Educationists in mind, we know nothing about intelligence, in the same sense that medical doctors know next to nothing about health. That is why doctors do not concern themselves with health, and give all their attention to relieving us of sickness. Indeed, their definition of health is the absence of sickness. This is a perfectly sensible way for them to approach matters and accounts in part for the success they have had compared to teachers. By concentrating on the elimination of sickness, doctors give a focus to their objective and procedures that teachers have not been able to match. Something quite similar may also be said of lawyers. When have you ever heard of someone consulting a lawyer in order to improve the quality of justice or good citizenship—of which, in any case, they know no more than the grocer down the block. They trouble themselves about injustice and bad citizenship, of which they know more than anyone else, and which, it turns out, are much more profitable fields of expertise. Doctors and lawyers, in other words, are painkillers. They are sought out by people who in one way or another have found themselves in trouble and are in need of remedies. This, then, is the strategy we propose for educationists—that we abandon our vague, seemingly arrogant, and ultimately futile attempts to make children intelligent, and concentrate our attention on helping them avoid being unintelligent. By changing the way we talk about our role as teachers, we provide ourselves with necessary constraints and realizable objectives. To return to the medical analogy: The physician knows about sickness and can offer specific advice about how to avoid it. Do not smoke, do not consumer too much salt or saturated fat, get exercise, and so forth. We are proposing that the study and practice of education adopt this paradigm precisely. The educationist should become an expert in folly and be able to prescribe specific procedures for avoiding it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

We grant that, unlike the study of sickness and injustice, the study of ignorance has rarely been pursued in a systematic way. However, this does not mean that the subject has no history. Everyone practices stupidity, including our own, should provide educationists with a sense of humility and, incidentally, assurance that they will never become obsolete. Stupidity is reducible. At present, educationists consume valuable time in pointless debates over whether or not intelligence is fixed, whether it is mostly genetic or environmental, and even how much of it different races have. Such debates are entirely unnecessary about stupidity. Stupidity is a form of behavior. It is not something we have; it is something we do. Unlike intelligence, it is neither a metaphor nor a hypothetical construct whose presence is inferred by a score on a test. We can see stupidity, and we can heart it. And it is possible to reduce it presence by changing behavior. This should provide educationists with a sense of potency. Stupidity is mostly done with the larynx, tongue, lips, and teeth; which is to say, stupidity is chiefly embodies in talk. It is true enough that our ways of talking are controlled by the ways we manage our minds, and no one is quite sure what “mind” is. However, we are sure that the main expression of mind is sentences. When we are thinking, we are mostly arranging sentences in our heads. When we are thinking stupidly, we are arranging stupid sentences. Even when we do a nonverbal stupid thing, we have preceded the action by talking to ourselves in such a way as to make us think the acts is reasonable. The word, in a word, brings forth the act. This provides educationists with a specific subject matter: the study of those ways of talking that lead to unnecessary mischief, failure, misunderstanding, and pain. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

A sense of humility, a sense of potency, a specific subject matter. If educationist adopt the metaphor of educationist as a painkiller, this is precisely what doctors and lawyers have, and this is what is to be gained. However, of course, this would not be the end of the matter, just the beginning. Two more giant steps are needed to complete the transformation. First, we must construct an anatomy of stupidity, including a thorough taxonomy of it. Just as doctors have identified, named, and described forms of sickness, we must identify, name, and describe forms of stupidity. Then, of course, we must invent two kinds of curricula: one intended for those who teach education for use in schools in various subjects and for children of various ages. The curricula must be thought of as strategies for releasing students from the pain of both practicing stupid talk and being victimized by it. Stupidity is like sickness in that some of it we produce ourselves, like ulcers, and some of it is inflicted upon us, like COVID-19; our students need protection from both. Stupid is usually found when there is either-or thinking; overgeneralization; inability to distinguish between facts and inferences; and reification, a disturbingly prevalent tendency to confuse words with things. Some people may not approve of the word “stupidity” as a label for these linguistic practices. Apparently, they feel that the word is too harsh and judgmental to suit the dignity of an educational enterprise. Perhaps the word “balderdash,” is a sufficient compromise. In some cases, we all have unconscious habits with which we delude ourselves. Pomposity is the triumph of style over substance, and generally it is not an especially venal form of balderdash. A little pomposity at a graduation ceremony is surely bearable. However, it is by no means harmless. Plenty of people are daily victimized by pomposity—made to feel less worthy than they have a right to feel by people who use fancy words, phrases, and sentences to obscure their own insufficiencies. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Generally speaking, pomposity is not a serious affliction among the young, although they are easily victimized by it. There seems to be a correlation between pomposity and aging, as some are now discovering. Young people, however, suffer badly from a related form of balderdash—what might be called earthiness. Earthiness is based on the assumption that is you use direct, off-color, four-letter words, you somehow are speaking more truth than if you observe the proper language forms. It is the mirror image of pomposity, because, like pomposity, it hopes that people will be so dazzled by the manner of speech that they will not notice the absence of matter. When we convince ourselves that four-letter words are the natural mode of expressing sincerity or honesty or candor, earthiness becomes dangerous. The advertising industry relies heavily on a population that believes in the magical powers of words to create realities that do not exist. There are many people roaming the streets who believe that the use of Listerine will improve the dating lives, and perhaps it will. Or, if used in abundance, they may believe the Presil ProClean Intense Fresh laundry detergent will help solidify their family situation, and that is possible. Word magic is an ancient form of balderdash and is never to be taken lightly. However, there is another that is just as ancient and perhaps even more malignant: what some people call fanaticism. There is one type of fanaticism, usually called bigotry, of which I will say nothing—not only because it is so vulgar and obvious but also because teachers are very well aware of it and have made strenuous efforts to help students overcome it. However, other forms of fanaticism are not as obvious and therefore may be more dangerous. One of them is what we call Eichmannism, in honor of Adolf Eichmann, who expertly managed to transport one million human beings to the gas chamber. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Eichmannism is that form of balderdash which accepts as its starting and ending point official definitions, rules, and regulations without regard for the realities of particular situations. The language of Eichmannism is the voice of the organization, which is why it is usually polite, subdued, and even gracious—in plastic sort of way. A friend of mine actually received a letter once from a mini-Eichmann which began: “We are pleased to inform you that your scholarship for the academic year 2021-2022 has been cancelled.” Eichmannism is the cool, orderly, cynical language of the bureaucratic mentality alienated from human interests. It is especially dangerous because it is so utterly detached. That means, among other things, that some of the nicest people turn out to be mini-Eichmanns, and that includes most of us. Ironically, a version of Eichmannism may be identified in the language of its victims, people so overwhelmed by establishments and systems that they have accepted as unchangeable all the rules and regulations that bureaucrats administer. This acceptance frequently takes the form of deifying “they” and “them,” as in “They will not let me do this,” or, “There is no way of dealing with them.” The fact is that every system, no matter how impersonal, is in the end controlled by people and is therefore susceptible to modification. There is, of course, no great harm in using a word like “establishment” as long as it is understood that the term is merely a metaphor for organized power. However, to the extent that terms like “the establishment” and “the power structure” are assumed to mean a non-human agent that perpetually frustrates individual human enterprise, then they are the equivalent of saying, “The Devil made me do it.” It is the greatest achievement of Eichmannism that in the end the language of the oppressor and the language of the oppressed are identical. They both end up saying, “I cannot help what I am doing.” Two other varieties of balderdash require a word or two of explanation here, and one of them is what is usually called superstition. Superstition is ignorance presented under the cloak of authority. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

A superstition is a belief, usually expressed in definitive terms, for which there is no verifiable, factual basis; for instance, that they country in which you live is a finer place, all things considered, than all other countries. Or that the religion into which you were born confers upon you some special standing with the cosmos that is denied to other people. The teaching profession, it grieves us to say, has generated dozens of similar superstitions—for example, the belief that people with college degrees are educated, or the belief that students who are given lessons in grammar will improve their writing, or that one’s knowledge of anything can be objectively measured. For many, the most perilous of all these superstitions is the belief, expressed in a variety of ways, that the study of literature and other humanistic subjects will result in one’s becoming a more decent, liberal, tolerant, and civilized human being. Whenever someone alludes to this balderdash in my presence, one must try to remind oneself that during the last four decades men and women with Ph.D.s in the humanities and social sciences, many of them working for the Pentagon, have been responsible for terminating more people in any given week than the Klan has managed since its inception. Furthermore, there is an exceedingly depressing form of balderdash that never seems to diminish in popularity, namely, sloganeering. Sloganeering consists largely of ritualistic utterances intended to communicate solidarity. The utterances themselves may have meanings quite contrary to those the sloganeers intend—as in the mercifully obsolete expression “Power to the People.” Very few sloganeers who used this expression could possibly have wanted the people to have all that power since, were it possible, most of the people probably would have put an immediate end to campus dissent, and various forms of liberation and activism, and other troublesome political movements. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

What “Power to the People” really meant, of course, was “Power to Our people,” a perfectly legitimate sentiment provided you have made clear to yourself and others that is what you are saying. The major problems with slonganeering, whether shouted from a picket ling or convention hall, or displayed on a car bumper, is that it is a substitute for thought, indeed a repudiation of thought. The young are afflicted badly with this sort of balderdash, of course, and if we could get them to restrict its use to cheering at football games, we would be making some progress. However, as long as slogans are used to simulate ideas, no matter in whose name, we have a serious problem in need of treatment. Now, we know that the ways in which we have stated these forms of stupidity are inadequate. Nor do we claim that these are necessarily the most crippling habits of mind that afflict us. Even if some of them were, we assure you that we have no special expertise in imagining how we could get ourselves and our students to avoid them. These are meant to be taken only as examples of the behaviors we might identify as the focus of our activities as educationists. Education as the art of healing the mind is in its infancy. In saying this, we intend no disrespect to the great educationists of the past. For at least 2,500 years, there were men and women called doctors of medicine, many of them brilliant and some of them useful. And yet, prior to this century, the whole history of medicine was simply the history of the placebo effect. Doctors have become effective, systematic healers only within the recent memory of living people. Perhaps in fifty years we shall be able to say the same of educationists. By its own annoyance, society creates delinquent behavior and delinquents. If a child, who does not know what he is, is authoritatively told that he is a delinquent, he obediently conforms to this role too, especially when it involves exclusion from nondelinquent playmates. A spell in a “reform” school increases the chances of returning to some other correctional institution on a more serious charge, and almost guarantees belonging to a gang, for it deepens fatalism and throws one in with congenial companions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

If there were no jails there would, in time, be less crime; for a long time philosopher have been pointing that out; but the popular wisdom will not buy it. The social creation of the delinquent character is a matter of the very highest importance and deserves a book to itself. Consider what happens. There are a number of quite different behaviors, some really harmful and antisocial, some indifferent and even performed innocently, yet all forbidden. When, however, they are all tarred with the same brush, the salient fact about them all becomes their defiance, culpability, and punishability. Vice becomes “vertical”: is a boy practices “self-love,” smokes, plays truant, he might as well steal, joy ride, hustle, use narcotic, commit burglaries, etcetera. Such a boy no longer has friends, but mutually blackmailing accomplices. A spectacular example of this social creation of felony is the illegality of marijuana, which increases contact with punishers of addictive drugs; and the intransigent attitude toward heroin as a criminal rather than a socio-medical problem guarantees worse consequences still. Once the process of accounting for every available square inch of terrain and every raw material has begun, it is necessary to convince people to want the converted products. On the environmental end of the equation, the goal is to turn raw materials in the ground, or the ground itself, into a commodity. On the personal end of the equation, the goal is to convert the uncharted internal human wilderness into a form that desires to accumulate the commodities. The conversation process within the human is directed at experience, feeling, perception, behavior, and desire. These must be catalogued, defined and reshaped. The idea is to get both ends of the equation in synchrony, like standard-gauge railways. The human becomes the terminus of the conversation of plants, animals, and minerals into objects. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

The conversation of natural into artificial, inherent in our economic system, takes place as much inside human feeling and experience as it does in the landscape. The more you smooth out the flow, the better the system functions and, in particular, the more the people who activate the processes benefit. In the end, the human, like the environment, is redesigned into a form that fits the needs of the commercial format. People who take more pleasure in talking with friends than in machines, commodities and spectacles are outrageous to the system. People joining with their neighbors to share housing or cars or appliances are less “productive” than those who live in isolation from each other, obtaining their very own of every object. Any collective act, from sharing washing machines to car-pooling to riding buses, is less productive to the wider system in the end than everyone functioning separately in nuclear family units and private homes. Isolation maximizes production. Human beings who are satisfied with natural experience, from sexuality to breast feeding to cycles of mood, are not as productive as the not-so-satisfied, who seek hygiene sprays, chemical and artificial milk, drugs to smooth out emotional ups and downs, and commodities to substitute for experience. As long as the process of mediating between people and natural nonconsumer experience is encouraged, the big wheel keeps turning and we all turn with it. Not long ago, we learned from a laboratory experiment which mirrored this process of reshaping needs to fit environment. Some chimpanzees had been isolated, one to a room, and were being taught to communicate with a team of scientists by way of symbols. Whenever they had a need or a desire they would push buttons. If they wanted a banana, they located a button marked with a symbol of a banana, pushed it and a banana came down a chute. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

 Other buttons had other symbols. There was one for water and one for changes in lighting. There was even one that requested physical affection. When the chimp pushed it, a human scientist would enter the room, hug and play with the chimp for a time, and then go back out the door. The chimpanzees’ World of experience was reduced to what they could ask for with these buttons. What could be requested, of course, was limited to what the scientists had thought to provide. Since cost was a factor in the experiment, the scientist did not attempt to duplicate the kids of experiences the chimps formerly enjoyed in the forests. The scientists provided the experiences which were convenient for them to provide in a lab. I think there were twelve in all. Apparently, at least for the time being, these few experiences were sufficient to keep the animals satisfied, although it is well known that there is an extraordinarily high death rate (even suicide rate) among all confined animals. This is especially true of the more intelligent ones, such as dolphins and monkeys. There is an even higher lethargy rate, as a visit to any zoo reveals. The scientific purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate that as the scientists switched a symbol from one button to another button—let us say a banana symbol was switched from button three to button ten—the animal would notice the switch had take place. It would “read” the symbol accurately and immediately push the newly appropriate button. This was hailed as a significant breakthrough because it showed that these animals had the ability to abstract. This is, they were able to go through mental associative processes, just as we can, and could thereby be trained more quickly to follow the scientists’ routines. To us, however, the experiment meant only that the chimp in the lab was undergoing an accelerated version of human history, from concrete to abstract. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

More important and more poignant, it meant that chimpanzees, like any other confined animals, will do whatever is necessary to survive and will make the best of a bad situation that is totally out of control. Confinement itself, the removal of a creature from its natural habitat into a rearranged World where its ordinary techniques for survival and satisfaction are no longer operative, produces several inevitable results: The creature become dependent for survival upon whoever controls the new environment. It will use it intelligence to learn whatever new tricks are necessary to fit that system. If it takes tricks and changes to stay alive, then that is what it takes. The creature becomes focused upon (addicted to) whatever experiences remain available in the new environment. The creature therefore reduces its own mental and physical expectations to fit what can be gotten. Confined creatures that cannot fit this pattern go crazy, revolt or die. As the study of the Internet on psychological and neurological affect of humans is being studied, there have been some fascinating discoveries, as the has been shown to cause extensive brain changes. The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. The daily use of computers, smartphones, search engines, and other such tools “stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. People’s brains change in response to Internet use. Researchers recruited twenty-four volunteers—a dozen experienced Web surfers and a dozen novices—and scanned their brains as they performed searches on Google. (Since a computer will not fit inside a magnetic resonance imager, the subjects were equipped with goggles onto which were projected images of Web pages, along with small handheld touchpad to navigate the pages.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The scans revealed that the brain activity of the experienced Googlers was much broader than that of the novices. In particular, the computer-savvy subjects used a specific network in the left front part of the brain, known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while the Internet-naïve subjects showed minimal, if any, activity in this area. As a control for the test, the researchers also had the subjects read straight text in a simulation of book reading; in this case, scans reveled no significant differences in brain activity between the two groups. Clearly, the experienced Net users’ distinctive neural pathways had developed through their Internet use. The most remarkable part of the experiment came when the tests were repeated six days later. In the interim, the researchers had the novices spend an hour a day online, searching the Net. The new scans revealed that the area in their prefrontal cortex that had been largely dormant now showed extensive activity—just like the activity in the brains of the veteran surfers. After just five days of practice, the exact same neural circuitry in the front part of the brain became active in the Internet-naïve subjects. Five hours on the Internet, and the naïve subject had already rewired their brains. If our brains are so sensitive to just an hour a day of computer exposure, what happens when we spend more time online? One other finding of the study sheds light on the differences between reading Web pages and reading books. The researchers found that when people search the Net they exhibit a very different pattern of brain activity than they do when they read book-like text. Book readers have a lot of activity in regions associated with language, memory, and visual processing, but they do not display much activity in the prefrontal regions associated with decision making and problem solving. Experienced Net users, by contrast, display extensive activity across all those brain regions when they scan and search Web pages. The good news here is that Web surfing, because it engages so many brain functions, may help keep older people’s minds sharp. Searching and browsing seems to “exercise” the brain in a way similar to solving crossword puzzles. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

However, the extensive activity in the brains of surfers also points to why deep reading and other acts of sustained concentration become so difficult online. The need to evaluate links and make related navigational choices, while also processing a multiplicity of fleeting sensory stimuli, requires constant mental coordination and decision making, distracting the brain from the work of interpreting text or other information. Whenever we, as readers, come upon a link, we have to pause, for at least a split second, to allow our prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether or not we should click on it. The redirection of our mental resources, from reading words to making judgments, may be imperceptible to us—our brains are quick—but it has been shown to impede comprehension and retention, particularly when it is repeated frequently. As the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex kick in, our brains become not only exercised but overtaxed. In a very real way, the Web returns us to the time of scriptura continua, when reading was a cognitively strenuous act. In reading online, we sacrifice the facility that makes deep reading possible. We revert to being mere decoders of information. Our ability to make the rich mental connections that for when we read deeply and without distraction remains largely disengaged. Computer use may provide some with more intense mental stimulation than does book reading. The neural evidence could even lead a person to conclude that reading books chronically understimulates the senses. However, while this is true, the interpretation of differing patterns of brain activity may be misleading. It is the very fact that book reading “understimulates the senses” that makes the activity so intellectually rewarding. By allowing us to filter out distractions, to quiet the problem-solving function of the frontal lobes, deep reading becomes a form of deep thinking. The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind, not a buzzing one. When it comes to the firing of our neurons, it is a mistake to assume that more is better. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Our brains incorporate two very different kinds of memory: short-term and long-term. We hold our immediate impressions, sensations, and thoughts as short-terms memories, which tend to last only a matter of seconds. All the things we have learned about the World, whether consciously or unconsciously, as stored as long-term memories, which can remain in our brains for a few days, a few years, or even a lifetime. One particular type of short-term memory, called working memory, plays an instrumental role in the transfer of information into long-term memory and hence in the creation of our personal store of knowledge. Working memory forms, in a very real sense, the contents of our consciousness at any given moment. We are conscious of what is in working memory and not conscious of anything else. If working memory is the mind’s scratch pad, then long-term memory is its filing system The contents of our long-term memory lie mainly outside of our consciousness. In order for us to think about something we have previously learned or experienced, our brain has to transfer the memory from long-term memory back into working memory. We are only aware that something was stored I long-term memory when it is brought down into working memory. Long term memory serves as a big warehouse of facts, impressions, and events, that it plays little part in complex cognitive processes such as thinking and problem-solving. However, the brain scientists have come to realize that long-term memory is actually the seat of understanding. It stores not just facts but complex concepts, or “schemas.” By organizing scattered bits of information into patterns of knowledge, schemas give depth and richness to our thinking. Our intellectual prowess is derived largely from the schemas we have acquired over long periods of time. We are able to understand concepts in our areas of expertise because we have schemas associated with those concepts. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schemas. However, the passage from working memory to long-term memory also forms the major bottleneck in our brain. Unlike long-term memory, which has a vast capacity, working memory is able to hold only a very small amount of information. Current evidence suggests that we can process no more than about two to four elements at any given time with the actual number probably being at the lower rather than the higher end of this scale. Those elements that we are able to hold in working memory will, moreover, quickly vanish unless we are able to refresh them by rehearsal. Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that is the challenge involved in transferring information from working memory into long-term memory. By regulating the velocity and intensity of information flow, media exert a strong influence on this process. When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can control by the pace of our reading. Through our single-minded concentration on the text, we can transfer all or most of the information, thimbleful by thimbleful, into long-term memory and forge the rich associations essential to the creation of schemas. With the Net, we face many information faucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from one faucet to the next. We are able to transfer only a small portion of the information to long-term memory, and what we do transfer is a jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream from one source. The information following into our working memory at any given moment is called our “cognitive load.” When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to store and process the information—when the water overflows the thimble—we are unable to retain the information or to draw connections with the information already stored in our long-term memory. We cannot translate the new information into schemas. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Our ability to learn suffers, and our understanding remains shallow. Because our ability to maintain our attention also depends on our working memory—we have to remember what it is we are to concentrate on, as a highly cognitive load amplifies the distractedness we experience. When our brain is overtaxed, we find distractions more intruding. (Some studies link attention deficit disorder, or ADD, to the overloading of working memory.) Experiments indicate that as we reach the limits of our working memory, it becomes harder to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information, signal from noise. We become mindless consumers of data. Difficulties in developing an understanding of a subject or a concept appear to be heavily determined by working memory load, and the more complex the material we are trying to learn, the greater the penalty exacted by an overloaded mind. There are many possible sources of cognitive overload, but two of the most important are extraneous problem-solving and divided attention. Those also happen to be two of the central features of the Net as an informational medium. Using the Net may exercise the brain the way solving crossword puzzles does. However, such intensive exercise, when it becomes out primary mode of thought, can impede deep learning and thinking. Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle; that is the intellectual environment of the Internet. Sexual liberation presented itself as a bold affirmation of the senses and of undeniable natural impulse against our puritanical heritage, society’s conventions and repressions, bolstered by Biblical myths about original sin. From the early sixties on there was a gradual testing of the limits on expression of pleasures of the flesh, and they melted away or had already disappeared without anybody’s having noticed it. The disapproval of parents and teachers of youngsters’ sleeping or living together was easily overcome. The moral inhibitions, the fear of disease, the risk of carrying a child, the family and social consequences of premarital pleasures of the flesh and the difficulty of finding places in which to have it—everything that stood in its way suddenly was no longer there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Students, particularly the girls, were no longer ashamed to let the public see they were attractive and had fulfilment in their lives. The kind of cohabitations that were dangerous in the twenties, and risqué or bohemian in the thirties and forties, became as normal as membership in the Girl Scouts. This emancipation had in its intention and its effect the accentuation of the difference between the genders. The immediate promise of equality was, simply, happiness understood as the release of energies that had been stored up over millennia during the dark night of repression. This also meant that parents once had come to an understanding to “Never darken our door again,” to wayward daughters, whereas now some rarely protest when boyfriends sleep over in their homes. A very nice, very normal young woman responded, “Because it is no big deal.” That says it all. This passionlessness is the is the most striking effect, or revelation, of the sexual revolution, and it makes the younger generation more or less incomprehensible to older folk. Do not confuse the sexual revolution with feminism. Feminism, on the other hand, was, to the extent it presented itself as liberation, much more a liberation from nature than from convention or society. Therefore it was grimmer, unerotic, more of an abstract project, and required not so much the abolition of law but the institution of law and political activism. Instinct did not suffice. The negative sentiment or imprisonment was there, but what was wanted, as Dr. Freud suggested, was unclear. The woman’s movement’s crucial contention is that biology should not be destiny, and biology is surely natural. It is not self-evident, although it may be true, that women’s roles were always determined by human relations of domination, like those underlying slavery. Feminists also tend to believe that male passions for pleasures of the flesh have become sinful again because it culminates in sexism. Some men, and a small percentage of women, have failed to read the Emancipation Proclamation. It sounds to be like feminism is more inclined to be more conservative, like the Victorians, but to give women protection under the law. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

In the genteel nineteenth-century World, women were asexual creatures who ungirdled and surrendered their unwilling loins to their husbands solely to fulfill their wifely duties and procreate. From many accounts, they performed this unpleasant task with even less enthusiasm than they churned butter or embroidered butterflies onto the edges of tea towels. Many women formed Boston marriages, which was the recognized term for committed and usually chaste romantic relationships between women. Most were unmarried, professional working women, but the occasional wife also pledged herself to another female as well as to her husband. Romantic friendships, complete with longing gazes, passionate letters, and emotional outbursts, were the first stage of Boston marriages. The feature of romantic friendships that transformed them into Boston marriages was cohabitation, though some Boston marriages were conducted from separate dwellings. It was, of course, not unheard for single women to live together, particularly after the American Civil War. Chaste or unchaste, what differentiated Boston marriages from other relationships was that they were founded on love, equality, mutual support, common professional passions and ambition, and personal fulfillment achieved in the absence of a controlling male. Out of the darkness of the nineteenth century, they miraculously created a new and sadly short-lived definition of a woman who could do anything be anything, go anywhere she please. During séances, many of these women would reveal to their spiritualist medium their approval of their womenfolk’s relationships and they were urged to travel together to restore their health and happiness. Boston marriages provided women with a soul mate and a life companion. A rock-solid partnership based on reciprocal values, interests, and goals, and bounded by unjealous affection and respect, and for over a quarter of a century it provided a safe haven for most gifted women. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

It was quite necessary from women to know that there is someone who was deeply devoted to her as a person, and who also had the capacity and the depth of understanding to share, vicariously, the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort, recognizing the heartache, the great weariness of mind and body, the occasional morbid despair it may involve—someone who cherishes her and what she is trying to create, as well. However, there was also some concern from their female spouses that their Boston marriage disrupted the flow of life, and caused too much preoccupation with “Us” and too much emotional upset. Yet most enjoyed the reasoned workings of their informed minds, abetted by the stirrings of their passionate hearts. Today, in a startling reversal, the anti-science banner is flapped most frenetically by elements of the left. It is chiefly found in departments of literature, social science, women’s studies, and the humanities in America and European universities. Indeed, while the left in America hotly opposes the religious right on such emotionally charged social issues as terminating a pregnancy, or public subvention of religious schools, the same left links arms with the right in today’s guerrilla war on science. None of this is to suggest scientists are above reproach, that fraud never happens in a laboratory, that irresponsible, even dangerous experiments never occur, or that the benefits of science are shared equally by rich and poor. Moreover, the rapid global expansion of scientific research has outpaced the ability of governments, universities and the profession itself to monitor fraudulent projects—another example of de-synchronization. Correcting these faults is surely necessary. However, the anti-science war has far wider goals. It arrives at a moment when scientific breakthroughs are coming faster and faster in field after field. With the decoding of the human genome alone, the World’s knowledge base is dramatically expanded and the rate of likely “gain” or accumulation of knowledge is hastened. However, we are standing on a great peak and new country lies at our feet. However, not everyone wants to explore it. Instead, they are desperate to cabin, crib, and confine the new science. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

We perceive a community great in numbers, mighty in power, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; true life, not mere breathing space; full liberty, not mere elbow room; real happiness, not that of pasture beasts; actively participating in the civic, social and economic progress of the country. Fully sharing and increasing its spiritual possessions and acquisitions, doubting its joys, halving its sorrows, yet deeply rooted in the soil of America; clinging to its past, working for its future, true to its aspirations, one in sentiment with their brethren wherever they are; attached to the land of their father, true to its tradition, faithful to its aspirations, one I sentiment with their brethren wherever they are; attached to the land of their fathers as the cradle and resting place of the American spirit; humans with straight backs and raised heads, with big hearts and strong minds, with no conviction crippled, with no emotional stifled; receiving and resisting, not yielding like wax to every impress from the outside, but blending the best they possess with the best they encounter; not a horde of individuals, but a set of individualities, adding a new note to the richness of American life, leading a new current into the stream of American civilization; not a formless crowd of taxpayers and voters, but a sharply marked community, distinct and distinguished; esteemed for its traditions, valued for its aspirations; a community such as the Prophet of the Exile saw in his vision: and marked will be their seed among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; everyone that will see them will point to them as a community blessed by the Lord. Time is when humans live as natural beings. In those days of humanity’s beginnings, no vision of goodness, no dream of justice or mercy had as yet been born within the human heart. As once in the physical World, so then in the realm of the spirit—darkness was upon the face of the deep. However, even as the spirit of God hovered over chaos, so it moved through the confused souls of primitive humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

You’re going to fall in love: #Havenwood is our newest addition to the #CresleighHomes family, and we’re so excited to introduce you to Residence Two!

Click the link in bio to read the complete profile! ☝️☝️☝️ https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-two/