Repetitive nonsensical behaviour is an indication of a mental disorder. There is little disagreement among responsible political leaders that the United States of America and the whole Western World are passing through a dangerous period. Even though opinions vary on the degree of these dangers, there is a widely shared conviction that we have a clear and realistic picture of the situation, that we are meeting it as adequately as we can, and that there is no essentially different course of action we can take Communism is a revolutionary-imperialist movement out to conquer the World by force or subversion. Its industrial and military development has made the Communist camp into a powerful rival to American Capitalism, capable of destroying our human and industrial potential to a considerable degree. This bloc can be restrained from executing its wish for World conquest solely by the knowledge that any such attempt would be met with a counterblow that would destroy or cripple its human and economic potential. In this deterrent capacity lies the only hope for peace since the ultimate negative will abstain from her attempt at World conquest only because of fear of our deterrent. As long as we have a sufficiently strong deterrent power and military allies around the World, peace is secured. Within this general concept, opinions vary widely. There are those who consider that while nuclear warfare may kill 100 to 150 million Americans, it will not destroy or seriously transform our form of life. There are those who consider the probability of losses of 200 to 250 million casualties as being more realistic. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

There are those who are in favour of disarmament negotiations from a position of strength, while others look at any kind of disbarment negotiations as a futile exercise in propaganda. There are those who are for limited steps toward arms control, like the cessation of nuclear tests, while there are others who consider any such step a threat to our security. There are those who favour a nuclear strategy of counterforce aimed at the enemy’s missile bases, and those who consider any such step a threat to our security. There are those who favour a nuclear strategy of counterforce aimed at the enemy’s missile bases, and those who favour a “second strike” stable deterrent, aimed at the population centers, and still others who try to combine both strategies. (Although this combination may deprive both approaches of their alleged advantages.) Views also differ in various sectors of our policy-making groups. Under the Eisenhower administration, the State Department and the President took a somewhat more conciliatory line with regard to the cessation of testing and arms control, while the military and the Atomic Energy Commission have then and now taken a less conciliatory stand. The various armed services differ among themselves in strategic concepts. Each espouses a concept that provides the most room for its own expansion and at the same time makes some compromises with it two competing service. In spite of these differences, however, most responsible political leaders and the majority of the population seem convinced of the correctness of the basic premises of our policy and appear willing to continue in the direction we have taken. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

In spite of these differences, however, most responsible political leaders and the majority of the population seem convinced of the correctness of the basic premises of our policy and appear willing to continue in the direction we have taken. Indeed they are certain that there is no other possible course—in fact, that every other course is ore conducive to war than the one we are taking. This position is buttressed by the conviction that our policy is not only the sole hope for physical survival, but that it is also the only one recommended by moral and spiritual considerations. They believe that we and our allies represent freedom and idealism, while the ultimate negative and their allies represent servitude and materialism. The assumption is made that the risk is even war and destruction must be taken because it is better to die than to be slaves. When executing a policy based on these premises, anyone who knows the dangers involved for us and for the whole World will have a heavy heart, but few doubts. He will be convinced that we are doing the best we can, and that there is no other course of action which can protect us better from war or enslavement. If, however, the premises on which our policy is based are erroneous, then, indeed, we would be taking a course of action that no human being with some sense of responsibility and duty could dare to recommend. Hence, we have the intellectual and moral obligation to question the correctness of these premises again and again. Many of our assumptions are fictitious or distorted, and hence we are running with confused minds into the gravest danger for ourselves and the rest of mankind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

However, we do not want an all-destructive war, and we do want the ideas of human dignity and individualism to be kept alive on this Earth. Peace is still possible and the humanist tradition has, still, a future. Societies have lives of their own; they are based on the existence of certain productive forces, geographical and climatic conditions, techniques of production, ideas and values, and a certain type of human character that develops under these conditions. They are organized in such a way that they tend to continue existing in the particular form to which they have adapted themselves. Usually, men in each society believe that the mode in which they exist is natural and inevitable. They hardly see any other possibilities and, in fact, they tend to believe that a basic change in their own mode of existence would lead to chaos and destruction. They are seriously convinced that their way is right, sanctioned by the gods or by the laws of human nature, and that the only alternative to the continuation of the particular form in which they exist is destruction. This belief is not simply the result of indoctrination; it is rooted in the affective part of man, in his character structure, which I molded by all social and cultural arrangements so that man wants to do what he has to do, so that his energy is channeled in such a way as to serve the particular function he has to fulfill as a useful member of a given society. It is for this very reason, namely that the patterns of thought are rooted in patterns of feelings, that patterns of thought are so very persistent and resistant to change. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

Yet societies do change. Many factors, like new productive forces, scientific discoveries, political conquests, expansion of population, and so on, make for change. In addition to these objective factors, man’s growing awareness of his needs and of himself and, most of all, of his increasing need for freedom and independence, make for constant change in his historical situation, ranging from the cave dweller’s existence to the space-traveling man of the near future. How do these changes occur? Most of them have occurred in violent and catastrophic ways. Most societies, leaders and led, have been incapable of adapting themselves voluntarily and peacefully to fundamentally new conditions by anticipating the necessary changes. They have tended to go on and on with what they sometimes poetically called “accomplishing their mission,” trying to continue the basic pattern of their social lives with only small changes and modifications. Even when circumstances that were in complete and flagrant contradiction to their whole structure arose such societies went on blindly trying to continue their modes of living until they could not manage any further. They were then conquered and destroyed by other nations, or they slowly died because of their incapacity to master life any longer in their customary way. The most opposed to fundamental change have been the elites, which profited most from the existing order and hence were unwilling to give up their privileges voluntarily. However, the material interests of the ruling and privileged groups are not the only reason for the incapacity of many cultures to anticipate necessary changes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Another equally important reason lies in a psychological factor. Leaders and led, having hypostatized and deified their way of life, their thought concepts, and their formulation of values, becomes rigidly committed to them. Even only slightly different concepts become intensely disturbing and are looked upon as hostile, devilish, crazy attacks on one’s own “normal,” “sound” thinking. For the Cromewellians, the Papists were of the Devil; for the Jacobeans, the Girondists; for the Americans, the Communists. Man, in each society, seems to absolutize the way of life and the way of thought produced by his culture and to be willing to die rather than to change, since change, to him, is equated with death. Thus the history of man is graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reactions to challenge. Yet nonviolent anticipatory change has also occurred in history. The liberation of the working class from the status of objects of ruthless exploitation to that of influential economic partners in Western industrialized society is an example of nonviolent change in the class relations within societies. The willingness of the British Labour Government to grant independence to India before it was forced to do so is an example in the area of international relations. However, these anticipatory solutions have been the exceptions rather than the rule in history, so far. Religious peace came to Europe only after the Thirty Years’ War, to England only after violent and cruel mutual persecution by Papists and anti-Papists alike; in the First and Second World Wars, peace came only after the futile slaughter of millions of men and women and animals and vegetation and buildings and automobiles on both sides and long after the eventual outcome of the war was already clear. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

If the enforced decisions had been voluntarily accepted by both sides before they were enforced, would not mankind have gained? Would not an anticipatory compromise have averted hideous losses and wholesale brutalization? Even if this is true has not the increasing mastery over nature resulted in an increased strength of the individual self? This is true to some extent, and inasmuch as it is true it concerns the positive side of individual development which we do not want to lose track of. However, although man has reached a remarkable degree of mastery of nature, society is not in control of the very forces it has created. The rationality of the system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production, in its technical aspects, is accompanied by the irrationality of our system of production in its social aspects. Economic crises, unemployment, war, govern man’s fate. Man has built his World; he had built factories and houses, he produces cars and clothes, he grows grain and fruit. However, he has become estranged from the product of his own hands, he is not really the master any more of the World he has built; on the contrary, this man-made World has become his master, before whom he downs down, who he tries to placate or to manipulate as best he can. The work of his own hands had become his God. Man seems to be driven by self-interest, but in reality his total self with all its concrete potentialities has become an instrument for the purposes of the very machine his hands have built. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Man keeps up the illusion of being the center of the World, and yet he is pervaded by an intense sense of insignificance and powerlessness which his ancestors once consciously felt toward God. Modern man’s feeling of isolation and powerlessness is increased still further by the character which all his human relationships have assumed. The concrete relationship of one individual to another had lost its direct and human character and has assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality. In all social and persona relations the laws of the market are the rule. It is obvious that the relationship between competitors has to be based on mutual human indifference. Otherwise any one of them would be paralyzed in the fulfillment of his economic tasks—to fight each other and not to refrain from the actual economic destruction of other is necessary. Th relationship between employer and employee is permeated by the same spirit of indifference. The word “employer” contains the whole story: the owner of capital employs another human being as he “employs” a machine. They both use each other for the pursuit of their economic interests; their relationship is one in which both are means to an end, both are instrumental to each other. It is not a relationship of to human beings who have any interest in the other outside of this mutual usefulness. The same instrumentality is the rule in the relationship between the businessman and his customer. The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

The attitude toward work has the quality of instrumentality; in contrast to a medieval artisan the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment, and what he produces depends essentially on the market which promises that the investment of capital in a certain branch will prove to be profitable. Not only the economic, but also the personal relations between men have this character of alienation; instead of relations between human beings, they assume the character of relations between things. However, perhaps the most important and the most devastating instance of this spirit of instrumentality and alienation is the individual’s relationship to his own self. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity. The manual labourer sells his physical energy; the businessman, the physician, the clerical employee, sell their “personality.” If they are to sell their products or services, they have to have a “personality.” This personality should be pleasing, but besides that its possessor should have energy, initiative, this, that, or the other, as his particular position may require. As with any other commodity it is the market which decides the value of these human qualities, yes, even their very existence. If there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he has none; just as an unsalable commodity is valueless though it might have its use value. Thus, the self-confidence, the “feeling of self,” is merely an indication of what others think of the persons. It is not he who is convinced of his value regardless of popularity and his success on the market. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody. This dependence of self-esteem on the success of the “personality” is the reason why for modern man popularity has this tremendous importance. On it depends not only whether or not one goes ahead in practical matters, but also whether one can keep up one’s self-esteem or whether one falls into the abyss of inferiority feeling this analysis of self-esteem and popularity is another method of survival of the fittest. As you can see, survival of the fittest may have a lot to do with following the Golden Rule. Once an expertly formulated and timely proposal for action has been presented to the public, it might be supposed that the next phase of the planning process—the policy phase—would consist merely of a decision by the appropriate policy-making body empowered to represent the public. Much more is required, however, so much more that the act of decision comes only as the climax of a complex process of prior discussion, and may indeed never come at all, as can happen to the best-laid plans. Since discussion so little resembles certain popular notions of what planning is, and because of some of the semantic prejudices about its meaning, it is important to describe in some detail what takes place in the phase of democratic planning. First of all, it has to be recognized that we are dealing with binding agreements and negotiation. Academic discussion of academic questions commits no one to action. #RandolphHarri 10 of 15

Any sort of unilateral communication—preaching, persuading, selling, amusing—obviously does not constitute discussion, not even when two people or parties engage in it alternately. The phenomenon of two people talking past each other is widely known. The mere assertion of interest (“I want…”) by one party to another does not constitute discussion, even though it involves a question of action, since it does not tend to produce an agreement, or at least a decision, accepted as binding upon both parties. What distinguishes discussion from propaganda, begging, or commanding is that it involves a mora commitment to act in a specified way. If a decision to act or co-operate is to be arrived at through genuine discussion, certain requirement must regularly be met. Otherwise any apparent decision might be called an agreement but is likely to prove unworkable as a basis for action. Planning can only proceed on the basis of binding commitments for specified periods; and under modern conditions, where apparent consent through customer is unreliable and the constant use of force repugnant, voluntary agreement is the only basis on which binding commitments can be obtained. It is necessary, therefore, to specify the requirements of genuine discussion. A need following the conditions of human existence, is that for rootedness. Man’s birth as man means the beginning of his emergence from his natural home, the beginning of the severance of his natural ties. Yet, if man loses his natural roots, where is he and who he is, this very severance is frightening? #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Man would stand alone, without a home, without roots; he could not bear the isolation and helplessness of this position. He would become insane. He can dispense with the natural roots only insofar as he finds new human root and only after he has found them can he feel at home again in this World. It is surprising, then, to find a deep craving in man not to sever the natural ties, to fight against being torn away from nature, from mother, blood and soil? The most elementary of the natural ties is the tie of the child to the mother. The child begins life in the mother’s womb and exists there for a much longer time than is the cause with most animals; even after birth, the child remains physically helpless and completely dependent on the mother; this period of helplessness and dependence again is much more protracted than with any animal. In the first years of life no full separation between child and mother has occurred. The satisfaction of all his physiological needs, of his vital need for warmth and affection depend on her; she has not only given birth to him, but she continues to give life to him. Her care is not dependent on anything the child does for her, on any obligation which the child has to fulfill; it is unconditional. She cares because the new creature is her child. The child, in these decisive first years of his life, has the experience of his mother as the fountain of life, as an all-enveloping, protective, nourishing power. Mother is food; she is love; she is warmth; she is Earth. To be loved by her means to be alive, to be rooted, to be at home, and obviously babies are born understanding their own power and Dr. Darwin’s mantra of survival of the fittest. In order to survive, the baby knows he has to be cute because he is so dependent. They understand the economic cost benefit principle. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

What we now call democracy burst forth only when the decision load suddenly swelled beyond the capacity of the old elite to handle it. The arrival of the Second Wave, brining expanded trade, a greater division of labour and a leap to a whole new level of complexity in society, caused the same kind of decision implosion in its time that the Third Wave is causing today. As a result, the decisional capabilities of the old ruling groups were overwhelmed, and new elites and sub-elites had to be recruited to cope with the decision load. Revolutionary new political institution had to be designed for that purpose. As industrial society developed, becoming ever more complex, its integrating elites, the “technicians of power,” were in their turn continually compelled to recruit new blood to help them carry the expanding decision load. It was this invisible but inexorable process that drew the middle class more and more into the political arena. It was this expanded need for decision-making that led to an ever wider franchise and created more niches to be filled from below. If this picture is even roughly correct, it tells us that the extent of democracy depends less on culture, less on Marxist class, less on battlefield courage, less on rhetoric, less on political will, than on the decision load of the social system expands, therefore, democracy becomes not a matter of choice but of evolutionary necessity. The system cannot run without it. Well all this further suggest is that we may be on the edge of another great democratic leap forward. For the very implosion of decision-making now overwhelming our presidents, prime ministers and governments unlocks—for the first time since the industrial revolution—exciting prospers for a radical expansion of political participation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The need for new political institutions exactly parallels our need for new family, educational and corporate institutions as well. It is deeply wired into our search for a new energy base, new technologies, and new industries. It reflects the upheaval in communications and the need to restructure relationships with the non-industrial World. It is, in short, the political reflection of accelerating changes in all these different spheres. Without seeing these connections, it is impossible to make sense of the headlines around us. For today the single most important political conflict is no longer between the rich and the poor, between America’s Next Top Model and those made to return to their room, collect their belongings and go home, or even between capitalism and communist visions. The decisive struggle today is between those who try to prop up and preserve industrial society and those who are ready to advance beyond it. This is the super struggle for tomorrow. And then keep in mind, China has thousands of EV cars sitting in junkyards because they are considered an inferior technology, and not comparable to gasoline engines. The field is over 15,000 square meter in size, and there are 60 cars waiting to be processed because the junkyard is at capacity. And keep in mind, these are new cars, most less than five years old. I guess that is why so many people are so jealous of fossil fuels? The possibility of good outcomes from equilibria of such games depends crucially on the rate at which future payoffs are discounted. The discounting can reflect the market rate of interest that one could if one receives payment earlier, or it can be a subjective measure of a player’ impatience, depending on the context. However, uncertainty #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Traders may have to leave the market for reasons outside of their control. The intermediary faces competition from others for his monopoly position; therefore he has an uncertain lifetime, either in the limited sense of being ousted from the market in a literal sense. Naming the “attack” is a great factor for victory. For example, an attack may be made to hinder; then the believer must be on guard against all hinderances, seen and unseen, which the hinderer is placing in his way. EV technology may just be a hinderance to fossil fuels, and it will eventually be phased out because it is too expensive and temperamental an inconvenient. It could also be a tool used to make fossil fuel producers impatient. Therefore, they must be on guard regarding all things liable to test his patience. The sooner the attack is recognized and named, the quicker the weapon can be called into use to destroy it. It may be a flood of accusations of wrongdoing which need to be recognized, or tested as to their truth. When the accusing spirit charge a person with some specific wrong over a certain thing, and the believer surrenders that thing to God, if the accusation does not then pass away it shows that it is not the true ground for the accusation, but there is some other cause hidden from view. The believer should then seek light from God upon the hidden causes, according to John 3.21, and refuse the cause of the accusation without knowing what it is saying, “I refuse the cause of this attack, whatever it is, and I trust the Lord to destroy it.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the high $600s

Now Selling!

No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,377 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.  Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more! Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included! 

Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is  just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town.   https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/

#CresleighHomes

August 17, 2023 1:10 am