Since no human has a natural authority over one’s fellow human, and since force does not gives rise to any right, conventions therefore remain the basis of all legitimate authority among humans. If, says, Grotius, a private individual can alienate one’s liberty and turn oneself into the slave of a master, why could not an entire people alienate its liberty and turn itself into the subject of a king? There are many equivocal words here which need explanation, but let us confide ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or sell. A man who makes oneself the slave of someone else does not give oneself; one sells oneself, at least for one’s subsistence. However, why does a people sell itself? Far from furnishing one’s subjects with their subsistence, a king derives one’s own from them alone, and according to Rabelais, a king does not live cheaply. Do subjects then give their persons on the condition that their estate will also be taken? I fail to see what remains for them to preserve. It will be said that the despot assures one’s subjects of civil tranquility. Very well. However, what do they gain, if the wars one’s ambition drags them into, if one’s insatiable greed, if the oppressive demands caused by one’s ministers occasion more grief for one’s subjects than their own dissension would have done? What do they gain, if this very tranquility is one of their miseries? A tranquil life is also had in dungeons; is that enough to make them desirable? The Greeks who were locked up in the Cyclops’ cave lived a tranquil existence as they awaited their turn to be devoured. To say that a human gives oneself gratuitously is to say something absurd and inconceivable. If only for the fact that one who commits it does not have one’s wits about one, such an act is illegitimate and null. To say the same thing of an entire populace is to suppose a populace composed of madmen. Madness does not bring about right. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

Even if each person can alienate oneself, one cannot alienate one’s children. They are born humans and free. Their liberty belongs to them; they alone have the right to dispose of it. Before they have reached the age of reason, their father can, in their name, stipulate conditions for their maintenance and for their well-being. However, one cannot give them irrevocably and unconditionally, for such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature and goes beyond the rights of paternity. For an arbitrary government to be legitimate, it would therefore be necessary in each generation for the people to be master of its acceptance or rejection. However, in that event this government would no longer be arbitrary. Renouncing one’s liberty is renouncing one’s dignity as a human, the rights of humanity and even its duties. There is no possible compensation for anyone who renounces everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of humans. Taking away all liberty from one’s will is tantamount to removing all morality from one’s actions. Finally, it is a vain and contradictory convention to stipulate absolute authority on one side and a limitless obedience on the other. Is it not clear that no commitments are made to a person from whom one has the right to demand everything? And does this condition alone not bring with it, without equivalent or exchange, the nullity of the act? For what right would my slave have against me, given that all one has belongs to me, and that, since one’s right is my right, my having a right against myself makes no sense? Grotius and others derive from war another origin for the alleged right of slavery. Since, according to them, the victor has the right to terminate the vanquished, these latter can repurchase their lives at the price of their liberty—a convention all the more legitimate, since it turns a profit for both of them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

However, clearly this alleged right to terminate the vanquished does not in any way derive from the state of war. Humans are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason that humans living in their original state of independence do not have sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war. It is the relationship between things and not that between humans that brings about war. And since this state of war cannot come into existence from simple personal relations, but only from real [proprietary] relations, a private war between one human and another can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no constant property, nor in the social state, where everything is under the authority of laws. Fights between private individuals, duels, encounters are not acts which produce a state. And with regard to private wars, authorized by the ordinances of King Louis IX of France and suspended by the Peace of God, they are abuses of feudal government, an absurd system if there ever was one, contrary to the principles of natural right and to all sound polity. War is not therefore a relationship between one human and another, but a relationship between one state and another. In war private individuals are enemies only incidentally: not as humans or even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the homeland but as its defenders. Finally, each state can have as enemies only other states and not humans, since there can be no real relationship between things of disparate natures. This principle is even in conformity with the established maxims of all times and with the constant practice of all civilized peoples. Declarations of war are warnings not so much to powers as to their subjects. The foreigner (be one kind, private individual, or a people) who robs, kills or detains subjects of another prince without declaring war on a prince, is not an enemy but a brigand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Even in the midst of war a just prince rightly appropriates to oneself everything in an enemy country belonging to the public, but respects the person and goods of private individuals. One respects the rights upon which one’s own rights are founded. Since the purpose of war is the destruction of the enemy state, one has the right to terminate the defenders of that state so long as they bear arms. However, as soon as they lay down their arms and surrender, they cease to be enemies or instruments of the enemy. They return to being simply humans; and one no longer has a right to their lives. Sometimes a state can be terminated without a single one of its members being vanquished. For war does not grant a right that is unnecessary to its purpose. These principles are not those of Grotius. They are not based on the authority of poets. Rather they are derived from the nature of things; they are based on reason. As to the right of conquest, the only basis it has is the law of the strongest. If war does not give the victor the right to massacre the vanquished peoples, this right (which one does not have) cannot be the basis for the right to enslave them. One has the right to terminate the enemy only when one cannot enslave one. The right to enslave one does not derive from the right to vanquish one. Hence it is an iniquitous exchange to make one buy one’s life, to which no one has any right, at the price of one’s liberty. In establishing the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery one the right of life and death, is it not clear that one falls into a vicious circle? Even if we were to suppose that there were this terrible right to terminate everyone, I maintain that neither a person enslaved during wartime not a conquered people bears any obligation whatever toward its master, except to obey one for as long as it is forced to do so. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

In taking the equivalent of one’s life, the victor has done one no favour. Instead of endling one’s life unprofitably one ends one usefully. Hence, far from the victor having acquired any authority over one beyond force, the state of war subsists between them just as before. Their relationship itself is the effect of war, and the usage of the right to war does not suppose any peace treaty. They have made a convention. Fine. However, this convention, far from destroying the state of war, presupposes its continuation. Thus, from every point of view, the right of slavery is null, not simply because it is illegitimate, but because it is absurd and meaningless. These words, slavery and right, are contradictory. They are mutually exclusive. Whether it is the statement of one human to another human, or one human to a people, the following sort of talk will always be equally nonsensical. I make a convention with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; and, for as long as it pleases me, I will observe it and so will you. One of the principle interpersonal problems for people afflicted with depression is rejection from other people. Depressed people are hypothesized to induce a negative mood in their interactional partners through a process of emotional contagion. This hypothesis is predicated on the assumption that it is an irritating, negative experience to interact with a depressed person. This is because of the depressed person’s excessive reassurance-seeking behaviours. Initially others are thought to react to these with supportiveness, but as their irritation with the depressed person grows, they respond with increasingly nongenuine support and reassurance. As a consequence of the negative mood induced through interaction with the depressed person, other people eventually respond with outright rejection and avoidance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Depressed people experience a great deal of rejection from others. The interpersonal rejection of depressed people has thus been characterized as a reliable and robust phenomenon. This interpersonal rejection effect associated with depression appears to be moderated by a number of different variables. For example, depressed males elicit more rejection from others, especially other females, than do depressed females. Some evidence also indicates that friends are less rejecting of depressed persons than strangers; and that other people who assumes a “helper” role are less rejecting; and those who rely on advice giving, and joking with the depressed person, are more rejecting. Other findings on moderators of the depression-rejection effect indicate that physically attractive depressed targets elicit less rejection from others, and depressed people who are low in self-esteem and seek reassurance from their partners are especially likely to elicit rejection. Depressed people may actually seek and elicit negative reactions from other people. Self-verification theory holds that people are motivated to preserve self-views to enhance their sense of predication and control. For depressed persons, self-confirming feedback would take the form of negative appraisals from others, or rejection since depressed people generally hold negative self-views. Indeed, a sizable body of research indicates that depressed people actually seek and desire negative feedback from other people. In a sample of child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients, symptoms of depression, but not anxiety, were positively associated with interest in receiving negative feedback from others. The quest for self-verification can perpetuate a state of depression: “Eventually, a depressogenic cycle may develop: The receipt of negative feedback will indue increased levels of depressive affect and related symptoms, which in turn will increase self-focus and the salience of negative self-views, thereby perpetuating the cycle. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

As psychologically damaging as interpersonal rejection may be, this type of feedback may actually be sought after by depressed people. Self-verification theory is not the only tenable explanation for depressed people’s desire for negative feedback. A related possibility is that people who are depressed and/or have low self-esteem may find security in associating with others who have a less than flattering view of them. Being viewed favourable could create a sense of tension and anxiety in such a person, because others would be expected eventually to discover the person’s “true” self, and presumably would be let down. This may create fear of rejection. On the other hand, being in a relationship with those who view the self negatively may be reassuring, since there is no need to worry about leaving a bad impression and being discovered as undesirable. Interactional perspectives on depression also suggests that depressed people induce a negative mood in others through interpersonal interactions. This has come to be known as the emotional contagion hypothesis. Several experiments designed to test this hypothesis have failed to document this negative mood induction effect (exempli gratia), although it may become more evident over repeated interactions with a depressed target person. Meta-analysis provides somewhat strong support for the hypothesis that depressed people induce a negative mood in others through social interaction. There is evidence that depressed people may actually produce symptoms of depression, not just a negative mood state, in other people with whom they have relationships (exempla gratia roommates, neighbours, spouses, et cetera). Indeed it is common to observe significant associations between dating partners’, roommates’, and spouses’ symptoms of depression. Misery loves company. However, rightfully, findings such as these must be interpreted with caution, as they could be the results of assortative mating (id est, depressed people seeking out other depressed people to form a relationship with) or reactions to common stressors. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Through structural equation modeling with longitudinal data, there is evidence that the experience of common stressors can explain the relationship between partners’ levels of depression better than the direct effect from one partner’s depression to other’s can. In terms of assortative mating, there is substantial evidence indicating that people have a preference for mates with psychological distress similar to their own. Studies on depression in particular suggest that depressed people tend to marry other depressed people. Compelling evidence for this phenomenon came from a study showing not only that depressed people were married to other depressed people, but that the first-order relatives of these depressed spouses also exhibited increased prevalence of mood disorders. This implies that depression ran in the families of these people, and thus it is likely that each spouse brought depression into such a marriage, rather than becoming depressed as a result of marriage to a depressed spouse. With these important caveats in mind, it should be noted that some scientific evidence shows what appears to be the direct transmission of depression from one person to another. In one of the few studies with a design appropriate for demonstrating a causal relationship between interaction with a depressed person and contagion of depressive symptoms, it was demonstrated that over the course of 3 weeks, roommates of depressed students became more depressed themselves. This study provides tantalizing evidence to suggest that depressed people’s ill effects on others may reach far beyond simple negative mood induction, and may perhaps extend to the induction of depression itself. #RandolpHarris 8 of 15

Another hypothesis in this interactional perspective on depression is that depressed people excessively seek reassurance from others, and that this reassurance seeking is irritating to others. A substantial body of data now exists to suggest that reassurance seeking is common in depressed people and can have corrosive relational effects. The tendency for depressed people to seek reassurance from others may be driven by their increased experience of negative life events and low self-esteem. The consequences of excessive reassurance seeking from others include an increase in the experience of minor stressors, which in turn predicts increases in subsequent depressive symptoms. Excessive reassurance seeking is the interpersonal linchpin in depression—responsible for both the contagion of depression and interpersonal rejection from others. Another component of this interactional perspective on depression is that that to receive empirical attention is the key assumption explaining why rejection from others serves to create, maintain, or worsen a state of depression in the recipient of that rejection. It has been demonstrated that depressed people are actually aware of other people’s reactions towards them, and negative interpersonal feedback can exacerbate their negative mod state. It has also been subsequently demonstrated that increased depressive symptoms following partner devaluation were particularly pronounced among dating women who had either low self-esteem or tendencies toward excessive reassurance seeking. Furthermore, depressed people are quite astute at detecting insincere positive feedback from others. Collectively, these studies show that depressed people are most likely aware of the reactions that other exhibit toward them, and that these negative reactions can exacerbate feeling and symptoms of depression. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go,” reports Joshua 1.9. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

Are you pretending to be something you are not, trying to be what everybody else wants you to be, living up to their expectations and following their dreams for your life? When one uses one’s creative powers one copies, in one’s limited way, the World-Mind. However, to the extent that one uses the to bring misery, injury, and perversity to others, or to oneself, one copies the opposing force. Ultimately, one must find fault with oneself when one seeks to trace the cause of most of one’s troubles. However, this will require one to bring great moral courage to the examination of one’s life course. For the personal ego is an inveterate alibi-hunter. If one is to overcome its insidious suggestions, its slippery arguments, one must see oneself in the worst light. It is not necessary that one should be conscious of one’s virtues, but it is necessary that one should be conscious of one’s faults. The ego’s interference shows itself in practical life no less than in mysterious life. Under its influence, people create a false and favourable mental picture of a situation, or of a person. They then expect one or the other to yield results that by their very nature could not be yielded. This leads to disappointment and unhappiness within themselves. Or the same people create a false but unfavourable picture and then severely criticize another for faults which do not exist outside the picture itself. This leads to disharmony and friction with others. From this simple instance we may see that the elimination of egotistic interference—a goal that philosophic discipline sets for itself—is not merely a theoretical affair for dreamers or hermits with nothing else to do, but is a practical affair promising great practical benefits for everyone who has to live or work in the World. The charge that philosophy is useless can only be made by those who have failed to inform themselves sufficiently about it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Our only enemies are those inside ourselves. They are our weakness and vices, our lower passions and intellectual deformities. It is better to fight them than to fight other humans. When the last word of the last argument against the realization of principles has been uttered, it will be found that all the obstacles lie inside and not outside us. There are mountains of selfishness, ignorance, and inertia in the human heart, but—as Jesus pointed out—faith can remove them. All history—recent, medieval, ancient, Occidental, and Eastern—tells us that we do not have to look very deep into the hearts of humans to find the presence of tigers, demons, savages, and brute creatures. The struggles and conflict, with humans and between them, come from the ego’s presence. The philosopher has to look very far into human history and very deep into human nature for the ultimate causes of human errors. The ego is behind each point of resistance in a human which holds one down from advancing further on this quest. What lies at the root of all these errors in conduct and defects in character? It is the failure to understand that one is more than one’s body. It is, in one word, materialism. It is a human’s own internal defects which shows their faces in many of the external troubles that beset one. Yet it is hard for one to accept this truth because one’s whole life-habit is to look outwards, to construct defensive alibis rather than to engage in censorious self-inquisitions. However, be assured that there is a cause for every decree of Providence. Whatever good or evil God creates, do not in any place or circumstance quarrel with one’s action or be aggrieved in thy heart. Therefore, the aspirant who is really earnest about the quest should develop the attitude that one’s personal misfortunes, troubles, and disappointments must be traced back to one’s own weakness, defects, faults, deficiencies, and indisciplines. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Let one not blame them on other persons or fate. In this way one will make the quickest progress whereas by self-defending or self-justifying or self-pitying appointment of blame to causes outside oneself, one will delay or prevent it. For the one mean clinging to the ego, the other means giving it up. Nothing is to be gained by such flattering self-deception while much may be lost by it. One must bring oneself to admit frankly that one oneself is the primary cause of most of one’s ills, as well as the secondary cause of some of the ills of others. One must recognize that the emotions of resentment, anger, self-pity, or despondency are often engendered by a wounded ego. Instead of reviling fate at each unfortunate event, one should analyze one’s moral and mental make-up and look for the weaknesses which led to it. One will gain more in the end by mercilessly accusing one’s own stubbornness in pursuing wrong courses than by taking shelter in alibis that censure other people. Like a stone in a shoe which one stubbornly refuses to remove, the fault still remains in one’s character when one stubbornly insists on blaming things or condemning persons for its consequences. In this event the chance to eliminate it is lost, and the same dire consequences may repeat themselves in one’s life again. Therefore, do not copy anybody. Just be yourself. Be who God created you to be. God does not want a duplicate of someone else. God wants an original. That truth will set you free. God wants people to see who you are. That is all God requires you to be. And that is all He expects of you, as well. You may have some faults, some interpersonal issues you and God are refining. However, remember, God is in the process of changing you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

If you choose to be happy with who God made you to be, and make a decision that today you are going to be the best you can be, God will pour out His favour in your life. Do not let the labours you have assumed on God’s account break your spirit. Do not let troubles God has sent you get you terribly down. God’s promises will strengthen and console you at every turn. God is flush enough to reward you beyond all means and measures. And remember this. You will not have to labour long for this, nor will you have to be dragged down by your dolors. Keep watch for a little while, and then you will see a swift end to all evils. The hour will come when all labour and tumult will cease. The passage of time will be short and pass quickly. In the meantime, do what you are doing; no need to stop. Labour faithfully in God’s Word. Write, read, sing, sigh, shush, pray, behave virilely against a contrary. Eternal Life is worth fighting for, large battles and small. Peace will surely come, but when? That is known only to the Lord. However, when it does come, then there will be no day, no night; only perpetual light, infinite clarity, firm peace, and safe rest. Then you will not be able to ask, as Paul asked he Romans (7.24), “Who will free me from this death ride in my carcass?” Nor will you be able to whoop “Woe!” as the Psalmist liked to preface important sayings (120.5), “my journey has been delayed once again!” As Isaiah partially foresaw (25.7-8), Death will take a header on thick ice, and Salvation will coruscate on thin ice. Anxiety will evanesce, and there will appear in her place Jollity, Beatitude, and all the other grand companions in the Heavenly Society. You should see the perpetual crows of the Saints in Heaven! Once the Contemptibles in this World, they got to join in the glory of the next World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

As for you, My dear friend, you should immediately humble yourself. Stay in that lowly but not unlovely position until you come to the inevitable conclusion: You are subject to everyone and everything else. This you must do before you ever again assume a position of authority over another. Another thing. Do not waste your time watching all the days of your life to be happy ones. If you want to make hay with God, then thank Him profoundly for all the days of toil and trouble He has sent you. After all is said and done between you and God, to be accounted as nothing among humans—that should be your greatest loot! If only you would get the full flavour of these remarks and take them profoundly to heart! Then you would no dare utter a single syllable against them. When Eternal Life is the goal, should not all back-breaking tasks be borne with a grin? To gain or lose Heaven—that is not your normal task. Therefore, life your face to Heaven, and what you will see? All God’s Saints! While they were on Earth, it was just one battle after another; that is the way the Letter to the Hebrew put it (10.32). Now they rejoice, and they are refreshed; they are free from care and ready to rest. And they will remain with Jesus Christ without end in His Father’s kingdom; that is the promise He made in the Upper Room, and Matthew was the recordist that night (26.29). Knowing that You have a tremendous plan for my life gives me confidence to use the gifts and talents You have given me, Father. I appreciate my parents and others who have sown good things in my life, but it is my time to shine, my time to fulfill my destiny, and to become all that You intended for me to be. “As for you, keep in your heart what you have heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the first dwells and remains in you, then you will dwell in the Son and in the Father [always]. Ans this is what He Himself has promised us—the life, the eternal [life],” reports 1 John 2.24-25. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

I lie alone remembering changes how suddenly crystals grew from water falling. I hold my face beyond surprising rains. Because everyone can touch and see the body, whereas few can sense a mind, through prayer unusual powers can be displayed. Once must begin this work by accepting the tenet that one is not the body, only a tenant in the body. Otherwise one may fall into the danger of the inability to achieve mystical experience or practice spiritual thinking. Though God in the heights and the depths be potent, yet how can a nation at once be born? The radiant One shall redeem His people, and then at the evening it shall be morn! And up to Mount Zion shall march her saviours, for Zion hath travailed and bringeth forth, a voice is proclaiming in all her borders, thy tent-place enlarge both to south and north, Thy dwelling extend unto far Damascus, thy sons and thy daughters again to take, exult and be joyful, O rose of Sharon, beholding the sleepers of Hebron wake. Return unto Me, and be saved, O America, if only today ye would hear My voice! A man hath sprung forth, and he Branch his name is—yea, David himself, ‘tis King David, rejoice! Up, up! in the dust lie no longer buried! Ye dwellers in ashes awake and sing! The desolate city shall rise imperial to hail as aforetime her ransomed King. The name of the wicked shall God extinguish—He grants His anointed celestial grace. Then make of our seed an eternal people, preserving forever King David’s race. “For with God nothing is ever impossible and no word from God shall be without power or impossible of fulfillment,” reports Luke 1.37. A few days pass. The experience itself has now lodged in the shadows of memory. What is left to one as the after-effect of the Glimpse? What does one really possess as the gain from it? Only those who have felt it can know completely satisfying nature of the love which flows to and fro between the ego and the Overself at such enkindled moments. They may be gone the same day but they will reflect themselves in a whole lifetime’s aspiration thereafter. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

Now selling! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.  Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!

Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included! 

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