Randolph Harris II International Institute

There is no bondage more grievous than that which a person forges for himself, when he yields his judgment to another’s will. Such dependence, once sweetened by affection, grows into a distemper of the mind, wherein the sufferer fears to breathe without the other’s permission. Morbid dependency is the neurotic tendency to seek and maintain affection through involvement in exploitative or manipulative relationships. Domestic violence is a pathological pattern of interpersonal dependency that is linked to domestic violence. Research suggests that high levels of emotional dependency in an abused partner may reduce the likelihood that the victimized person will terminate the relationship. Although we can study the characteristics of a morbid dependency in any relationship, they come into clearest relief in the sexual relationship between a self-effacing and an arrogant-vindictive type. The conflicts generated here are more intense, and can develop more fully, since, for reasons residing in both partners, the relationship is usually of longer duration. The narcissistic or detached partner more easily becomes tired of the implicit demands made upon him and is liable to quit, while the sadistic partner is more prone to fasten himself onto his victim. For the dependent person, in turn, it is much more difficult to extricate himself from a relation with an arrogant-vindictive type. With his peculiar weakness, he is as unequipped for such an involvement as a ship built for navigation in still waters is for crossing a rough, stormy ocean. Her whole lack of sturdiness, every weak spot in her structure, will then make itself felt and may mean ruin. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Similarly, a self-effacing person may have functioned fairly well in life, but when tossed into the conflicts involved in such a relationship, every hidden neurotic factor in him will come into operation. Let us assume that the self-effacing partner is a woman and the aggressive one a man. Actually, this combination seems to be more frequent in our civilization, although, as many instances show, self-effacement has nothing to do with femininity nor aggressive arrogance with masculinity. The first characteristic to strike us is such a woman’s total absorption in the relationship. The partner becomes the sole center of her existence. Everything revolves around him. Her mood depends upon whether his attitude toward her is more positive or negative. She does not dare make any plans lest she might miss a call or an evening with him. Her thoughts are centered on understanding or helping him. Her endeavors are directed toward measuring up to what she feels he expects. She has but one fear—that of antagonizing and losing him. Conversely, her other interests subside. Her work, unless connected with him, becomes comparatively meaningless. This may even be true of professional work otherwise dear to her heart, or productive work in which she has accomplished things. Naturally, the latter suffers most. Other human relations are neglected. She may neglect or leave her children, her home. Friendships serve more and more merely to fill the time when he is not available. Engagements are dropped at a moment’s notice when he appears. The impairment of other relations often is fostered by the partner, because he, in turn, wants to make her more and more dependent upon him. Also, she starts to look at her relatives or friends through his eyes. He scorns her trust in people and instills his own suspiciousness in her. So, she loses her roots and becomes increasingly impoverished. In addition, her self-interest, always at a low ebb, sinks. She may incur debts, risk her reputation, her health, and her dignity. If she is in analysis, or used to analyzing herself, the interest in self-recognition gives way to a concern for understanding his motivations and helping him. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

The trouble may set in, full-fledged, right at the beginning. However, sometimes, things look fairly auspicious for a while. In certain neurotic ways, the two seem to fit together. He needs to be the master; she needs to surrender. He is openly demanding, and she is complying. If her pride is broken, only then can she surrender, and for many reasons of his own, he cannot fail to do so. However, sooner or later, clashes are bound to occur between two temperaments—or, more accurately, between two neurotic structures—which in all essentials are diametrically opposed. The main clashes occur on the issue of feelings, of “love.” She insists upon love, affection, and closeness. He is desperately afraid of positive feelings. Their display seems indecent to him. Her assurances of love seem like pure hypocrisy to him—and indeed, as we know, it is actually more a need to lose herself and merge with him that motivates her than personal love for him. He cannot keep from striking out against her feelings, and hence, against her. This, in turn, makes her feel neglected or abused, arouses anxiety, and reinforces her clinging attitudes. And, here, another collision occurs. Although he does everything to make her dependent upon him, her clinging to him terrifies and repels him. He is afraid and contemptuous of any weakness in himself and despises it in her. This means another rejection for her, provoking more anxiety and more clinging. Her implicit demands are felt as coercion, and he must hit out in order to retain his feelings of mastery. Her compulsive helpfulness offends his pride. And actually, with all her often sincere attempts, she does not really understand him—hardly can do so. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Besides, in her “understanding,” there is too much need to excuse and to forgive, for she feels all her attitudes are good and natural. He, in turn, senses her feeling morally superior and feels provoked to tear down the pretenses involved. There is but scant possibility for a good talk about these matters because, at bottom, they are both self-righteous. So, she starts to see him as a brute, and he sees her as a moral prig. If it were done in a constructive way, the tearing down of her pretenses could be eminently helpful. However, as it is mostly done in a sarcastic, derogatory way, it merely hurts her and makes her more insecure and more dependent. It is an idle speculation to ask whether or not, with all these clashes, they might be helpful to each other. Certainly, he could stand some softening and she some toughening. However, mostly, they are both too deeply entrenched in their particular neurotic needs and aversions. Vicious circles which bring out the worst in both, keep operating, and can result only in mutual torment. The frustrations and limitations to which she is exposed vary not so much in kind as in being more or less civilized, more or less intense. There is always some cat-and-mouse play, a dynamic where one party pursues, controls, or toys with another—while the other is kept in a state of uncertainty, anticipation, or anxious dependence. Satisfactory relations involving pleasures of the flesh may be followed by crude offenses; an enjoyable evening may be followed by forgetting a date; eliciting confidences by sarcastically using them against her. She may try to play the same game, but is too inhibited to do it well. However, she is always a good instrument on which to play, since his attacks make her despondent and his seemingly positive moods throw her into fallacious hopes that from now on everything will be better. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

There are always plenty of things he feels entitled to do without allowing any questioning. His claims may concern financial support or gifts for himself and his friends or relatives; work to be done for him, like housework or typing; furthering his career; or strict consideration of his needs. These latter may, for instance, concern time arrangements, undivided and uncritical interest in his pursuits, having or not having company, remaining unruffled when he is sulky or irritable, and so on and so forth. Whatever he demands is his self-evident due. There is no appreciation forthcoming, but much nagging irritability when his wishes are not fulfilled. He feels and declares in no uncertain terms that he is not at all demanding but that she is stingy, sloppy, inconsiderate, unappreciative—and that he must put up with all sorts of abuse. On the other hand, he is astute at spotting her claims, which he finds altogether neurotic. Her need for affection, time, or company is possessive; her wanting pleasures of the flesh or good food, overindulgence. So, when he frustrates her needs, which he must do for reasons of his own, it is in his mind no frustration at all. It is better to disregard her needs because she should be ashamed of having them. Actually, his frustrating techniques are highly developed. They include dampening joy by sulkiness, making her feel unwelcome and unwanted, and withdrawing physically or psychologically. The most harmful and, for her, least tangible part is his pervasive attitude of disregard and contempt. Whatever actual regard he may have for her faculties or qualities is seldom expressed. On the other hand, he does not despise her for her softness and for her caginess and indirectness. However, in addition, because of his need for active externalization of his self-hate, he is faultfinding and derogatory. If she, in turn, dares to criticize him, he discards what she says in a highhanded manner or proves that she is vindictive. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

We find the greatest variation in matters involving pleasures of the flesh. Relationships involving pleasures of the flesh may stand out as the only satisfactory contact. Or, in case he is inhibited in enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, he may frustrate her in this regard, too, which is felt all the more keenly since, in view of his lack of tenderness may mean for her the only assurance of love. Or the pleasures of the flesh may be a means of degrading and humiliating her. He may make it clear that for him, she is nothing but an object for the pleasures of the flesh. He may fault intimate passions with other women, intermingled with derogatory comments about her being less attractive or responsive than these others. Intimate passions may be degrading because of the absence of tenderness or because he uses sadistic techniques. Although the issue of the effectiveness of mandatory reporting laws remains unclear, providers should be familiar with reporting laws in their states, and whether there are policies for mandatory reporting of intimate partner violence (IPV) or injuries that are suspicious for resulting from criminal assault. Patients should be made aware of mandated reporting requirements before universal IPV screenings, including universal education. This shows respect for the patient’s autonomy, allows them to decide on whether they would want to reveal any IVP-related experiences given the known mandatory interventions, and has the awareness that they can always disclose information at subsequent visits if they choose. IVP may not always be present in the acute care setting with physical findings due to acute trauma. Healthy consequences faced by IVP patients may be multisystemic, given the type of abuse faced, and can present as acute or chronic medical complaints. For example, strangulation, in an acute or chronic setting, can appear as hoarseness, sore throat, neck pain, or difficulty swallowing. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Patients who sustain blows to the head may experience serious traumatic brain injuries (TBI) or mild TBI (mTBI) and present acutely with a headache, confusion, nausea, or vomiting. Under the circumstances of repeated mTBIs, the body may not be able to completely heal in between the abuse. Patients can experience and present with histories of neurological symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, memory loss, seizures, hearing problems, ear ringing, vision problems, blacking out, or difficulty concentrating. Of note, patients who have experienced loss of consciousness due to strangulation may have similar neurological complaints or cognitive difficulties due to anoxic brain injury. They may also have chronic migraines, syncopal episodes, and possibly seizures. Though causal relationships have yet to be established in the underlying causes for specific neurological outcomes, victims of violence frequently (10 percent to 44 percent) report strangling and blows to the head resulting in loss of consciousness which may contribute to the development of the various neurological conditions mentioned above. Of note, post-concussive or TBI symptoms can complicate a patient’s ability to understand or follow through on health and safety plans. Gastrointestinal symptoms are also common presentations due to prior blunt force to the abdominal region affecting internal organs or from the effects of chronic stress. Symptoms may appear as chronic abdominal or stomach pain, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, self-induced vomiting, loss of appetite, or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Given the fear and shame associated with IPV, there is a strong correlation with excessive stress, which can manifest as varying yet common disorders such as IBS, hypertension, chest pain, and even a suppressed immune system, which can lead to greater frequency of colds and viral infections. Knowledge of these medical conditions commonly associated with IVP is beneficial, so that IVP is considered a possible underlying condition or cause leading to a more accurate diagnosis and more appropriate interventions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

About 33.6 percent of men in the United States of America have reported experiencing IVP in their lifetime, including sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking, with 34.2 percent reporting psychological aggression from an intimate partner. Men often face barriers in reporting IVP because of a lack of knowledge that the abuse is illegal, stigma that being a victim would be unmasculine, fear of being ridiculed, and biases that they will be seen as the perpetrator. However, if you fear reporting, while there is a fact that your allegations may not be taken seriously, keep in mind how defensive police are when they are being assaulted. So, do not be afraid of reporting IVP. In some cases, just touching an officer can be considered assault, and they take being assaulted very seriously. Therefore, do not let someone make you feel like your claim is illegitimate. Men presenting to the emergency department (ED) due to IVP were found to have intentional striking and being cut/pierced as the major causes of injury. IPV injury due to cuts are 7-times higher in men compared to women with IVP injuries. Lacerations were the main injury diagnosis and should raise concern for IPV men. The most common anatomic locations of these injuries in men were the head, neck, or face, as seen in most women, followed by upper extremity injuries, possibly due to self-defense mechanisms. All ED clinicians should have training on recognizing these injury patterns, including when evaluating men in the ED, as it may lead to IVP identification and offering awareness, referrals, and safety resources. Privacy is critical and should be prioritized when discussing IPV and conducting a physical exam. Patients should not be screened during triage, especially if other individuals are present, including accompanying family members or friends. A patient cannot speak freely — especially about sensitive, dangerous, or shame‑laden matters — if a parent, partner, or friend is in the room. Their “I” is inhibited by: fear of judgment, fear of retaliation, internalized obligation to protect the other person, learned patterns of deference or submission. So, the rule exists to protect the patient’s autonomy, giving them a space where their own voice can emerge without interference. Inform visitors that it is hospital/office policy to speak with the patient alone. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Just as a child cannot develop a stable “I” without being recognized as a separate self, a patient cannot speak authentically when another’s presence eclipses their autonomy; privacy is the space in which the self becomes possible. One basic task of all religions is to reaffirm that first relationship, for we have in us deep down a lifelong mistrustful remembrance of that truly meta-physical anxiety; meta—“behind,” “beyond”—here means “before,” “way back,” “at the beginning.” One basic form of heroic asceticism, therefore, one way of liberating man from his existential delimitations, is to retrace the steps of the development of the I, to forego even object relations in the most primitive sense, to step down and back to the borderline where the I emerged from its matrix. Much of Western monasticism concentrates on prayer and atonement, but the Eastern form cultivates the art of deliberate self-loss: Zen-Buddhism is probably its most systematic form. Some children forget the Christchild because of the sadness of their youth: some have lost their childhood. In moments of terror, they may want God’s recognition. The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes it solid turn. The lunatic’s visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geological times is hard for our imagination—they seem too much like mere museum specimens. Yet, there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did not daily through long years of the foretime hold fast to the body struggling in despair of some fated living victims. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

If on a smaller spatial scale, forms of horror just as dreadful to their victim fill the world about us to-day. Here, on our very hearths and in our gardens, the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along, and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is literally the right reaction on the situation. It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect of such evil, dumb submission or neglect to notice is the only practical resource. If the mind is only the reflection of events, it cannot anticipate their progress, except by hypothesis. If Marxist theory is determined by economics, it can describe the history of production, not its future, which remains in the realms of probability. The task of historical materialism can only be to establish a method of criticism of contemporary society; it is only capable of making suppositions, unless it abandons its scientific attitude, about the society of the future.  Moreover, is it not for this reason that its most important work is called Capital and not Revolution? Marx and the Marxists allowed themselves to prophesy the future and the triumph of communism to the detriment of their postulates and of scientific method. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Then predictions could be scientific; on the contrary, only by ceasing to prophecy definitely. Marxism is not scientific; at best, it has scientific prejudices. It brought out into the open the profound difference between scientific reasoning, that fruitful instrument of research, of thought, and even of rebellion, and historical reasoning, which German ideology invented by its negation of all principles. Historical reasoning is not a type of reasoning that, within the framework of its own functions, can pass judgment on the world. While pretending to judge it, it really tries to determine its course. Essentially, a part of events, it directs them and is simultaneously pedagogic and all-conquering. Moreover, its most abstruse descriptions conceal the most simple truths. If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history to endow history with the form of human reason. Therefore, the history of contemporary nihilism is nothing but a prolonged endeavor to give order, by human forces alone and simply by force, to history no longer endowed with order. The pseudo-reasoning ends by identifying itself with cunning and strategy, while waiting to culminate in the ideological Empire. What part could science play in this concept? Nothing is less determined on conquest than reason. History is not made with scientific scruples; we are even condemned to not making history from the moment when we claim to act with scientific scruples; we are even condemned to not making history from the moment when we claim to act with scientific objectivity. Reason does not preach, of if it does, it is no longer reason. That is why historical reason is an irrational and romantic form of reason, which sometimes recalls the false logic of the insane and at other times, the mystic affirmation of the word. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

To will one thing cannot, then, mean to will what in its essence is not one thing, but only seems to be so by means of a horrible falsehood. Only through a lit is it one thing. Now, just as he that only wills this one thing is a lair, so he that conjures up this one thing is the father of lies. That dryness and emptiness is not in truth one thing, but is in truth nothing at all. And it is destruction for the man that only wills that one. If, on the contrary, a man should in truth will only one thing, then this thing must, in the truth of its innermost being, be one thing. It must, by eternal separation, cut of the heterogenous from itself in order that it may in truth continue to be one and the same thing and thereby fashion that man who only wills one thing into conformity with itself. In truth to will one thing, then, can only mean to will the Good, because every other object is not a unity; and the will that only wills that object, therefore, must become double-minded. For as the coveted object is, so becomes the coveter. Or would it be possible that a man by willing the evil could will one thing, provided that it was possible for a man so to harden himself as to will nothing but the evil? Is not this evil, like evil persons, in disagreement with itself, divided against itself? Take one such man, separate him from society, shut him up in solitary confinement. Is he not at odds with himself there, just as poor union between persons of his sort is an association that is ridden dissension? But a good man, even if he lived in an out-of-the-way corner of the world and never saw any human being, would be at one with himself at one with all about him because he wills one thing, and because the Good is one thing. Each one who in truth would will one thing must be led to will the Good, even though now and then it happens that a man begins by willing one thing that is not in its deepest sense the Good although it may be something quite innocent; and then, little by little, he is changed really in truth to will one thing by willing the Good. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Love, from time to time, has in this way helped a man along the right path. Faithfully he only willed one thing, his love. For it, he would live and die. For it, he would sacrifice all and in it alone, he would have his eternal reward. Yet, the act of being in love is still not in the deepest sense the Good. However, it may possibly become for him a helpful educator, who will finally lead him by the possession of his beloved one or perhaps by her loss, in truth to will one thing and to will the Good. In this fashion, a man is educated by many means; and true love is also an education toward the Good. Perhaps, there was a man whose enthusiasm was for only one thing. He would live and die for that cause. He would sacrifice all for that in which alone he would have his happiness, for love and enthusiasm are not satisfied with a divided heart. Yet, his endeavor was perhaps still not in the deepest sense the Good. Thus, enthusiasm became for him a teacher, whom he outgrew, but to whom also he owed much. For, as it is said, all ways lead to the Good, when a man in truth only wills one thing. And where there is some truth, in the fact that he wills one thing, this is all for the best. However, there is danger that the lover and the enthusiast may swerve out of the true course and aim perhaps for the impressive instead of being led to the Good. The Good is certainly also in truth the impressive, but the impressive is not always the Good. And one can bid for a woman’s favor by willing something when it is merely impressive. This can flatter the girl’s pride, and she can repay it with her adoration. However, God in heaven is not a young girl’s folly. He does not reward the impressive with admiration. The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

By exclusively acknowledging and confessing Christ our Lord, we more fully see that the wide range of His dominion is disclosed to us. It is not metaphysical speculation; it is not a theologoumena of the logos spermatikos, but it is the concrete suffering of injustice, of the organized lie, of hostility to mankind, and of violence; it is the persecution of lawfulness, truth, humanity and freedom which impels the men who hold these values dear to seek the protection of Jesus Christ and therefore to become subject to His claim, and it is through this that the Church of Jesus Christ learnt of the wide extent of her responsibility. The relationship of the Church with the world today does not consist, as it did in the Middle Ages, in the calm and steady expansion of the power of the name of Christ, nor yet in an eddeavour, such as was undertaken by the apologists of the first centuries of Christianity, to justify and publicize and embellish the name of Jesus Christ before the world by associating it with human names and values, but solely in that recognition of the origin which has been awakened and vouchsafed to men in this suffering, solely in the seeking of refuge from persecution in Christ. It is not Christ who must justify Himself before the world by the acknowledgement of the values of justice, truth, and freedom, but it is these values which have come to need justification, and their justification can only be Jesus Christ. It is not that a “Christian culture” must make the name of Jesus Christ acceptable to the world; but the crucified Christ has become the refuge and the justification, the protection and the claim for the higher values and their defenders that have fallen victim to suffering. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

It is with the Christ who is persecuted and who suffers in His Church that justice, truth, humanity, and freedom now seek refuge; it is with the Christ who found no shelter in the world, the Christ who was cast out from the world, the Christ of the crib and of the cross, under whose protection they now seek sanctuary, and who thereby for the first time displays the full extent of His power. The Cross reveals that no one stands in neutrality, for every person is already shaped by the models they imitate. Thus, Christ can say both “He who is not with me is against me” and “He who is not against us is for us,” because our roles, loyalties, and identities are formed through imitation long before we speak them aloud. We learn our roles by being trained into them and by identifying with the role models available to us. This is not optional. It is how human beings come into being. A child learns “I” only through recognition. A person learns courage by seeing courage. A person learns cruelty by watching cruelty.       A person learns scapegoating by participating in it. A person learns mercy by receiving it. We are imitative creatures — and the Cross is the moment when the human pattern of imitation is revealed in its starkest form. This is why the sayings of Jesus are not contradictions but two sides of the same anthropological truth: Imitation makes neutrality impossible. Imitation makes belonging inevitable. We are always becoming like the model we follow — whether that model is Christ, the crowd, the persecutor, the scapegoat mechanism, or the false self we were trained to perform. Thus, as children, our behavior is rewarded by our parents when it conforms to their image of the way a little boy or a girl should act. At each level, our behavior is “shaped,” by the consequences of approval and of punishment that they provide to our actions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

As we get older, we are encouraged to emulate the behavior of people who function as exemplars or role models. This is the way we begin to learn how to be a husband or a father, or a wife, or a mother, when the time comes, and it is the way we learn our occupational roles. Each person, thus, serves as a model to be emulated by others. People encounter difficulties in fulfilling their gender roles and family roles when they have grown up without regular contact with role models or when the role models differ from the norms of their group. Some male homosexuals, for example, have grown up without a father in the home or with a father who was so hateful that the boy would not identify with him. When divorce is common, many children grow up without a father because they usually are raised by the mother. Under these conditions, the girls may not learn what adult man-woman or husband-wife behavior can be expected, nor will the little boys. Consequently, they do not learn reasonable family role expectations for self and for others; they may acquire idealized notions of what to expect from their spouses and children when they marry, expectations that their spouses and future children cannot fulfill. In Harlow’s famous and widely publicized study, infant monkeys were raised by artificial mothers, wire or foam rubber mechanical objects that were rigged to provide milk for the infants. Lacking adequate role models, these infants survived infancy handily but were totally unable to carry on adult functions. They were, as Harlow described them: helpless, hopeless, heartless parents. In professional and vocational training, the learner is both “shaped” by teachers and encouraged by them to copy the teacher’s ways of performing skills. I served as a consultant to a nursing college and found that the faculty and the staff nurses were not serving as authentic exemplars of the kind of nursing practice they wished students to learn. They wanted the students to be very open, to be responsive to and empathic with patients, doctors, and colleagues. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

However, they were not functioning in those roles that were expected of nurses. Many of the floor nursing faculty had left bedside nursing because they did not like regular contact with the ill. Many floor nurses were afraid of close, communicative relationships with patients, doctors, and each other. My task was to help the faculty and staff become the kind of nursing exemplars that the students could emulate. We attempted to do this, first, by encouraging the nursing college faculty to return to regular bedside nursing college faculty to return to regular faculty meetings where the purpose was to practice open, personal communication with each other. There is some evidence that the strained, formal, and impersonal atmosphere of the college was replaced by one that encouraged greater openness of communication and that the students did become better at relating empathically and warmly with their parents. Compassion is simply seeing someone’s need and wanting to help. Acting on that feeling leads us to do what we can for that person. This is part of our covenant to “bear one another’s burden” (Mosiah 18.8) and is at the heart of ministering. Compassion is a skill that we can learn. It takes practice. We can start by being a good listener and imagining how we would feel if we had the same experience as someone else. Heavenly Father wants His children to be compassionate. This is why you have a feeling to want to help a person struggling to move forward under a load of grief and difficulty. You promised that you would help the Lord make their burdens light and be comforted. You were given the power to help lighten those loads when you received the gift of the Holy Ghost. As the intellectual change of attitude is promoted by the discoveries of science and the reflections of scientists, religious, moral, educational, metaphysical, and social changes will follow as a logical consequence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Whether it is electricity brightening a village, science awakening the mind, or clean gear protecting a firefighter, illumination always brings responsibility. Once we see clearly, we must act with care, discipline, and stewardship. Firefighter protective clothing is a perfect example: when it is dirty, it loses insulation, conducts heat and electricity more readily, sheds liquids poorly, and can even become flammable. Many fireground residues are carcinogenic or toxic to the skin. Turnout gear must therefore be cleaned regularly to prevent these dangers — yet it must also be cleaned correctly, because improper washing can degrade the fabric, weaken its thermal protection, or worsen its performance. Illumination does not simply reveal the world; it reveals the obligations that come with knowing better. Any blaze in a large building is dangerous, both for the firefighters who confront it and for the surrounding area if the fire gains too much headway. Sometimes, despite a department’s best efforts, circumstances align against them and a structure is lost. In this case, several factors converged. Around 2:30 p.m., a car being repaired with a welding torch ignited, and the gasoline tank exploded, spraying flames throughout the garage portion of the warehouse. All workers escaped unharmed and multiple calls were placed to the fire department. However, the first caller gave the wrong address, sending the responding engine to the opposite end of town and delaying arrival by five critical minutes. When crews finally reached the scene, the fire was still largely confined to the garage, but it had already begun to extend into the front of the building and was racing up into the roof structure. Those few minutes of delay allowed the fire to gain the momentum that ultimately doomed the warehouse. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

The wind began to freshen just as the men backed out of the building, fanning the now‑raging blaze. Firefighters battled the fire in icy weather, working to protect the surrounding structures. The building next to the library ignited several times from the intense heat, but each flare‑up was quickly extinguished with minimal danger. Across the street, several businesses had their windows shattered by the radiant heat pouring off the warehouse. At the front of the building, the Fire Chief and several firefighters were manning hoselines when the roof gave way, bringing the entire front of the structure down with it. Bricks and debris showered the area, narrowly missing the crews. After the collapse, the fire continued to burn for several more hours, but the threat to nearby buildings had passed. Damage was later estimated at more than $2 million, including over twenty cars stored inside, with surrounding businesses suffering smoke and water damage. A gas station to the south sustained some damage as well, and during the chaos, tools and batteries were stolen from the property. The Chief later praised the award‑winning Sacramento Fire Department, noting that their efforts were invaluable in containing the blaze to a single building and saving the structures across the alley. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

When it comes to firefighting, no matter how large or small the fire is or how routine the call seems to be, there is always the potential for injury. If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency, and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way because if you hit someone and they happen to die, you could be charged with manslaughter. Sometimes fire firefighters are getting back into their vehicle, and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals; sometimes emergency vehicles are in motion, albeit slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, if you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other people’s problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation, and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrate to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in America, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in America which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the national debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by sending more money overseas. Buying American-made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards on pollution. American companies must be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Under President Trump’s administration, he has made America a priority. President Trump has closed the southern border, illegal crossings have fallen to an all-time low, and are 90 percent lower than under the previous administration. Since President Trump’s crack down on crime, violent crimes in Washington D.C. have dropped by approximately 80 percent. He has stopped thousands of pounds of drugs from entering America and killing citizens. And since President Trump took office, investments in America have increased by trillions of dollars in U.S.A. manufacturing, production, and innovation. As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes, as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. As a reminder, parents, please teach your children to love America and be patriotic citizens, and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. It is inborn in the human mind to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. A lot of children are having problems in school and cannot even write a paragraph because they are not reading their books. When you actually read books, you get an example of how to write and will become a better student. Therefore, remember to take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. Also, to make sure they have all the resources required, please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to help improve our national security. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

The Winchester Mansion

People say the Winchester Mansion is strange because Mrs. Sarah Winchester built it that way — staircases to nowhere, doors that open into air, rooms that appear without warning. But those who have studied the deeper folklore whisper something else: that the house inherited stories far older than California, stories that drifted across oceans and centuries until they found a place to root themselves again. They say the mansion carries echoes of another place — a fortress of stone, a house of trials, a home of restless spirits. And at the center of those echoes stands a single figure. The Watcher. Long before the mansion rose from the California soil, the Watcher belonged to a different tower — a high, narrow room where he kept vigil over a land filled with fear, accusations, and unanswered questions. But when Mrs. Sarah Winchester began her endless construction, something in her grief called to him.

Visitors to the mansion sometimes see him in the uppermost windows: a tall silhouette, unmoving, always looking outward as if guarding something only he understands. Guides say the tower is empty. Workers say no one goes up there. Yet the figure appears, night after night, watching. Some believe he is a guardian. Others say he is a witness. But the oldest version claims he is both — a presence drawn to places where sorrow builds walls and fear carves corridors. In the eastern wing, guests sometimes report a pale woman drifting through the hallways, her gown trailing like mist. She never speaks. She never approaches. She simply moves from room to room as though searching for something she lost long ago. Some say she is a memory Mrs. Sarah could not let go of. Others believe she is one of the mansion’s “unfinished stories,” a spirit who followed the Watcher across the sea and found a new home in the labyrinth Mrs. Sarah built.

On fog-heavy nights, the mansion grounds echo with the sound of a horse-drawn carriage approaching the front steps — though nothing ever arrives. The clatter of wheels, the snort of horses, the creak of leather harnesses… all vanish the moment someone opens the door. Locals say it is the carriage of a former visitor returning to the house, eternally repeating his journey. Others whisper that it is the Watcher’s escort, arriving to collect the lost or guide the wandering. In the farthest corridors, where the house seems to fold in on itself, visitors sometimes hear heavy footsteps pacing behind them — too slow for a person, too deliberate for an animal. Some claim to hear low growls echoing from the walls, as though something unseen is patrolling the mansion’s edges. Mrs. Sarah herself once wrote of “shadows that walk like men but breathe like beasts.” Whether she meant it literally or metaphorically, no one knows. But the stories persist.

The legend says Mrs. Sarah Winchester did not create these hauntings — she inherited them. Her grief, her isolation, her relentless building formed a kind of beacon. The house became a sanctuary for wandering spirits, a place where old stories could settle into new rooms. And the Watcher, drawn by the same sorrow he had known in his first tower, took up his post again — not to frighten Mrs. Sarah, but to accompany her. To stand guard over a woman who built a labyrinth not to trap spirits, but to give them somewhere to go. Some nights, when the mansion is especially still, visitors swear they see him turn from the window, as if acknowledging them. As if reminding them that every house with a history has someone watching over it.

PRIVATE EVENTS & WEDDINGS
at WINCHESTER ESTATE

Many event locations claim to be unique, but nothing compares to the Winchester Mystery House. If you’re truly seeking a distinct, one‑of‑a‑kind setting for your milestone celebration or special occasion, reserve a venue that delivers on uniqueness many times over. Whether you’re planning a wedding, birthday or anniversary celebration, corporate gathering, holiday party, or any other meaningful event, the Winchester Mystery House offers an unforgettable backdrop. Give your guests an experience they’ll be talking about for years to come.

Café 13: A Rest Stop on the Edge of the Mystery

After wandering the winding halls of the Winchester Mystery House—where staircases defy logic and whispers seem to cling to the walls—Café 13 offers a welcome return to warmth and grounding. Newly reopened and serving guests daily from 10 AM to 3 PM, this cozy hideaway invites you to pause, breathe, and gather yourself before diving back into the mansion’s secrets. Here, you can enjoy breakfast, lunch, snacks, and refreshing drinks in a calm indoor space that feels worlds away from the mansion’s twisting corridors. Settle in with a warm meal, challenge a friend to a board game, or simply rest and recharge as sunlight filters through the windows. Café 13 is more than a café—it’s a moment of calm between chapters of the Winchester legend, a place to steady your nerves before returning to the gardens, the grandeur, and the mysteries that await.

Winchester Mercantile Gift Shop

Your journey into the Winchester Mystery House begins long before you cross the mansion’s threshold. It starts at the Mercantile gift shop—a welcoming outpost standing at the edge of a world where history and myth intertwine. Here, beneath warm lights and shelves lined with curiosities, you can secure your tour tickets and prepare for the adventure ahead. Guests often pause for a souvenir photograph, capturing the moment before they step into Sarah Winchester’s enigmatic domain. As you explore the shop, you will find an eclectic array of gifts and keepsakes: tokens of the mansion’s lore, echoes of Victorian elegance, and mementos that carry a touch of the house’s enduring mystery. The Mercantile is more than a gift shop—it is the gateway. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Why Choose Harris?

Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company.

Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs, not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/

Brian Harris BMW

With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW, The Ultimate Driving Experience, has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands.BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. This is why BMW is known as The Ultimate Driving Machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/

Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers

Building strong and lasting client relationships is crucial for a successful legal career. Many lawyers mistakenly believe that mastering legal skills alone ensures success, but law is fundamentally a service industry—our job is to solve problems through the time we sell. To build long-term relationships, attorneys must focus on three core elements: knowing their clients, understanding how their legal issues fit into a larger context, and consistently delivering exceptional service.

Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax-deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. Trust is the cornerstone of any client relationship. Ultimately, my clients feel they are in capable hands with someone who genuinely understands their problems and goals. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html

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March 12, 2026 10:04 pm

When institutions fail to enforce their own rules, individuals are forced into roles they never chose, sustaining dysfunction through silence, avoidance, and fear. Such situations require a lot of emotional labor. Emotional labor is the psychological glue that holds dysfunctional systems together, especially when people are forced into roles that contradict who they are. Emotional labor is not just being nice at work. It is the management of feeling—the requirement to display emotions that you do not feel and suppress emotions that you do feel to manage a role, and keep a situation cohesive. This is the situation with a weakly “cathected” or inactive leader. In healthy systems, emotional labor is part of the job. People are capable of mobilizing energy because they are doing something rewarding, or can be charged up by an outside source. However, in dysfunctional systems, emotional labor becomes the job. This happens when you are expected to absorb conflict others refuse to address, forced to be the “calm one,” the “fixer,” the “bigger person,” pressured to maintain harmony while others create chaos, required to pretend incompetence around you is normal, and are punished for showing frustration at others’ negligence. This is role drift through emotional coercion. I had to study psychology and religion to understand this situation, and it took me far off my path. I never agreed to be the therapist, the parent, the moral compass, the scapegoat, or the shock absorber—but the system pushed those roles onto me, relying on my integrity to compensate for everyone else’s refusal to do their jobs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

At first, I wore the role like a badge of honor. I could help people become more rational, more grounded. But as the years stretched into more than a decade, the role hardened into a career I never asked for. The same problems cycled endlessly, even with paid professionals sitting right there, unable to help anyone resolve anything. Eventually, I started hiding—running errands at dawn, slipping out late at night—because people would wait around to latch onto me. After twelve to fourteen years of this, I reached a breaking point. I did not want to be the one absorbing everyone’s chaos, especially when so many others were standing right there, untouched and unbothered. I honestly do not have fun anymore. Life has become nothing but work—endless bills, endless responsibilities, endless situations to manage. It feels like every part of my existence has turned into a job. And the drama never ends. Holidays, family gatherings, every day of the week—there is always someone ready to do something forbidden, disobey the law, or explode the moment they get an audience. In this frustrated and vulnerable state, an individual has no defense against people with problematic behavior, and other human relationships are neglected. Engagements are dropped at a moment’s notice when someone wants to use their position or situation to have a conniption fit or temper tantrum. The mismatch between the authentic self and the forced role produces burnout, moral injury, resentment, identity fatigue, emotional numbness, and a sense of being trapped in a role you never agreed to play. This is why people say, “I do not even recognize myself anymore.” To perform a role effectively, one must be and feel potent: not omnipotent, but potent enough to deal with these individuals. The individuals must believe that they are potent enough, so the individual forced into the leader role has protection against their dysfunction and wrath. Dysfunctional adults need permission or a license to give up, or be released from negative behavior. Dysfunctional institutions survive because the system runs on the emotional labor of the unwilling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

To be a judge obviously involves a knowledge of the law and probably also knowledge of a much wider range of human affairs that are legally relevant. It also involves, however, “knowledge” of the values and attitudes deemed appropriate for a judge, extending as far as those proverbially deemed appropriate for a judge’s wife. The judge must also have appropriate “knowledge” in the domain of the emotions: He will have to know, for example, when to restrain his feelings of compassion, to mention a not unimportant psychological prerequisite for this role. In this way, each role opens an entrance into a specific sector of the society’s total stock of knowledge. To learn a role, it is not enough to acquire the routines immediately necessary for its “outward” performance. One must also be initiated into the various cognitive and even affective layers of the body of knowledge that is directly and indirectly appropriate to this role. This implies a social distribution of knowledge. A society’s stock of knowledge is structured in terms of what is generally relevant and what is relevant to specific roles. This is true of even very simple social situations. In social situations, for instance, one must have knowledge of the procedures necessary to keep this company economically afloat. The social distribution of knowledge entails a dichotomization in terms of general and role-specific relevance. Given the historical accumulation of knowledge in a society, we can assume that, because of the division of labor, role-specific knowledge will grow at a faster rate than generally relevant and accessible knowledge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The multiplication of specific tasks brought about by the division of labor requires standardized solutions that can be readily learned and transmitted. These, in turn, require specialized knowledge of certain situations, and of the means/ends relationships in terms of which the situations are socially defined. In other words, specialists will arise, each of whom will have to know whatever is deemed necessary for the fulfillment of his particular task. To accumulate role-specific knowledge, a society must be so organized that certain individuals can concentrate on their specialties. If, in a hunting society, certain individuals are to become specialists as swordsmiths, there will have to be provisions to excuse them from the hunting activities that are incumbent on all other adult males. Specialized knowledge of a more elusive kind, such as the knowledge of mystagogues and other intellectuals, requires a similar social organization. In all these cases, the specialists become administrators of the sectors of the stock of knowledge that have been socially assigned to them. At the same time, an important part of generally relevant knowledge is the typology of specialists. While the specialists are defined as individuals who know their specialties, everyone must know who the specialists are in case their specialties are needed. The man on the street is not expected to know the intricacies of the magic, inducing fertility or casting evil spells. If the need for either service arises, what he must know, however, is which magicians to call upon. #RandolphHarris 4 of17

People complain about the cost of welfare, but nothing drains resources like a bad manager. In any specialized field, you cannot afford to have someone with a poor attitude and no commitment running the show. A person who is just there for a paycheck can destroy a business from the inside. A typology of experts (what contemporary social workers call a referral guide) is thus part of the generally relevant and accessible stock of knowledge, while the knowledge that constitutes expertise is not. The practical difficulties that may arise in certain societies (for instance, when there are competing coteries of experts, or when specialization has become so complicated that the layman gets confused) need not concern us now. It is thus possible to analyze the relationship between roles and knowledge from two vantage points. Looked at from the perspective of the institutional order, the roles appear as institutional representations and mediations of the institutionally objectivated aggregates of knowledge. Looked at from the perspective of the several roles, each role carries with it a socially defined appendage of knowledge. Both perspectives, of course, point to the same global phenomenon, which is the essential dialectic of society. The first perspective can be summed up in the proposition that society exists only as individuals are conscious of it, the second in the proposition that individual consciousness is socially determined. Narrowing this to the matter of roles, we can say that, on the other hand, the institutional order is real only insofar as it is realized in performed roles and that, on the other hand, roles are representative of an institutional order that defines their character (including their appendages of knowledge) and from which they derive their objective sense. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The analysis of roles is of particular importance to the sociology of knowledge because it reveals the mediations between the macroscopic universes of meaning objectivated in a society and the ways by which these universes are subjectively real to individuals. Thus, it is possible, for example, to analyze the macroscopic social roots or a religious world view in certain collectives (classes, say, or ethnic groups, or intellectual coteries), and also to analyze the manner in which this world view is manifested in the consciousness of an individual. If one inquires into how the individual, in his total social activities, relates to the collectivity in question, the two analyses can be brought together. Such an inquiry will, of necessity, be an exercise in role analysis. Everybody knows that in Germany, the career of the young man who is dedicated to science normally begins with the position of Priivatdozent. After having conversed with and received the consent of the respective specialists, he takes up residence on the basis of a book and, usually, a rather formal examination before the faculty of the university. Then he gives a course of lectures without receiving any salary other than the lecture fees of his students. It is up to him to determine, within his venia legendi, the topics upon which he lectures. In the United States of America, the academic career usually begins in quite a different manner, namely, by employment as an “assistant.” This is similar to the great institutes of the natural sciences and medical faculties in Germany, where usually only a fraction of the assistants tries to habilitate themselves as Privatodozenten and often only later in their career. Particularly, this contrast means that the career of the academic man in Germany is generally based upon plutocratic prerequisites. For it is extremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself to the conditions of the academic career. He must be able to endure this condition for at least a number of years without knowing whether he will have the opportunity to move into a position which pays well enough for maintenance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

In the United States of America, where the bureaucratic system exists, the young academic man is paid from the very beginning. To be sure, his salary is modest; usually, it is hardly as much as the wages of a semi-skilled laborer. Yet, he begins with a seemingly secure passion, for he draws a fixed salary. As a rule, however, notice may be given to him just as with German assistants, and frequently he definitely has to face this should he not come up to expectations. These expectations are such that the young academic in America must draw large crowds of students. This cannot happen to a German docent; once one has him, one cannot get rid of him. To be sure, he cannot raise any “claims.” However, he has the understandable notion that after years of work, he has a sort of moral right to expect some consideration. He also expects—and this is often quite important—that one have some regard for him when the question of the possible habilitation of other Privatdozenten comes up. Whether, in principle, one should habilitate every scholar who is qualified, or whether one should consider enrollments, and hence give the existing staff a monopoly to teach—that is an awkward dilemma. It is associated with the dual aspect of the academic profession. In general, one decides in favor of the second alternative. However, this increases the danger that the respective full professor, however conscientious he is, will prefer his own disciples. If I may speak of my personal attitude, I must say that I have followed the principle that a scholar promoted by me must legitimize and habilitate himself with somebody else at another university. However, the result has been that one of my best disciples had been turned down at another university because nobody there believed this to be the reason. A further difference between Germany and the United States of America is that in Germany, the Privatdozent generally teaches fewer courses than he wishes. According to his formal right, he can give any course in his field. However, to do so would be considered an improper lack of consideration for the older docent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

As a rule, the full professor gives the “big” courses, and the docent confines himself to secondary one. The advantage of these arrangements is that during his youth, the academic man is free to do scientific work, although this restriction of the opportunity to teach is somewhat involuntary. In America, the arrangement is different in principle. Precisely during the early years of his career, the assistant is absolutely overburdened just because he is paid. In a department of German, for instance, the full professor will give a three-hour course on Goethe, and that is enough, whereas the young assistant is happy if, besides the drill in the German language, his twelve weekly teaching hours include assignments of, say, Uhland. The officials prescribe this curriculum, and in this, the assistant is just as dependent as the institute assistant in Germany. Of late, we can observe distinctly that the German universities in the broad fields of science develop in the direction of the American system. The large institutes of medicine or natural science are “state capitalist” enterprises, which cannot be managed without very considerable funds. Here, we encounter the same condition that is found wherever capitalist enterprise comes into operation: the “separation of the worker from his means of production.” The worker, that is, the assistant, is dependent upon the implements that the state puts at his disposal; hence, he is just as dependent upon the head of the institute as is the employee in a factory upon the management. For, subjectively and in good faith, the director believes that this institute is “his,” and he manages its affairs. Thus, the assistant’s position is often as precarious as that of any “quasi-proletarian” existence and just as precarious as the position of the assistant in the American university. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Those who fail in their once-bornness, we said, want to have another chance at being born. It often seems as though they want to be made over by the same mothers who give physical birth to them; but this, as we can now see, would be too literal an assumption. For that “first birth,” to which all of their symptoms are related, is the emergence of their consciousness as individuals, a consciousness born from the interplay of recognitions. Whoever is the maternal attendant to that early phase is man’s first “environment,” and whatever environment is then first experienced as such remains associated with “mother.” On the security of that first polarization of a self and a maternal matrix are built all subsequent securities. “Mother” is the person (or the persons) who knows how to convincingly offer provision and screening: the provisions of food, warmth, stimulation in answer to the infant’s searching mouth, skin, and senses; and the screening of the quality and quantity of his intake to avoid both over-and under-stimulation. The new human being, therefore, experiences his appetites and aversions together with the personal care (and care means provision and caution) he gets. They form his first world; but so do those moments when he feels uncared for, alone with his discomfort and his rage. For these, however, he has at his disposal signals with an immediate appeal to the mothers, which sooner or later bring more or less response from her: the regularity and predictability of her responses are the infant’s first world order, the original paradise of provision. During the first year of life, the reality of the provider thus gradually emerges from the original matrix as a coherent experience, a verified fact, a sound investment of love and trust—and the infant has matured enough to experience coherently, verify reasonably, and invest courageously. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

This bipolarity of recognition is the basis of all social experience. Let nobody say that it is only the beginning, it passes, and it is, after all, childish. Man is not organized like an archaeological mound, in layers: as he grows, he makes the past part of all future, and every environment, as he once experienced it, part of the present environment. Dreams and dreamlike moments, when analyzed, always reveal the myriad past experiences which are waiting outside the gates of consciousness to mingle with present impressions. Man, at all times, wants to be sure that the original bipolarity is intact, especially when he feels tired, doubtful, unsure, alone—a fact which has been utilized by both theology and psychoanalysis. In that first relationship, man learns something which most individuals who survive and remain sane can take for granted most of the time. Only psychiatrists, priests, and born philosophers know how sorely that something can be missed. I have called this early treasure “basic trust”; it is the first psychosocial trait and the fundament of all others. Basic trust in mutuality is that original “optimism,” that assumption that “somebody is there,” without which we cannot live. In situations in which such basic trust cannot develop in early infancy, children die mentally. They do not respond nor learn; they do not assimilate their food and fail to defend themselves against infection, and often they die physically as well as mentally. One may well claim for that earliest meeting of a perceiving subject with a perceived object (which, in turn seems to “recognize” the subject) the beginning of all sense of identity; this meeting thus becomes the anchor-point for all the developments which culminate, at the end of adolescence, in the establishment of psychosocial identity. At that point, an ideological formula, intelligible both in terms of individual development and of significant tradition, must do for the young person what the mother did for the infant: provide nutriment for the soul as well as for the stomach, and screen the environment so that vigorous growth may meet what it can manage. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Of all the ideological systems, however, only religion restores the earliest sense of appeal to a Provider, a Providence. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, no prayer indicates this more clearly than “The Lord makes His Face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace”; and no prayerful attitude better than the uplifted face, hopeful of being recognized. The Lord’s countenance is apt to loom to sternly, and His son’s on the cross to show the enigmatic quality of total abandonment in sacrifice; but painters and sculptors fashion a faintly smiling face for the Madonna, graciously inclined toward the infant, who responds with peace and gaiety until, in the Renaissance, he stands up and, fully confident, motions away from her. We can see the search for the same smile of peace in the work of Eastern painters and sculptors, although their Buddhas seem closer to being the overall parent and child, all in one. It is art, the work of the visually gifted and the visually driven, in conjunction with religion, which puts such emphasis on the face; thought expresses the original symbiotic unity as a state of being firmly yet flexibly held, embedded in a Way. The deification of the irrational, of blood and instinct, of the beast of prey in man can be countered with the appeal of reason; arbitrary action can be countered with the written law; barbarity with the appeal to culture and humanity; the violent maltreatment of persons with the appeal to freedom, tolerance and the rights of man; the subordination of science, art and the rest to political purposes with the appeal to the autonomy of the various different fields of human activity. In each case, this is sufficient to awaken the consciousness of a kind of alliance and comradeship between the defenders of these endangered values and the Christians. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Reason, culture, humanity, tolerance, and self-determination, all these concepts which until very recently had served as battle slogans against the Church, against Christianity, against Jesus Christ Himself, have now, suddenly, and surprisingly, come very near indeed to the Christian standpoint. This takes place at a time when everything Christian is more closely hemmed in than ever before and when the cardinal principles of Christian belief are displayed in their hardest and most uncompromising form, in a form which could give the greatest offence to all reason, culture, humanity, and tolerance. And, indeed, it is precisely in inverse proportion to this oppression and to this narrowing of its field of action that Christian thought acquires the alliance of all these concepts and with it an entirely unexpected new wide field of activity. It is clear that it is not the Church that is seeking the protection and alliance of these concepts; but, on the contrary, it is the concepts that have somehow become homeless and now seek refuge in the Christian sphere, in the shadow of the Christian Church. IF we are to interpret this experience simply as a purely tactical move, as an alliance of expediency which will be dissolved as soon as the struggle is at an end, it will not correspond at all to the real. What is decisive is rather the fact that there took place a return to the origin. The children of the Church, who had become independent and gone their own ways, now, in the hour of danger, return to their mother. During the time of their estrangement, their appearance and their language have altered a great deal, and yet at the crucial moment, the mother and the children once again recognize one another. Reason, justice, culture, humanity, and all the kindred concepts seek and find a new purpose and a new power in their origin. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

This origin is Jesus Christ. In Soloviev’s story of the Antichrist, in the last days before Christ’s return, the heads of the persecuted churches discuss the question of what is for each of them the most precious thing in Christianity; the decisive answer is that the most precious thing in Christianity is Jesus Christ Himself. That is to say, that in the face of the Antichrist, only one thing has force and permanence, and that is Christ Himself. Only he who shares in Him has the power to withstand and to overcome. He is the center and the strength of the Christian Bible, of the Church, and of theology, but also of humanity, of reason, of justice and of culture. Everything must return to Him; it is only under His protection that it can live. There seems to be a general unconscious knowledge, which, in the hour of ultimate peril, leads everything which desires not to fall victim to the Antichrist to take refuge with Christ. “He that is not against us is for us,” reports Mark 9.40. Christ defines the limits of membership in Himself more widely than His disciples wish Him to do or themselves do. The particular concrete instance to which this saying of Jesus refers is the case of a man who, without himself being a disciple or follower, nevertheless casts out devils in the name of Jesus. Jesus forbade the disciples to hinder him, for “there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me,” reports Mark 9.39. Wherever the name of Jesus is still spoken, even though it be in ignorance or in the knowledge only of its objective power but without personal obedience, and even though it be only with hesitation and embarrassment, wherever this name is spoken it creates for itself a space to which the revilement of Jesus has no access, a region which still belongs to the power of Christ, where one must not interfere and hinder but where one must allow the name of Jesus Christ to do its work. It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it costs to speak this name is perhaps connected with some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent in it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is spoken, it is a protection and a claim. This is the case with all those who, in their struggle for justice, truth, humanity, and freedom, have learnt once again to speak the name of Jesus Christ, even though it is often with hesitation, with genuine fear. This name gives protection to them and to the high values for which they stand; and it is at the same time the claim to these men and to these values. “He that not with me is against me,” reports Matthew 12.30. It is the same Jesus who speaks these words. For abstract analysis, these two sayings of Jesus are in irreconcilable contradiction; but in reality, they necessarily belong together. Here again, we have living experience to prove our case; under the pressure of anti-Christian forces, there came together groups of men who confessed the faith unequivocally and who were impelled to seek a clear decision for or against Christ in the strict discipline of doctrine and of life. In their struggle, these confessing congregations could not help but perceive that the greatest of all the dangers which threatened the Church with inner disintegration and disruption lay in the neutrality of large numbers of Christians; they saw in this the true hostility to Christ. The exclusive demand for a clear profession of allegiance to Christ caused the band of confessing Christians to become ever smaller; the saying, “he that is not with me is against me,” became an actual, concrete experience of the Christian Church; and then, precisely through this concentration on the essential, the Church acquired an inward freedom and breadth which preserved her against any timid impulse to draw narrow limits, and there gathered around her men who came from very far away, and men to whom she could not refuse her fellowship and her protection; injured justice, oppressed truth, vilified humanity and violated freedom all sought for her, or rather for her Master, Jesus Christ. So now she had the living experience of that other saying of Jesus: “He that is not against us is for us.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

These two sayings necessarily belong together as the two claims of Jesus Christ, the claim to exclusiveness, the greater the freedom. However, in isolation, the claim to exclusiveness leads to fanaticism and to slavery; and in isolation, the claim to totality leads to the secularization and self-abandonment of the Church. The more exclusively we acknowledge and confess Christ as our Lord, the more fully the wide range of His domination will be disclosed to us. However, the slave of sin is not yet free; nor has he cast off the chain, “because he scoffs at it.” He is in bonds, and therefore double-minded, and for once, he may not have his own way. There is a power that binds him. He cannot tear himself loose from it. Nay, he cannot even wholly will it. For this power, too, is denied him. If you, my listener, should see such a man, although it is unlikely, for without a doubt, weakness and mediocrity are the more common, if you should meet him in what he himself would call a weak moment, but which, alas, you would have to call a better moment; if you should meet him when he had found no rest in the desert, when the giddiness passes away for a moment, and he feels an agonizing longing for Good; if you should meet him when, shaken in his inner most being, and not without sadness, he was thinking of that man of single purpose who even in all his frailty still wills the Good: then you would discover that he had two wills, and you would discover his painful double-mindedness. Desperate as he was, he thought: Lost is lost. However, he could not help turning around once more in his longing for the Good. How terribly embittered he had become against this very longing, a longing that reveals that, just as a man in all his defiance has not power enough wholly to lose himself from the Good, because it is the stronger, so he has not even the power wholly to will it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Perhaps you may even have heard that desperate one say, “Some good went down with me.” When a man meets his death by drowning, as he sinks, without being quite dead, he comes to the surface again. At least a bubble comes out of his mouth. When this has happened, then he sinks dead. That bubble was the last breath, the last supply of air, that could make him lighter than the sea. So, with that remark. In that remark, the last hope of salvation expired. In that remark, he gave himself up. Was there still concealed in this thought a hope of salvation? Hidden in the soul, was there still in this thought a possible link with salvation? When a remark is pronounced in confidence to another man (oh, terrible misuse of confidence, even if the desperate one only misused it against himself!), when this word is heard, then he sinks forever. Alas, it is horrible to see a man rush toward his own destruction. It is horrible to see him dance on the rim of the abyss without any intimation of it. However, this clarity about himself and about his own destruction is even more horrible. It is horrible to see a man seek comfort by hurling himself into the whirlpool of despair. However, this coolness is still more horrible: that in the anxiety of death, a man should not cry out for help, “I am going under, save me”; but that he should quietly choose to be a witness to his own destruction! Oh, most extreme vanity, not to wish to draw man’s eyes to himself by beauty, by riches, by ability, by power, by honor, but to wish to get his attention by his own destruction, by choosing to say of himself what at most pity in all sadness may venture to say of such a person at his grace, “Yet, some good went down with him.” In moments of crisis, the doubleness of the human mind becomes painfully clear. We cling to illusions, hoping to extract some advantage from the very forces that are destroying us, unwilling to admit that the Good—the rational, the humane, the lawful—is the one thing we never fully willed. Yet in the instant of danger, even if only for a fleeting moment, the other will becomes visible: the part of us that recognizes what must be done. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

This same clarity appears in emergency situations. When lives are at stake—when rescue or the prevention of fire spread is involved—there is no room for hesitation, sentimentality, or the false comfort of appearances. Property damage becomes irrelevant. The only rational response is decisive action. The threat of collapsing walls is present at every structure fire, but when you combine an enormous blaze in a row of old buildings, a swelling crowd, and a fire department stretched thin trying to save an entire neighborhood, the danger multiplies. That was the situation one August afternoon when a fire broke out at the “lower works” of a glass plant at the west end of Broadway. The alarm came in around 5:20 p.m. As the firemen left the station, they could already see the towering black smoke and knew they were facing a battle. The fire had begun at the west end of a row of warehouses and was rapidly consuming the adjoining structures. By the time the department arrived, all three warehouses were burning, threatening nearby homes and the rest of the abandoned factory. Captain X positioned himself near the east wall, trying to save the old office building and prevent the fire from advancing into the neighborhood. Thousands of people had gathered, edging dangerously close to the flames. Working alone, Captain X had to stop his hose several times to push the crowd back. As he turned again toward the fire, the wall suddenly collapsed, showering him with bricks and debris. Partially burned and pinned beneath the rubble, he was dug out by many of the same people whose lives he had just saved. Witnesses said he had a moment of warning but used it not to save himself, but to shove several people out of harm’s way before the wall came down on him. He was treated for leg injuries and survived. Despite the scale of the fire, no one else was hurt, and the blaze was contained to the warehouses. By morning, only tottering brick walls remained. The buildings were never rebuilt. This story is not just about a fire. It is about what real responsibility looks like. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

The Winchester Mansion

There are mysteries that hide in shadows, and then there is the Winchester Mansion—a place where the shadows seem to move on their own. Visit, and you’ll understand why its story refuses to die. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

March 9, 2026 11:36 pm