent possible within the given project resources, time and other constraints. Doing so serves the twin objective of reducing actual or potential stakeholders offense. It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual—one cannot act for another person. The moments we are truly alive are the moments wen we act with our entire will. #RandolpHarris 11 of 11
Randolph Harris II International Institute 