Randolph Harris II International

Home » American Dream » The Act of Creation is a Miracle of Which One Hears, but in Which One Does Not Believe!

The Act of Creation is a Miracle of Which One Hears, but in Which One Does Not Believe!

May be an image of outdoors

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism, in my mind, is an increasingly important thing to people. You may give us your symptoms. We will make the diagnosis. And we, the Establishment—for which I make no apologies for being part of—will implement the solution. Not only is darkness known through light, but conversely, light is known through darkness. As only that which works is real, so only good is real in the sense of exiting. Good is tantamount to convenient, sufficient, appropriate, suitable. One ought therefore to translate “omne agens agit propter bonum” as: “Every agent works for the sake of what suits it.” That is what the devil does too, as we all know. He too has an “appetite” and strives after perfection—not in good but in evil. Even so, one could hardly conclude from this that his striving is “essentially good.” However, not every situation where a person or a group has uncontrolled power over another generates sadism. Many—perhaps most—parents, prison guards, school teachers, and bureaucrats are not sadistic. For any number of reasons, the character structure of many individuals is not conducive to the development of sadism even under circumstances that offer an opportunity for it. Persons who have a dominantly life-furthering character, will not easily be seduced by power. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

May be an image of car and outdoors

What matters is the intensity of the sadistic passion within the character structure of a given person. There are many in whose characters sadistic elements can be found, but balanced by such strong life-furthering trends that they cannot be classified as sadistic characters. Not rarely in such individuals the internal conflict between the two orientations results in an enhanced sensitivity toward sadism and in the reactive formation of allergic reactions against all its forms. (Traces of their sadistic tendences may still show up in unimportant, marginal behaviour, slight enough to escape awareness.) There are others with a sadistic character in whim sadism is at least balanced by countervailing forces (not merely repressed), and while they may feel a certain amount of enjoyment in the control of helpless people, they would not participate in or get pleasure from actual torture and similar atrocities (except under extraordinary circumstances, such as mass frenzy). This can be demonstrated by the attitude of the Hitler regime toward the sadistic atrocities it ordered. It had to keep the extermination of Jews and Polish and Russians civilians a close secret known only to a small group of the SS elite, but kept from the vast majority of the German population. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

May be an image of indoor

In many speeches by Himmler and other executors of atrocities, it was stressed that the killings must be done in a “humane” way, without sadistic excesses, sine otherwise it would be too repugnant even to the SS men. In some instances orders were given that Russian and Polish civilians who were to be killed had to be put through a short, formal trial in order to give their executors the feeling that the shooting was “legal.” While all this sounds absurd in its hypocrisy, it is nevertheless a proof that the Nazi leaders believed that large-scale sadistic acts would be revolting to most otherwise loyal adherents of the regime. A great deal of material has come to light since 1945, but a systematic investigation of the degree to which the majority of Germans were attracted by sadistic acts—even though they avoided knowing about them—has not yet been made. If one isolates them from the whole character structure, sadistic character traits can never be understood. They are part of a syndrome that has to be understood as a whole. For the sadistic character everything living is to be controllable; living beings become things. Or, still, more accurately, living beings are transformed into living, quivering, pulsating objects of control. Their responses are forced by the one who controls them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

May be an image of indoor

The sadist wants to become the master of life, and hence the quality of life should be maintained in one’s victim. This is, in fact, what distinguishes one from the destroying persons. The destroyer wants to do away with a person, to eliminate one, to destroy life itself; the sadist wants the sensation of controlling and choking life. Another trait of the sadist is that one is stimulated only by the helpless, never by those who are strong. It does not cause any sadistic pleasure, for instance, to inflict a wound on an enemy in a fight between equals, because in this situation the infliction of the wound is not an expression of control. For the sadistic character there is only one admirable quality, and that is power. One admires, loves, and submits to those who have power, and one despises and wants to control those who are powerless and cannot fight back. The sadistic character is afraid of everything that is not certain and predictable, that offers surprises which would force one to spontaneous and original reactions. For this reason, one is afraid of life. Life frightens one precisely because it is by its very nature unpredictable and uncertain. It is structured but it is not orderly; there is only one certainty in life: that all humans die. Love is equally uncertain. To be loved requires a capacity to be loving oneself, to arouse love, and it implies always a risk of rejection and failure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

May be an image of indoor

Because love and unpredictable and may be unrequited, this is why the sadistic character can “love” only when one controls, id est, when ne has power over the object of one’s love. The sadistic character is usually xenophobic and neophobic—one who is strange constitutes newness, and what is new arouses fear, suspicion, and dislike, because a spontaneous, alive, and not-routinized response would be required. Another element is the syndrome is the submissiveness and cowardice of the sadist. It may sound like a contradiction that the sadist is a submissive person, and yet not only is it not a contradiction—it is, dynamically speaking, a necessity. One tries to compensate for this lack by having power over others, by transforming the worm one feels oneself to be into a god. However, even the sadist who has power suffers from one’s human impotence. One may kill and torture, but one remains loveless, isolated, frightened person in need of a higher power to whom one can submit. For those one step below Hitler, the Fuhrer was this highest power; for Hitler himself, it was Fate, the laws of Evolution. This need to submit is rooted in masochism. Sadism and masochism, which are invariably linked together, are opposites in behavioristic terms, but they are actually two different facets of one fundamental situation: the sense of vital impotence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

May be an image of outdoors

Both the sadist and the masochist need another being to “complete” them, as it were. The sadist makes another being an extension of oneself; the masochist makes oneself the extension of another being. Both seek a symbiotic relationship because neither has one’s center in oneself. While it appears that the sadist is free of one’s victim, one needs the victim in a perverse way. Because of the close connection between sadism and masochism it is more correct to speak of a sadomasochistic character, even though the one or the other aspect will be more dominant in a particular person. The sadomasochist has also been called the “authoritarian character,” translating the psychological aspect of one’s character structure into terms of a political attitude. This concept finds its justification in the fact that persons whose political attitude is generally described as authoritarian (active and passive) usually exhibit (in our society) the traits of the sadomasochistic character: control of those below and submission to those above. The sadomasochistic character cannot be fully understood without reference to Dr. Freud’s concept of the “anal character,” enlarged by one’s disciples, especially by K. Abraham and Ernest Jones. Dr. Freud (1908) believed that the anal character manifested itself in a syndrome of character traits: stubbornness, orderliness, and parsimony, to which punctuality and cleanliness were added later. He assumed that this syndrome was rooted in the “anal libido” that has its sources in the anal erogenous zone. The character traits of the syndrome were explained as reaction formations or sublimation of the aims of this anal libido. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

May be an image of indoor

Various traits of the syndrome are manifestations of the distance-keeping, controlling, rejecting, and hoarding mode of relatedness (“hoarding character”). This does not imply that Dr. Freud’s clinical observations with respect to the particular role of everything pertaining to feces and bowel movement was not correct. On the contrary, in decades of psychoanalytic observation of individuals, I have found Dr. Freud’s observations full confirmed. The difference lies, however, in the answer to the following: Is the anal libido the source of the preoccupation with feces and, indirectly, of the anal character syndrome, or is the syndrome the manifestation of a special mode of relatedness? In the latter case, the anal interest has to be understood as another, but symbolic expression of the anal character, not as its cause. Feces are, indeed, a very fitting symbol: they represent that which is eliminate from the human life process and which no longer serves human’s life. Those wishing to speculate might consider that the fascination with feces and smells constitutes a kind of neurophysiological regression to an evolutionary stage in which the animal was oriented more by smell than by sight. The hoarding character is orderly with things, thoughts and feelings, but one’s orderliness is sterile and rigid. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

May be an image of indoor

The hoarder cannot endure things to be out of place and has to put them in order; in this way one controls space; by irrational punctuality one controls time; by compulsive cleanliness one undoes the contact one had with the World which is considered dirty and hostile. (Sometimes, however, when no reaction-formation or sublimation has developed, one is not overclean but tends to be dirty.) The hoarding character experiences oneself like a beleaguered fortress; one must present anything from going out and save what is inside the fortress. One’s stubbornness and obstinacy is a quasi-automatic defense against intrusion. The hoarder tends to feel that one possesses only a fixed quantity of strength, energy, or mental capacity, and that this stock is diminished or exhausted by use and can never be replenished. One cannot understand the self-replenishing function of all living substance, and that activity and the use of our powers increases our strength while stagnation weakens it; to one, death and destruction have more reality than life and growth. The act of creation is a miracle of which one hears, but in which one does not believe. One’s highest values are order and security; one’s motto: “There is nothing new under the sun.” In one’s relationship to others intimacy is a threat; either remoteness or possession of a person means security. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

May be an image of indoor

The hoarder tends to be suspicious and to have a special sense of justice that in essence says: “Mine is mine and yours is yours.” The anal-hoarding character has only one way to feel safe in one’s relatedness to the World: by possessing and controlling it, since one is incapable of relating oneself by love and productivity. That the anal-hoarding character has the close relationship to sadism described by classic psychoanalysts is amply borne out by the clinical data, and it makes little difference whether one interprets this connection in terms of the libido theory or in terms of the relatedness of humans to the Word. It is also evidenced by the fact that social groups with an anal-hoarding character tend to exhibit a marked degree of sadism. Roughly equivalent to the sadomasochistic character, in a social rather than a political sense, is the bureaucratic character. In speaking here of bureaucrats, I refer to the old-fashioned, cold, authoritarian bureaucrats as they are still found in many old-fashioned schools, hospitals, prisons, railroads, and post offices. Big industry, which is also a highly bureaucratic organization, has developed an entirely different character-type—the friendly, smiling, “understanding” bureaucrat who has perhaps taken a course in “human relations.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

May be an image of indoor

 The reasons for this change lie in the nature of modern industry, its need for teamwork, for avoiding friction, for better labour relations, and a number of other factors. It is not as if the new friendly bureaucrats were insincere, as if they were really sadist who smile instead of showing their real faces; in fact, the old-fashioned sadist is not very suited to be a modern bureaucrat, for the reasons just mentioned. The modern bureaucrat is not a sadist turned friendly, but one is a thing to oneself, just as other people are things for one. One feels little, either for them or for oneself, and one’s friendly treatment, while not false, is so superficial and thin as to become false. However, even this is not quite fair, because nobody really expects it to be more than superficial and thin, except perhaps for the short moment when they both smile and indulge in the delusion that this is human contact. Two extended and thorough studies of the character of the modern manager will confirm or correct these impressions. In the bureaucratic system every person controls the one below one and is controlled by the one above. Both sadistic and masochistic impulses can be fulfilled in such a system. Those below, the bureaucratic character will hold in contempt, those above, one will admire and fear. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

May be an image of indoor

One only has to look at the facial expression and the voice of a certain type of bureaucrat criticizing one’s subordinate, or frowning when one is a minute late, or insisting on behaviour that at least symbolically expresses that during office hours one “belongs” to the superior. Or one might think of the bureaucrat being the post office window and watch one’s hardly noticeable thin little smile as one shuts one’s widow at 5.30 P.M. sharp, while the last two people who have already been waiting for half an hour have to leave and come back the next day. The point is not that one stops selling stamps at 5.30 P.M. sharp: the important aspect of one’s behaviour is the fact that one enjoys frustrating people, showing them that one controls them, a satisfaction that is expressed in one’s facial expression. Needless to say, not all old-fashioned bureaucrats are sadistic. Only a depth psychological study could show what the incidence of sadism among this group is compared with nonbureaucrats or modern bureaucrats. To mention only some outstanding examples, General Marshall and General Eisenhower, both among the highest ranking members of the military bureaucracy during the second World War, were conspicuous of their lack of sadism and their genuine humane concern for the life of heir soldiers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

May be an image of outdoors

On the other hand, a number of both German and French generals in the first World War were conspicuous for the ruthlessness and brutality with which they sacrificed the lives of their soldiers for no adequate strategic purpose. In many cases the sadism is camouflaged by kindness and what looks like benevolence toward certain people in certain circumstances. However, it would be erroneous to think that the kindness is simply intended to deceive, or even that it is only a gesture, not based on any genuine feeling. To understand this phenomenon better, it is necessary to consider that most sane people wish to preserve a self-image that makes them out to be human in at least some respects. To be completely inhuman means to be completely isolated, to lose any sense of being part of humanity. Hence it is not surprising that there are many data which makes one assume that the complete absence of any kindness, friendliness, or tenderness to any human being creates, in the long run, intolerable anxiety. There are reports of cases of insanity and psychic disorders, for instance, among humans who were in the Nazi special formations and who had to kill thousands of people. Under the Nazi regime a number of the functionaries who had to carry out the orders for the mass killings suffered nervous breakdowns that were called Funktinarskrankheit (“functionaries’ disease”). #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

May be an image of indoor

I have used the words “control” and “power” in reference to sadism, but one must be clearly aware of their ambiguity. Power can mean power over people, or it can mean power to do things. What the sadist is striving for is power over people, precisely because one lacks the power to be. Many writers, unfortunately, make use of this ambiguous meaning of the words “power” and “control,” and in order to smuggle in the praise of “power over” they identify it with “power to.” Moreover, lack of control does not mean lack of any kind of organization, but only of those kinds in which the control is exploitative and the controlled cannot control the controllers. There are many examples from primitive societies and contemporary intentional communities in which there is rational authority based on rea—not manipulated—consent of all, and where relations of “power over” do not develop. To be sure, the one who has no power to defend oneself also suffers characterologically. One may become submissive and masochistic instead of sadistic. However, one’s realistic powerlessness may also be conducive to the development of virtues like solidarity and compassion, as well as to creativity. Being powerless and hence in danger of being enslaved, or having power and hence being in danger of becoming dehumanized, are two evils. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

May be an image of 1 person and indoor

Which is to be shunned the most is a matter of religious and moral or political convictions. Buddhism, the Jewish tradition starting with the Prophets, and the Christian Gospels makes a clear decision, contrary to contemporary thinking. It is quite legitimate to make subtle differences between power and nonpower, but one danger is to be avoided: that of using the ambiguous meaning of certain words to recommend serving God and Caesar simultaneously, or still worse to identify them. Obviously evil can be represented as a diminution of good, but with this kind of logic one should just as well say: The temperature of the Arctic winter, which freezes our noses and ears, is relatively speaking only a little below the eat prevailing at the equator. For the Arctic temperature seldom falls much lower than 230 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. All things on Earth are “warm” in the sense that nowhere is absolute zero even approximately reached. Similarly, all things are more or less “good,” and just as cold is nothing a diminution of warmth, so evil is nothing but a diminution of good. The privatio boni argument remains a euphemistic petitio princippii no matter whether evil is regarded as a lesser good or as an effect of the finiteness and limitedness of created things. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

May be an image of indoor

The false conclusion necessarily follows from the premise “Deus = Summum Bonum,” since it is unthinkable that the perfect food could ever have created evil. It merely created the good and the less good (which last is simply called “worse” by laymen). Just as we freeze miserably despite a temperature of 230 degrees Celsius above absolute zero, so there are people and things that, although created by God, are good only to the minimal and bad to the maximal degree. It is probably from this tendency to deny any reality to evil that we get the axiom “Omne  bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine.” This is a contradiction of the truth that one who crated the heat is also responsible for the cold (“the goodness of the less good”). We can certainly hand it to Augustine that all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their badness from being equally obvious. One could hardly call the things that have happened, and still happen, in the concentration camps of the dictator states an “accidental lack of perfection”—it would sound like mockery. Psychology does not know what good and evil are in themselves; it knows them only as judgments about relationships. “Good” is what seems suitable, acceptable, or valuable from a certain point of view; evil is its opposite. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

May be an image of kitchen

If the things we call good are “really” good, then there must be evil things that are “real” too. It is evident that psychology is concerned with a more or less subjective judgment, id est, with a psychic antithesis that cannot be avoided in naming value relationships: “good” denotes something that is not bad, and “bad” something that is not good. There are things which from a certain point of view are extremely evil, that is to say dangerous. There are also things in human nature which are very dangerous and which therefore seem proportionately evil to anyone standing in their line of fire. It is pointless to gloss over these evil things, because that only lulls ne into a sense of false security. Human nature is capable of an infinite amount of evil, and the evil deeds are as real as the good ones so far as human experience goes and so far as the psyche judges and differentiates between them. Only unconsciousness makes no difference between good and evil. Inside the psychological realm one honestly does not know which of them predominates in the World. We hope, merely, that good does—id est, what seems suitable to us. No one could possibly say what the general good might be. No amount of insight into the relativity and fallibility of our moral judgment can deliver us from these defects, and those who deem themselves beyond good and evil are usually the worst tormentors of humankind, because they are twisted with pain and fear of their own sickness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

May be an image of indoor

Today as never before it is important that human beings should not overlook the danger of the evil lurking within them. It is unfortunately only too real, which is why psychology must insist on the reality of evil and must reject any definition that regards it as insignificant or actually non-existent. Psychology is an empirical science and deals wit realities. As a psychologist, therefore, I have neither the inclination nor the competence to mix myself up with metaphysics. Only, I have to get polemical when metaphysics encroaches on experience and interprets it in a way that is not justified empirically. My criticism of the privatio boni holds only so far as psychological experience goes. From the scientific point of view the privatio boni, as must be apparent to everyone, is founded on a petitio principii, where what invariably comes out at the end is what you put in at the beginning. Arguments of this kind have no power of conviction. However, the fact that such arguments are not only used but are undoubtedly believed is something that cannot be disposed of so easily. It proves that there is a tendency, existing right from the start, to give priority to “good,” and to do so with all the means in our power, whether suitable or unsuitable. So if Christian metaphysics clings to the privatio boni, it is giving expression to the tendency always to increase the good and diminish the bad. The privatio boni may therefore be a metaphysical truth. I presume to no judgment on this matter. I must only insist that in our field of experience white and black, light and dark, good and bad, are equivalent opposites which always predicate one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

May be an image of indoor

The Infinite Reality cannot be reasoned with, but only reasoned about. It cannot even be adequately symbolized, for regarding it as a mental image, a pictured thought, is only a more refined form of idol-worship. It can only be designated. The true Godhead is unconditioned, formless, not picturable. No individual worship can reach what is utterly beyond all individual existence. No name can be given that will properly stand for what is without attributes and without limitations. In the ultimate reality there are and can be no distinctions and no differences no grades and no change. Striker, axe-bearer, splitter, hammerer: please protect me. Bolt-caster, cleaver, smasher, way-clearer: please protect me. Warrior, victor, overcomer, protector: please protect me. Please break their shields, hammerer: please dissolve their defenses, stormer; please remove their courage, thunderer. Please fight beside me as my comrade, please win through with me to victory. Tyrannical power rose up against Thy people America to compel them to forsake Thy Word, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy Scripture. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Believe it or not the key to the massive front door was made of solid gold and the keys for the other 2,000 doors of the Eighth Wonder of the World fill two water buckets. We hear stories about dark things creeping out of the shadows, about people being possessed and doing unnatural, evil things to each other. If you are like me, you have tried to see inside yourself, to find in you what you see in others. If you are like me, you have only ever seen darkness where others have light. You believe you have no soul. You believe you have no goodness in you. However, you are made of God like everyone else. I was told I have no further permission from them to make use of any records I compiled while I was in the dead center of the 160-room catacomb—spellbound by the perplexity leavened by extravagant Victorian beauty scattered along each crooked path of exploration. However, I think it is important to share these srories. There is a dim-lit storeroom stacked entirely with never-used furnishings, displays rare hand-wrought elegance from another era, finest productions of forgotten craftsmen. Here are specially designed priceless stained-glass doors and windows, some set with jewel stones; concave-convex Belgium optical cut-glass panels furnished by Tiffany; a delicate inlaid spiderweb window designed personally by the Mystery Lady of the House. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

One sees exquisite sets of daisy pattern windows from Austria and rolls of quarter-inch thick, embossed French wall-paper. No causal visitor can see it all. Palatial elegance unfolds with each turn. One gazes through oval lens windows now only magnifying the pandemonium of Winchester Boulevard. But God, I swear it, in my soul of soul, it is not greed to live again, it is that the tale is unfinished, the demon continues, and I die. I would help, I would be an angel of the Lord somehow. It was a terrifying display of power. And I realized I felt possessed. I felt she was my Queen. I was displaying possession! The Queen had the Mind Gift and opened the many doors for me that lay between us. There was something so remarkable that it was painful for me to reveal it. No one human ever knows what lies beyond true death. Sarah Winchester admired her quiet gardens, sprouting fountains and blossoming orchards. The massive, flawless mirror still stands in the reception room, now counting expressions of a million perplexed faces. Spirits can come very close to knowing; they can see bright stairways to Heaven, they can see the fruit trees of paradise, they can talk to the dead in various forms, they can glimpse the light of God, on, that is forever happening, these glimpses and glimpses of light, but they cannot really know what lies beyond true death! No one who really escapes the Earth and its Earthbound spirits ever comes back. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

 They may appear to you. They may talk to you. However, you cannot make them come from beyond death. Once they are dead, it is in their hands or God’s hands whether they appear here or not. So do not ever believe anyone who tells you one knows all about Heaven. All of the realms of the spirits and angels that will ever be known to you or to me are of the Earth, not beyond Death. You understand? People are fascinated by the ghost of a man said to have broken his neck while attempting to flee the mansion. There is sometimes a big shadow in the darkness, smelling of the winter cold, and then his warm trembling hands will wrap around your neck. There is a ghost dressed in armor who walks around the house at night. There are cold spots and objects that move from room to room of their own volition. Marvelous parqueted floors are everywhere, their intricate designs highlight optical illusion patterns assembled from as many as six different rare hardwoods, their tiny, apparently jointless segments forming polished mirror sweep of elegant harmony. Once seen it is easy to believe such a floor required the work of one man for a solid year. Connecting hallways of inlaid linoleum, trod by two million shuffling feet, show little wear. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

May be an image of outdoors

Winchester Mystery House

May be an image of tree and outdoors

Tickets for today are already SOLD OUT, but still available for tomorrow!

May be an image of indoor

Explore the 160-room mansion on the new Self-Guided Mansion Tour. The touchless, self-guided experience allows guests to independently navigate the world’s most bizarre home and expansive estate. Tickets on sale now!

🎟️ Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com