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Contracts Which God Was Never Consulted About Which He Never Signed
The origins of schizophrenic almost certainly encompass both genetic and environmental factors, which through both independent and interactive neurodevelopmental mechanisms, appear to play important roles in this disorder. In recent years, evidence has accumulated in support of a role for neurodevelopment insults in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia. The dramatic changes in brain structure and function from conception to birth underscore the particular vulnerability to both short and long-term disease outcomes. Hence, the determinations of fetal brain development—both genes and environmental factors—deserve consideration as potential risk factors for schizophrenia. Among many putative environmental risk factors that have been investigated in studies of schizophrenia, infection is generally deemed as one of the most plausible, because microbial pathogens are well-documented causes of congenital brain anomalies and behavioural disorders. For example, prenatal exposure to ruvella, toxoplasmoisis, herpes simplex virus type 2 , and other infections are known causes of developmental disorders that include, mental retardation, learning disabilities, sensorineural dysfunction, and several structural brain anomalies. There is also a relatively high prevalence documentation of schizophrenia in populations with influenza during pregnancy. Associations between schizophrenia and epidemics of maternal respiratory viral infections, measles, varicella-zoster, and polio have been reported. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Schizophrenia is a psychosis. That it to say, it is a severe mental disorder in which the person’s emotions, thinking, judgment, and grasp of reality are so disturbed that his or her functioning is seriously impaired. The symptoms of schizophrenia are often divided into “positive” and “negative.” Positive symptoms are abnormal experiences and perceptions like delusions, hallucinations, illogical and disorganized thinking and inappropriate behaviour. Negative symptoms are the absence of normal thoughts, emotions and behaviour such as blunted emotions, loss of drive, poverty of thought, and social withdrawal. The two most common functional psychoses around in defining schizophrenia are schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive illness). Bipolar disorder is an episodic disorder in which psychotic symptoms are associated with severe alternations in mood—at times elated, agitated episodes of mania, at other times depression, with physical and mental slowing, despair, guilt and low self-esteem. On the other hand, the course of schizophrenia, though fluctuating, tends to be more continuous, and the person’s display of emotion is likely to be incongruous or lacking in spontaneity. Markedly illogical thinking is common in schizophrenia. Auditory hallucinations may occur in either manic-depressive illness or schizophrenia, but in schizophrenia they are more likely to be commenting on the person’s actions or to be conversing one with another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Delusions, also, can occur in both conditions; in schizophrenia they may hive the individual the sense the he or she is being controlled by outside forces of that his or her thoughts are being broadcast or interfered with. Despite common features, different forms of schizophrenia are quite dissimilar. One person, for example, may be paranoid but show good judgment and high functioning in many areas of life. Another may be bizarre in manner and appearance, preoccupied with delusions of bodily disorder, passive and withdrawn. So marked are the differences, in fact, that many experts believe that, when the causes of schizophrenia are worked out, the illness will prove to be a set of different conditions which lead, via a final common pathway of biochemical interactions, to similar consequences. In the 2001 film, “The Cave Man’s Valentine,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, Romulus Ledbetter is a character who is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. At times, he has a beautiful mind and is able to play the piano as well as Beethoven. At other times, demons are attacking his mind, and he becomes confused and dangerous and loses touch with reality. He seriously believes that people are putting thoughts into his mind. Not all schizophrenics are dangerous, nor are they out of touch with reality. In the 2001 film, “A Beautiful Mind,” starring Russell Crow, John Nash is an extremely intelligent character who is a genius in mathematics and even works with the Pentagon to help decode messages. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
As we have been challenged by the difficulties of working with a particular group of schizophrenics, we have learned new behaviours which are facilitative. How can we initiate a relationship with such individuals? One way which most of us have come to use is the expression by the therapist of his own immediate feelings, in a way which does not impose on the client. Thus, with a very silent man, I have voiced such feelings as these: “I feel quite content with our silence this morning. Sometimes when we are not talking, I feel sort of impatient and wanting to know what is going on but this morning it feels good just to be with you, quietly.” Or with another client, “I feel that you are angry at me. I am not sure, of course, because you have not said so. However, I keep wondering why you are angry with me.” Such statements are expressed as inward musings, not as questions or demands. They may be much more extensive than these brief examples. They tend to put the therapist as a person into the relationship, without threatening the client by demands. They keep repeating in a variety of ways, “I am here. I am offering a relationship. I am a person with feelings, with perceptions. I am sensitive to you and anything you are willing to reveal about yourself.” The therapist can draw on his own momentary experiencing and find there an ever-present reservoir from which he can draw, and with which he can initiate, deepen, and carry-on therapeutic interaction even with an unmotivated, silent, or externalizing person.” However, when dealing with people who are mentally ill and making threats of brandishing sharp objects, it is best to not make any sudden moves and get to safety and to take their threats seriously because they have a tendency to snap without notice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Some of our therapists go further in their behaviour. One in particular is moving more and more toward allying himself with the hidden and unrevealed person in the schizophrenic, and openly “clobbering” the defensive shell. In his work, there is a real similarity to Rosen or Whitaker. He is sensitively and obviously committed to the person who is in hiding, of the psychotic symptoms, the fear of relating, the defenses and avoidances. Perhaps partly because this approach is congenial to him as a person, he is finding it effective. As we listen to the recorded interviews of the various therapists in our group, we are gradually broadening the repertoire of behaviours which are real for each of us in dealing with our psychotic clients, and are slowly hammering out ways of facilitating movement in the unmotivated person. There is another lesson which we as therapists have learned, and that is the patience which is necessary to elicit what Dr. Otto Rank has called the “positive will,” in an individual in whom it has never been exercised. We have come to realize that almost none of the individuals with whom we have been working have ever been affirmed themselves. “They have never, in any meaningful way, said, “I feel,” “I live,” “I have a right to be.” They have instead been passive receivers of life’s hurts, blows, and events. It takes great patience to wait for the germination and budding of the will to say, “I am, I deserve to be.” Yet the phenomenon of growth is in some respects all the more exciting because it has been so long dormant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Coming, as a number of our therapist did, from work with non-hospitalized individuals, the development of our feeling about the significance of psychotic content in our contacts is of interest. The simplest way of stating our present attitude is to day that we have learned how relatively unimportant is psychotic material. This could easily be misunderstood. The hallucination, the delusion, the bizarre language or posture has of course its significance in the psychological dynamics of the schizophrenic individual. However, in the therapeutic relationship it simply forms a more difficult language of communication. Working with a child in play therapy, his language is his behaviour, and this is often difficult to understand. Or in working with a foreign-born client, garbled phrases and mispronunciations make understanding more difficult. So it is, it seems to us, with the schizophrenic. His scrambled incoherencies, his paranoid ideas, his hearing of voices, simply represent a mode of communicating himself which is often very difficult to understand. However, we have found the difference one of degree rather than kind, and do not attach special importance, nor use special procedures when dealing with the person who is frankly psychotic in his way of expressing himself. In my first few meetings with Charles, I was very impressed. He was bright, interested and had a good grasp of psychology. In group, he was helpful, using his knowledge to lead other members to some insights. Seeing his ability, I decided he would make an ideal group assistant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The group assistant is someone who takes charge in my absence and leads discussion when I feel it is best for me to be out of the room. I thought Charles, the amateur psychologist, was a natural for the job. It was a serious mistake. In my absence, Charles began to run the group like his own private kingdom. He chose the topics, limited the times others could talk, and reprimanded those who digressed from the subject. Using his knowledge of psychology, he “psyched out” the others and called his diagnoses into play when he wanted to put someone down. Yet whenever he digressed or showed his own weaknesses, he either may lame excuses or flatly said that the group had no right to “nail” him. The other group members became furious. Sessions which started out with open sharing soon deteriorated into shouting matches. Charles often locked horns with John, a man with a short fuse and sharp tongue. Whenever John challenged his point of view, Charles would become the intellectual, backing up his arguments with “facts” and logic. In one such discussion, John angrily shouted, “I might not be able to crack your logic, twerp, but I can sure crack your head!” Finally, the problem was brought up while I was in the room. In her shy, forgiving way, Victoria said, “I really appreciate how willing Charles is to lead the group, but I sometimes think he isn’t going by the same rules we are. Don’t the rules apply to him too?” Before I could reply, John snapped, “Damn right.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
The therapist, with full humanity and poignancy, and with the patient’s explicit and voluntary consent, may have to perform a similar task: not torture, but surgery. In order for the patient to get better, his illusions, upon which is whole life is based, must be undermined so that he can live in the World which is here today, rather than in his “If Only” or “Some Day.” This is the most painful task which the script analyst has to perform: to tell his patients finally that there is no Santa Claus. However, by careful preparation, the blow can be softened and the patient may, in the long run, forgive him. One of the favourite illusions of later childhood is shaken when Jeder finds out where babies come from. In order to maintain the fiction of his parents’ purity, he has to make the reservation: “All right, but my parents do not do that.” It is difficult for the therapist to avoid seeming crass and cynical when he confronts Jeder with the fact that he was not a virgin birth, so they must have done it at least once, and if he has brothers and sisters, several times. This is equivalent to telling him that his mother betrayed him, something no man should tell another unless the other pays him to do just that. Sometimes he has the opposite task of restoring to some semblance of decency the picture which mother herself or external circumstances have smeared into degradation. And for millions of children, this illusion is an unattainable luxury, and they must exist in a bare state of psychological as well as material subsistence. The beliefs in Satan Claus, Death, and mother’s virginity may be regarded as normal because they are eagerly grasped and give spiritual nourishment to idealistic or weaker spirits whenever they are made available. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
On the other hand, confused people are betwixt because they have their own special illusions. These range from, “If you take a colonic irrigation every day, you will be health and happy,” (they could cause micro tears in your colonic lining and lead to more serious health conditions) to “If you get sick, you can prevent your father from dying. If he dies, it is because you did not get sick enough.” There are also private contracts with God, contracts God was never consulted about which He never signed; and which He could in fact refuse to sign: “If I sacrifice my children, my mother will stay healthy” is a common example, or “If I do not have any climaxes, God will send me a miracle.” The latter was institutionalized among the women of the evening of Paris as “No matter how many men I have pleasures of the flesh with, or even knowingly infect with disease, I can still go to Heaven as long as it is done in the course of business and I do not enjoy it.” A classic ploy by which the hive stimulates stupidity is the Immortality Placebo—usually sexual or financial. First, the gene-pool sets up a Moral Taboo. Moral Taboos are Magnificent Intelligent Qualification (IQ) devices because they get everyone in the hive hung up on virtue-sin. The Moral Taboo must interfere with some normal, natural, caste-behaviour. It must perversely prevent some castes from getting something that they neurologically are wired to want. Once brought into focus by prescription the Taboo becomes charged with artificial cop-sinner magnetism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Genesis, the first chapter in the Judeo-Christian Bible, clearly sets out the strategy of the Immorality Placebo—using good verses evil as fascinating distraction, a front ploy. There are two forbidden trees in the Garden of Edan. The serpent—now exposed as an agent provocateur—gets Eve and Adam to eat the fruit of the first tree, which provides the knowledge—substitute the word “hang-up”—of Good and Evil, thus forgetting about the second tree, which bears the fruit of self-actualization and immortality. Interestingly, the Immorality Placebo has been formalized by Pynchon as one of his “Proverbs for Paranoids—If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they do not have to worry about answers.” Caught between unjustifiable virtue and unacceptable crime, consumed with pity and incapable of love, a recluse deprived of the benefits of cynicism, the man of supreme intelligence is killed by contradiction. “My mind is of this World,” Ivan said; “what good is it to try to understand what is not of the World?” However, he lived only for what is not of this World, and his proud search for the absolute is precisely what removed him from the World of which he loved no part. The fact that Ivan was defeated does not obviate the fact that once the problem is posed, the consequence must follow: rebellion is henceforth on the march toward action. This has been demonstrated by Dostoievsky, with prophetic intensity, in his legend of the Gran Inquisitor. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Ivan, finally, does not distinguish the creator from his creation. “It is not God whom I reject,” he says, “it is creation.” In other words, it is God the father, indistinguishable from what He has created. (Ivan allows his father to be killed and thus chooses a direct attack against nature and procreation. Moreover, this particular father is infamous. The repugnant figure of old Karamazov is continually coming between Ivan and the God of Aliosha.) His plot to usurp the throne, therefore, remains completely moral. He does not want to reform anything in creation. However, creation being what it is, he claims the right to free himself morally and to free all the rest of mankind with him. On the other hand, from the moment when the spirit of rebellion, having accepted the concept of “everything is permitted” and “Everyone or no one,” aims at reconstructing creation in order to assert the sovereignty and divinity of man, and from the moment when metaphysical rebellion extends itself from ethics to politics, a new undertaking, of incalculable import, begins, which also springs from the same nihilism. Dostoievsky, the prophet of the new religion, had foreseen and announced it: “If Aliosha had come to the conclusion that neither God nor immortality existed, he would immediately have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not only a question of the working classes; it is above all, in its contemporary incarnation, a question of atheism, a question of the tower of Babel, which is constructed without God’s help, not to reach to the Heavens, but to bring the Heavens down to Earth.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
After that, Aliosha can, in fact, treat Ivan with compassion as a “real simpleton.” The latter only made an attempt at self-control and failed. Others will appear, with more serious intentions, who, on the basis of the same despairing nihilism, will insist on ruling the World. These are the Grand Inquisitors who imprison Christ and come to tell Him that His method is not correct, that universal happiness cannot be achieved by the immediate freedom of choosing between good and evil, but by the domination and unification of the World. The first step is to conquer and rule. The kingdom of Heaven will, in fact, appear on Earth, but it will be ruled over by men—a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Caesars, because they were the first to understand—and later, with time, by all men. The unity of all creation will be achieved by every possible means, since everything is permitted. The Grand Inquisitor is old and tired, for the knowledge he possesses is bitter. He knows that men are lazy rather than cowardly and that they prefer peace and death to the liberty of discerning between good and evil. He has pity, a cold pity, for the silent prisoner who history endlessly deceives. He urges him to speak, to recognize his misdeeds, and, in one sense, to approve the actions of the Inquisitors and of the Caesars. However, the prisoner does not speak. The enterprise will continue, therefore, without him; he will be killed. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
Legitimacy will come at the end of time, when the kingdom of men is assured. “The affair has only just begun, it is far from being terminated, and the World has many other things to suffer, but we shall achieve our aim, we shall be Caesar, and then we shall begin to think about Universal happiness.” By then, the prisoner has been executed; the Grand Inquisitor reign alone, listening to “the profound spirit, the spirit of destruction and death.” The Grand Inquisitors proudly refuse freedom and the bread of Heaven and offer the bread of this Earth without freedom. “Come down from the cross and we will believe in you,” their police agents are already crying on Golgotha. However, He did not come down and, even at the most tortured moment of His agony, He protested to God at having been forsaken. There are, thus, no longer any proofs, but faith and the mystery that the rebels reject and at which the Grand Inquisitors scoff. Everything is permitted and centuries of crime are prepared in that cataclysmic moment. From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes. The unity of the World, which was not achieved with God, will henceforth be attempted in defiance of God. However, we have not yet reached that point. For the moment, Ivan offers us only the tortured face of the revel plunged in the abyss, incapable of action, torn between the idea of his own innocence and the desire to kill. He hates the death penalty because it is the image of the human condition, and, at the same time, he is drawn to crime. Because he has taken the side of mankind, solitude is his lot. With him the rebellion of reason culminates in madness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
When one is hungry, it feels good to eat. When one is thirsty, it feels good to drink water. When the time to do so has come, it feels good to urinate and to empty one’s bowels. Physical massage and the sheer sensuality of being caressed yield pleasure not overshadowed by a climax, which is viewed by most humans as the acme of human pleasure. Although pleasure as such cannot serve as the chief purpose of life—the reality principle discussed by Dr. Freud tells us that the quest for pleasure can endanger life itself—a life without pleasure is hardly worth living. Gratification of basic needs is pleasurable in and for itself, and the capacity to feel such pleasure is one of the rewards of healthy personality. Although it may seem surprising, many persons actually dread the experience of pleasure and repress it. Such repression is most likely in person reared under puritanical regimes in which “self-indulgence” is regarded as a sin. Pleasure comes not only from the fact of satisfying basic needs, however. There is joy to be found in contemplation of beauty in music, art, and nature; in sound of birds; the sight of a child taking its first steps; the smell of new-mown hay. Another source of pleasure is to be found in the zest of accompanying action. When people engage in activities that will challenge, but not overwhelm them, zest is engendered. Thus, when a game of tennis or handball, surfing along the perfect wave, skiing down a fast slope, yield pleasure no less than that afforded by sensuous, passive massage. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Similar zest arises in those who love their work, whether it be that of an artist in the studio, a scientist in the laboratory, or a businessperson planning a sales campaign. People who experience pleasure in living do not develop the uptight, armoured bodies and grim facial expressions of those whose lives have been hard and joyless or whose religious orientation proscribes pleasure as a sin. And those who find zest in their work and play appear “childlike” or ageless—they do not grow old. Pleasure engulfs the experience of persons who have just had their hopes fulfilled, or who have just completed a valued project. The delights of winning a prize or receiving an unexpected gift are among the “highs” in life, as are the joys of finishing a difficult mountain climb or writing a book. Pleasure—whether occasioned by sensuality, physical activity, or consummation of projects—is a goal and reward of healthy personality. I cannot recall any statement by mystics—ancient, medieval, or modern—that one aspect of spiritual union is exquisite refinement. Everyone writes of its moral fruits, its religious insights—even its creativity, artistic or intellectual—but who seems to note this aesthetic effect on manners, feelings, speech, and living? That breeding and culture can contribute to spirituality may not be evident to the ascetically mystic mind or the simpler religious mind. That fastidious refinement (but not arrogant snobbish refinement) can come with inner growth may be likewise obscure. However, the long association of holiness with asceticism or with bareness of living has confused the understanding of truth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
A lifestyle touched with beauty in manners, surroundings, character, or taste, can better express what philosophy means than an ugly and unclean one. That lack of opportunity is responsible for a parts of crudeness and inferiority and immaturity is, however, obvious enough. However, it is a fact which ought not be used to cover up the correct view of these things. Good manners are not only an end in themselves, emblems of a finer personality, tokens of willingness to be of service, but also part of a means to higher spiritual attainment—the ultimate courtesy and supreme generosity of human behaviour. Ill-mannered conduct is ordinarily incompatible with spiritual realization: the cases of those Christian masters who historically behaved badly towards would-be disciples are special cases, and ought not to be taken as guides. Refinement is as valuable a quality, and as spiritual, as truth-seeking. Good manners and finer feelings, courtesy and graciousness—these inhere in one who possesses a true spirituality. It is true that many aspirants consider this to be mere surface polish, unimportant, a cloak of quite often for hypocrisy and falseness. That may be so in a number of cases. However, even it if were correct of all cases, the fact remains that the manners which aspirants adopt, the code of behaviour which they practise, possess a definite place on this quests. The Christians who regarded and used etiquette as part of their way toward inner unfoldment, as part of their path, were not wrong. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
For etiquette creates forms of conduct which not only refine and uplift the practiser’s character, but also can be used to defend his inner life—where he is developed enough to possess one—against society’s onslaughts. There is a moral element in it, too. For where etiquette trains a man sympathetically to consider the emotional reactions of other persons to his own behaviour, it transfers his point of view from an habitual selfish one to a more impersonal one. Again, by smoothing the relations between both of them, it puts the others not only more at peace with themselves but also with him. Lastly, it requires and fosters some measure of self-control. For we are not only victims of aggression from our enemies. We are just as much, or even more, victims of ourselves, attacked by our own weakness and faults. We should learn to teach children to learn to respect the requires for respect—whether it be shown to elders or to authorities, or whether it be shown to other people’s religious beliefs. Respect is something which can later grow into a higher quality and that is reverence. Through reverence we can begin to sense higher atmospheres which produce a feeling of awe whether the atmosphere be found in the beauties of nature, of music, of art, or of saints. People of the lower classes are apt to lose their temper more quickly than those of the upper classes because some have not been brought up to respect self-control or to value it and thus to respect themselves. Thus, self-respect becomes respect for one’s own higher self. The connection between the good life and good manners is not usually brought out by those who would uplift humanity spiritually, expect of course by such shining exceptions. In a period like the present—when the young generation ridicules all mention of manners, courtesy, etiquette, and so on as hollow, hypocritical, and insincere—the values so criticized must be clarified again and their connection with the higher life made plainer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is to safeguard the lives and property of the Sacramento populations from fires, natural disasters, and incidents involving hazardous materials. The department provides fire protection and emergency medical services (EMS) to the city of Sacramento. Members of the Fire Department fight fires, provide emergency medical treatment, and rescue people from dangerous situations. The department has specialized divisions that investigate fires, deal with hazardous material, and help protect the Sacramento International Airport. “There was a rooming house on Capitol Avenue. A flophouse really, a nine-story dump, filled with dozens and dozens of occupants who were less well off than the rest of us. I was lieutenant of our ladder company, and we went as an additional ladder company to the fire, which eventually went to six alarms. These people were being taken out from the inside. We consulted with the chief, and he said, ‘The guy in that window.’ He’s pointing to the eight floor, where a guy was hanging over the windowsill. Our rig was parked a block away, so I told our guys to swing it around to the other block and see if our stick can reach him from there. In the meantime, I went up the inside stairs to the eighth floor. There was not a large amount of fire to be seen, but the smoke and the heat were boiling. I found this guy, and he was barely conscious. Besides, he couldn’t walk very well because of arthritis or something. I said, ‘Okay, come on, let’s go.’ And I started to carrying him down. I was lucky, he wasn’t a heavy guy at all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“We were in the hallways when the smoke and the heat changed instantly. I knew it was going to flash, and we had to get the heck out. At any moment the fire was going to chase us. He was having trouble, so I gave him my mask, and I carried him down the inside stairway. In the street I put him on the running board on the far side of one of the trucks. Somebody brought over an inhalator, and I was trying to get the guy to take some air. Then I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital. They told me afterwards that I just went shish, boom, and that was it. In the hospital, I heard a woman doctor talking to the others. And I said to myself, ‘That’s it, an angel, I’m all done. This is it, I’ve bought it.’ The only reason the department saw fit to write me up for a medal was because I had pulmonary burns, burns down the throat and lungs. But they were not from the fire itself, they were from the heat. The difference is, I wouldn’t be sitting here today if they were from the fire itself. Just the smoke and heated gases, that’s all. I don’t think it’s a great idea to talk about the medal—it was nice, okay—but I’m no different from anybody else. Exceeding the needs and expectations of those they serve with the highest level of valor, integrity and commitment is what the Sacramento Fire Department is dedicated to doing. Please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department and you could save lives and property. They provide optimum prevention and protection to our community. It is also of utmost importance to raise your children to love God and Jesus Christ, love America and be patriotic. To help keep America strong, we must also buy American cars and other American goods and services. In order to keep our communities safe, please obey and respect law and order and treat everyone, especially your elders with dignity, and make it a point not to litter. Remember, there lives a God! Each finite creature proclaims His rule on sea and land; throughout all changing forms of nature is clearly shown His mighty hand. In every place is heard the call: The Lord of Host has made us all. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all. Remember to raise your children to love America, to love God and Jesus Christ, to respect law and order, buy goods made in America, and be kind and respectful to everyone, especially their elders. There lives a God! #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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You, Sir, Had a Mild Heart Attack Last Night!
Each of us has our own difficult journeys in the “wilderness.” Some journeys are so difficult that it might even seem unbearable at times. The man you are about to meet, not only were his conversations battles, life itself was a battle—a battle he almost lost before finding his core. His biggest disappointment in life was that his father had not been killed in the war. Charles was born in 1942, into a World turned upside down; a World of women who worked in factories while their men went to far-off countries to fight. Charles’ mother was a pale, weak woman who worked too hard and had not the strength to survive his birth. A judge put Charles into the care of his Aunt Selma, a wealthy spinster who had nothing else to do but pamper the baby, whom she considered a gift sent from Heaven to fill and delight her lonely days. The first three years of Charles’ life were as much a delight to him as they were to his aunt. His every demand was filled as quickly as the woman could get to it. He did as he pleased and Clare’s only responses were kisses, pats, hugs, and praise. However, then the way was over—and for Charles, the nightmare began. His father came home. His father had a skill which was rare among men in those days: he could type. So instead of shouldering a rifle, he sat at a typewriter in Maryland. At war’s end, he returned uninjured, but had to face two gigantic problems: unemployment and fatherhood. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The first problem he was able to solve simply by taking the lowest-paying job available. However, the second problem had no simple solutions. It never would. Charles’s nightmare because real when his father took him away from Aunt Clare and moved him into a cramped apartment in St. Louis. In their first few months together, Charles’ father was unemployed. Unsure of what he ought to allow the little boy to do, he decided the safest course was to let him do nothing which could lead to trouble. Thus, Charles heard, “Do not touch that!” and “Bad boy!” for the first time in his life. And to the extent three-year-old boys are able, Charles began to feel progressively irritated, annoyed and resentful of his father’s restrictiveness. His father eventually found a job as a clerk in a brewery and every morning left Charles in the care of an overwrought woman who had six children of her own. As the boy grew to young manhood, his resentment of his father grew to a full-blown hatred. They squabbled over everything and nothing Charles did was quite good enough for his father’s liking. In return, Charles found a little to admire in the stranger who called himself his father. The man worked hard, but was not able to rise above the position of senior bookkeeper. He had no zest for living, few friends, no accomplishments to be proud of. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
As Charles matured, he also lost much of his zest for living. He too found difficulty making friends, mainly because he argued about nearly everything. However, he did have accomplishments to be proud of. He was extremely bright and had a natural ability with numbers. In college, he majored in accounting and graduated first in his class. He accepted an offer from a huge company in New York, with a starting salary higher than the salary his father had worked twenty years to attain. The job did not last. Despite his youth and inexperience, Charles refused to follow the orders for his supervisors. He always had a better way to do things. Even when he was show to be in error, he would argue his position rather than back down. The final straw came when his supervisor overheard him advising a department head to account for supplies in a manner different from the standard. He was told to resign, but he insisted he be fired, despite the damage this would do to his record. Then Charles began taking a series of jobs in different cities, each with companies of lesser and lesser prestige. The pattern he set in his first job repeated itself. At last, even the worst companies would not have him. More from necessity than choice, he decided to go into solo practice. So he got an office, advertised a little, and business trickled in. His clients, though miffed by his heavy-handedness, saw his ability. His business grew, but his constant bickering made them throw up their hands and seek another accountant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
With the constant turnover in clientele, Charles found that he had to work punishingly hard to make a living. He was at his desk from morning until late in the evening, doing all the work himself. The tiresome schedule appealed to him. He had no social life and his only hobby was psychology, in which he was getting a Master’s degree at night. Ultimately the strain of too much work, too little sleep, and junk food took its toll. As he sat at his desk one evening, he felt a small twinge of pain just above his stomach. Indigestion, he thought, probably the result of the cheeseburger he had eaten earlier. He glanced at his watch and noted it was nine-thirty. He tried to ease the pain by breathing deeply, but his breaths came only in painful gasps. He felts a sudden chill, despite the fact that he was sweating a great deal, his shirt having become soaked in a few seconds. Frightened, Charles decided to take an Alka-Seltzer, but when he tried to rise and push his chair back, he could not. His strength was gone. He tried again, got halfway up and the World went black. When he awoke, he was laying on the floor. He glanced at his watch again: almost ten o’clock. He had been out a half-hour. However, on getting up, he felt fine. Nevertheless, he closed the books and went home. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The next day, Charles went to a doctor, thinking that he might have the beginnings of an ulcer. Not so. “Your blood enzyme test bothers me,” the doctor said with an ominously wrinkled brow. “Just to be sure, I’m going to do an EKG.” “What the heck’s that?” “Electrocardiogram. Heart test.” When the test results came back, the doctor seemed pleased with himself. “Just as I suspected. You, sir, had a mild heart attack last night. It was one of the few moments in his life that Charles could think of nothing to say. “I know what you’re thinking,” the doctor went on. “You’re only thirty-five years old, too young to have a heart attack. But I’ll be you work too hard and don’t exercise. Probably haven’t eaten a decent meal outside a restaurant in a year. Am I right so far?” One thing Charles could not do was admit someone else was right, no matter what the circumstances. “Say no more,” the doctor said, chickling. Then he turned serious. “Here it is, straight: You’re going to the hospital now. After a few days of observation, you can home—if we don’t find anything more disturbing. When you get out, no more junk food. No more sixteen-hour days. No more coffee. Get a lot of sleep, try not to get upset. This bum ticker of yours is a fact. You’re stuck with it, so you might as well live with it. There’s nothing else you can do.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Five days later, Charles left the hospital feeling a mixture of frustration and anger. The thought of taking orders from the medical man infuriated him. Yet he could not afford to do things his own way. Not with this. In this game, someone else held all the cards. That afternoon, he closed his office obediently at five, went home and fixed a salad, ate it slowly, and took a nap before going to class. For the past few weeks, the class had been discussing psychosomatic illnesses, a subject which interested Charles little. However, on this evening, he listened very, very closely. The professor was lecturing about the forms of psychosomatic illness: “The most obvious type is, of course, ulcers. People now recognize that stress, worry and overwork may give one an ulcer. However, psychologists are discovering that many other illnesses may have psychosomatic origins. People are unwilling to accept that such aliments as cancer, asthma, heart trouble and the like have their roots in psyche. One patient of mine, for example, Charles froze at the mention of the words “heart trouble.” Could his hear problem be “all in his head”? During the next few days, the thought came up repeatedly. Every time it did, it frightened him—not because he thought the condition serious, but because there was apparently nothing he could do about it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
All his life, Charles had felt able to control whatever came up. He had always been able to do something about everything. Yet in this case, there was nothing he could do. This bothered him most. The next week, Charles asked the professor a hypothetical question about a “friend” who had heart trouble and was wondering if it might be psychosomatic. The old psychologist saw through the deception and suggested Charles try therapy. He referred him to me. One of the deepest learnings in mu previous clinical work had been the tremendous pull exerted in the client by the satisfaction of learning one’s self. No matter how external the concern initially expressed by the client—the problem of his wife’s behaviour, or the choice of a vocational goal—once he had experienced the bitter-sweet satisfaction of self-exploration, this inevitably became the focus of therapy. I do not find this to be true with our schizophrenic clients. Even when we have established a relationship, even when the individual experiences some new facet of himself, and understands himself a bit more clearly, he does not necessarily continue along this line. For reasons I am not sure I understand, he does not find himself, except very occasionally, drawn to the exploring and experience of self. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Instead, he is more likely to continue to externalize his problems, to refuse to own his feelings. Is this due to the nature of the schizophrenic reaction to life? Is it primarily characteristic of the chronically hospitalized person? Is it due to the low socio-educational status of our group? Is it simply that very few of our clients have reached the level of inner development where self-exploration is satisfying? I cannot be sure. Counseling center clients, on the average, show a significantly greater depth of self-exploration than our schizophrenic clients. This was based on a new measure of intrapersonal exploration, developed out of our Process Scale and its derivatives. It was also found, in accordance with expectation, that the more successful cases showed an increase in degree of self-exploration over time, while the less successful cases—both neurotic and psychotic—showed actually less intrapersonal exploration later in therapy than they did early in therapy. However, the surprising finding was that the more successful schizophrenic cases showed the greatest increase in depth of self-exploration from early to late, greater even than the successful neurotic cases. This is both pleasing and surprising. It means that in those schizophrenics who do show marked improvement on objective tests, this improvement is preceded by the spontaneous and feelingful expression of personally relevant material, by an active, struggling, fearful exploration of self. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
It appears in our sample that when a schizophrenic improves it is because he has entered into “therapy” as we have customarily understood it. Another simple observation. Our schizophrenics tend to be either massively silent, or to engage in continuous (and not very revealing) conversation. It has been found that half of our schizophrenics, in their second interviews, show either less than 1 percent silence mor more than 40 percent silence. This is sharply different from clinic clients. Our schizophrenic individuals tend to fend off a relationship either by an almost complete silence—often extending over many interviews—or by a flood of over-talk which is equally effective in preventing a real encounter. Parents everywhere are the same in regard to illusions. If the child believes they are magicians, it is partly because they believe it themselves. There is no actual or conceivable parent who has not somehow conveyed to his offspring: “If you do what I tell you, everything will come out all right.” To the child, this means: “If I do what they tell me, I will be protected by magic, and all my best dreams will come true.” He believes this so firmly that it is almost impossible to shake his faith. If he does not make it, it is not because the magic has gone, but because he has broken the rules. And if he defies or abandons the parental directives, it does not mean the he had lost his belief in his illusions. It may only mean that he cannot stand the requirements any longer, or does not think he will ever meet them. Hence the envy and derision which some people direct at those who follow the rules. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The inner Child still believes in Santa Claus, but the rebels are saying, “I can het if from him wholesale” (drugs or revolution), while the futilists cry: “Who needs his sour grapes? The grapes of death are sweeter.” However, as they get older, a few people are able to give up the illusion themselves, and they seem to do so without the envy or derision of those who have not. The Parental precept, at best, reads: “Do right and no harm can befall you!” a motto which has been the basis of ethical systems in every country throughout recorded history, starting with the oldest known written instructions by Ptahhotep, in ancient Egypt, five thousand years ago. At worst it reads: “If you kill certain people, the World will be a better place, and in that way, you will attain immortality, become omnipotent, and acquire irresistible power.” Oddly enough, from the Child’s point of view, both of these are slogans of love, for they are both based on the same Parental promise: “If you do as I tell you, I will love and protect you, and without me you are nothing.” This shows up clearly when the promise is given in writing. In the first case, it is the Lord who will love and protect you, as it is written in the Christian Bible and Book of Mormon, and in the second it is Mr. Hitler, as it is written in Mein Kampf and other productions. Mr. Hitler promised the thousand-year Reich, which is practical immortality, and his followers did indeed acquire omnipotence and irresistible power over the Poles, Gypsies, Jews, painters, musicians, writers, and politicians whom they imprisoned in their extermination camps. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
While this was going on, however, reality took over in the Napoleonic form of infantry, artillery, and air support, and millions of Mr. Hitler’s followers became mortal, impotent, and resistible. It takes enormous power to shatter these primal illusions, and this occurs most commonly in wartime. When Tolstoy’s Count goes into battle, he cries in outage: “Why are they firing at me? Everybody likes me (=I am irresistible).” The most horrifying example of smashing this almost universal belief by force is shown in the notorious picture of a little boy about nine years old standing in the middle of a street in Poland, alone and friendless despite the onlookers who line the sidewalk, while an armed Death’s Head Trooper stand over him. The expression on his face says very plainly: “But mother told me fi I was a good boy, everything would be all right.” The most brutal psychological blow that any human being can sustain is proof that his good mother deceived him, and that is the devastating torture which the German soldier is inflicting on the little boy he has concerned. When everything is permitted and the law passes away, the history of contemporary nihilism really begins. The romantic rebellion did not go so far. It limited itself to saying, in short, that everything was not permitted, but that, through insolence, it allowed itself to do what was forbidden. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
With the Karamazovs, on the contrary, the logic of indignation turned rebellion against itself and confronted it with a desperate contradiction. The essential difference is that the romantics allowed themselves moments of complacence, while Ivan compelled himself to do evil so as to be coherent. He would not allow himself to be good. Nihilism is not only despair and negation but, above all, the desire to negate. The same man who so violently took the part of innocence, who trembled at the suffering of a child, who wanted to see “with his own eyes” the lamb lie down with the lion, the victim embrace his murderer, from the moment that he rejects divine coherence and tries to discover his own rule of life, recognized the legitimacy of murder. Ivan rebels against a murderous God; but from the moment that he begins to rationalize his rebellion, he deduced the law of murder. If all is permitted, he can kill his father or at least allow him to be killed. Long reflection on the condition of mankind as people sentenced to death only leads to the justification of crime. Ivan simultaneously hates the death penalty (describing an execution, he says furiously: “His head fell, in the name of divine grace”) and condones crime, in principle. Every indulgence is allowed the murderer, none is allowed the executioner. This contradiction, which Sade swallowed with ease, chokes Ivan Karamazov. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
He pretends to reason, in fact, as though immortality did not exist, while he only goes so far as to say that he would refuse it even if it did exit. In order to protest against evil and death, he deliberately chooses to say that virtue exists no more than does immortality and to allow his father to be killed. He consciously accepts his dilemma; to be virtuous and illogical, or logical and criminal. His prototype, the devil, is right when he whispers: “You are going to commit a virtuous act and yet you do not believe in virtue; that is what angers and torments you.” The question that Ivan finally poses, the question that constitutes the real progress achieved by Dostoievsky in the history of rebellion, is the only one in which we are interested here: can one live and stand one’s ground in a state of rebellion? Ivan allows us to guess his answer: one can live in a state of rebellion only by pursuing it to the bitter end. What is the bitter end of metaphysical rebellion? Metaphysical revolution. The master of the World, after his legitimacy has been contested, must be overthrown. Man must occupy his place. “As God and immortality do not exist, the new man is permitted to become God.” However, what does becoming God mean? It means, in fact, reorganizing that everything is permitted and refusing to reorganize any other law but one’s own. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Without it being necessary to develop the intervening arguments, we can see that to become God is to accept crime (a favourite idea of Dostoievsky’s intellectuals). Ivan’s personal problem is, then, to know if he will be faithful to his logic and if, on the grounds of an indignant protest against innocent suffering, he will accept the murder of his father with the indifference of man-god. We know his solution: Ivan allows his father to be killed. Too proud to be satisfied with appearance, too sensitive to perform the deed himself, he is content to allow it to be done. However, he goes mad. The man who could not understand how one could love one’s neighbour cannot understand either how one can kill him. Studying counterintelligence is one way to understand how intelligence can be lowered. Counter-intelligence incessantly seeks old fact about other hives. Counter-intelligence continuously search for maps, blueprints, plans about intra-hive activity—in spite of the fact that nothing of genetic importance occurs within hives. Counter-intelligence feverishly construct apparatuses, devices, networks to limit our intelligence. Counter-intelligence bureaucracies, which includes the CIA, Senate investigating committees, and the old Soviet KGB lower intelligence and makes us more stupid with time tested techniques. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Anyone who keeps secrets from you is your Essence Enemy—acting to lower your most precious asset—your intelligence. If intelligence is the ultimate good then secrecy is the ultimate crime. Censorship is the imposition of secrets. Counter-intelligence makes us stupid. Disinformation—false facts obviously increase stupidity. When Richard Helms lied under oath about CIA involvement in Chile, he was acting to keep the Senate and the American people stupid. When Dick Gregory and Mark Lane invented Kennedy conspiracy facts, they are lowering the National intelligence index. Secrecy is the most obvious and blatant technique for inhibiting intelligence and always designed to increase stupidity. Even simple human ethics, let alone divinely given commandments, tell us to treat others as we wish them to treat ourselves. Whoever looks for the negative aspects of others should also remember that there are usually some beneficial ones also and that in fairness he ought to recognize them too. If anyone or anything, a man or a book, can contribute to free us from the resentments towards others or the bitterness towards life which poison feelings, thoughts, and health, he has rendered us a great service or the book has proved its worth. His virtue is not cold and selfish and self-admiring, although it may seem so to those who have insufficient knowledge of these matters. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Conformity has its uses, its merits, its place and time. Given these, it is quite acceptable. Ill-mannered people mistake invective for argument. The insatiable curiosity whose satisfaction fills so many columns of personal gossip in newspapers, is reflected in those who intrusively ask private questions where they have no right and no encouragement to do so. It is a breach of good manners, a blow at personal rights. It is a lack of respect for human dignity and independence. Being different from the crowd may mean being lonely but it also means being inspired, protected, blessed. Jesus Christ was not holier in essence than he is, only that man had manifested all this holiness, whereas he has hardly begun to do so. The task is to reflect the attributes of divinity in the conduct of humanity, involving the bringing-in of his metaphysics and his mysticism to actuate his conduct. Emotional expression is an aspect of communication. If we share a common upbringing and cultural heritage, we will not have difficult in understanding the subtleties and nuances of emotion that are conveyed by the flare of a nostril, the narrowing of eyelids, or the ripple of muscle along the jawline as a person suppresses rage. When we enter another culture, however, such as happens when an American from New York visits a Southern state or another English-speaking country, we frequently do not recognize when our speech and actions are angering or amusing the local people. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Indeed, it may take years to learn the perspective, expectations, and evaluative norms of the natives, and until that happens, a visitor may feel lonely and out of touch. Many students have had the experience of joy and relief at encountering someone from their home when they were abroad. Understanding one another’s feelings is usually immediate between people who know one another. There are occasions, however, when the emotional disclosure of someone well known becomes unintelligible; we cannot comprehend why a friend is terrified, angry, or sexually aroused. This is the case with so-called schizophrenic and neurotic people; their emotionality does not appear to make sense, even to members of their families. Yet, because they are human, it must be assumed that the emotional experience of such sufferers makes sense to them, in the light of their perspective upon the World. If someone is terrified, it is because the person experiences imminent danger; if someone is enraged, it is because someone else has violated that person’s space and integrity. All emotion makes sense when we have imaginatively grasped the perspective of the person who is feeling it. It is such empathy, and the willingness to encounter and enter into dialogue with someone with a different perspective, which is so important for therapists, teachers of children, parents, and those who seek to live and work in another country. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is to ensure safety and well-being for residents and visitors through firefighting, public education, enforcement of fire codes, and efficient emergency response resources. “You see a lot in this profession. There was a truck driver driving this tractor-trailer through Sacramento one afternoon, he crossed the highway divider. He hit a Honda head on and crushed it, also a pickup truck with three construction workers in it. We didn’t even see the girl who was driving the Hunda until we got a big tow truck to get the tractor-trailer off her car. She was just jelly. We had to cut her out with the jaws of life. The three construction workers were coming home from work. They didn’t make it. They were crushed inside the truck. The saddest thing is to see an innocent person dying. We had several medical calls recently to a young boy who was extremely sick, and every once in a while he would stop breathing. That was a very painful thin for his parents, and it drew a lot of compassion from firemen. You’ve got to live with these things. When we come back to the situation, I talked about these things with one of the guys I work with. But the traditional male machoism keeps some guys from expressing their true feelings or even talking about it. This guy now has a master’s degree in psychology. He does seminars in Texas on postincident stress reduction, helping firefighters deal with injuries and deaths, mass deaths like in plane crashes. You go out there and do what you have to do, yet a lot of it sets in and affects you. You’ve got to learn to overcome it, to release it instead of bottling it up inside. So we’re learning to do that.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department recognizes that they face unique challenges in keeping pace with the changing World in which they live and work. They will not forget the traditions of those that came before them. However, they have adapted and progressed so that they can remain successful. “We are a family of individuals committed to serving others. We will always provide for the welfare of our personnel through a health and rewarding work environment. We are dedicated to respect, integrity, compassion, and leadership amongst ourselves so that we may proudly serve others. The Sacramento Fire Department strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and remind them of the importance of education. To help America survive the global recession and bring manufacturing jobs back to America and to get American wages at pace with inflation, it is important to buy America cars, American meat, American produce and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Winchester Mystery House
There is only one week left until our Friday the 13th Flashlight Tour 🔦
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore the mansion in full darkness on this eerie night 🌔
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
The Wages of Fun Were Death
We woke as the plane started the sunrise descent to Madrid. It was a picture album moment to remember, touching the soil of Europe. It was a coming home. Tracing the ancestor seed line back. America is a genetic experiment on the part of Europe, Asia, and Africa. We were high freedom and new experiences. We cleared customs smoothly and cabbed to the Hilton Madrid where there was no room. Conventions, block tours, and an army of Japanese visitors were jamming the hotels. After three sweaty hours of futility, we decided on a long shot. For years, friends had told us of a Spanish law professor from one of the best families in Spain, who had expressed great interest in us. Alvaro. Alvaro. What is his last name? I sat in a café flicking mnemonic cards. Alvaro Janez. There were rows of Janez in the phone book. Two were doctors. The first call clicked. “Dr. Janez, my name is Dr. Harris. From the Menninger Clinic. I am a friend of Carlo Galli.” “A friend of his is a friend of mine.” “I have a message from him to you.” Alvaro insisted that we come at once to his home. In the cab I decided to check the scene. If Alvaro was OK, I could identify myself. Alvaro lived in a mansion surrounded by an iron fence and formal gardens. I left the cab with my bags and Alvaro was fully enthusiasm. He embraced me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Alvaro was young, and leaping around with joy. His wife Arianna was warm, Andalusian, dark, striking. They were aristocratic people delighted by the adventure of hosting me. I was shown to a luxurious room. After a rest, a moment of sharing and a sauna, Alvaro and Arianna took me to a small but hidden elegant restaurant. We were old friends before the evening. Alvaro and Arianna were bored with Madrid society. They wanted me to stay in Spain. He had a country house where we could live in isolation. He could arrange a South American passport with his left connections. It was an intriguing prospect. However, I could not live in luxury, underground, with a false passport. I have often had people tell me that the hardest thing to take is rejection. Sales people are paid as well as they are, I am told, because they have to take rejection, while others are unwilling to do so. If these things are true, I can see how the value called “control” becomes exaggerated. It becomes so because one of the strongest, most consistent forms of rejection we experience early in our lives in the one contained in these two words: “You’re wrong.” For many of us, being “wrong” is about the worst thing we can do. Being caught at it is the worst that can happen to us. Our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and other authority figures place so much emphasis on our being “right,” that we develop an internal taboo against being wrong. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
If you allow this to become exaggerated, you are a manipulator who always finds where others are going wrong. When you yourself are criticized, you get defensive and resort to logic, but never allow yourself to stay with your feelings. As a manipulator, you need to control others, and you have developed a heavy-handedness which other people resent. You need to win and cannot surrender to the possible “rightness” of another’s views. Yet, if you are a master, you have learned to surrender to the views of others, make a place for them beside your own views, or even replace your views with theirs. Having learned to listen to others, you are not as quick to argue and thus you make more friends. Not having to defend yourself all the time, you are more relaxed and feel better about yourself. Your conversations are not battles; they are dialogues which lead to mutual growth. Growing out of client-centered therapy and especially its application with hospitalized schizophrenics, there is now emerging a mode of psychotherapy which centers on the “experiencing” of the two persons in the therapy interaction, rather than on the discussed verbal contents. This development is similar to recent trends in other orientations: there is a strong tendency to emphasize the interaction in psychotherapy, to emphasize that two human beings are involved, and to focus on the concrete subjective events occurring in these two persons, rather than only on the verbal contents being discussed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Basic to this development is the view that psychotherapy involves “experiencing” (by whatever name), a somatic inwardly felt process, the manner and meanings of which are affected by the interaction. Some attention is being given to the theoretical problem of how inwardly felt bodily events can have “meaning,” be “explored” and “symbolized,” and how these concrete implicit “meanings” can be affected and changed by interaction. Now that psychotherapy is widely thought to involve a concrete feeling. Schizophrenics are one of the most difficult groups I have ever worked with, in terms of the probability of change. We are dealing with more or less chronically psychotic individuals. There is ample experience to indicate that this is a very difficult group. We are dealing with individuals whose socio-educational status is, on the average, quite low. We are dealing with individuals who, almost without exception, are not consciously desirous of psychotherapy, who tend to have the view that “talking cannot help,” and who do not see the therapist as a potentially helpful person. Some of them are not only unmotivated, but are actively antagonistic to any attempt to help them. When you consider these three factors together, I believe my statement is correct that in terms of probability of change, this is one of the least promising groups ever taken on for psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
A major lesson we have gleaned is that absence of conscious motivation constitutes a really profound problem in psychotherapy. This is certainly not news, but we have learned to recognize and formulate this issue much more clearly and sharply. There is a great difference between working with the consciously motivate client, whether neurotic or psychotic, and working with the person who has no such conscious motive, whether that person is normal, neurotic, or psychotic. Working with the person who desires help is psychotherapy, as usually defined and understood. Not only is there a wealth of experience in this kind of relationship, but there has been a steady increase in empirical knowledge as well. Objectively, we know a great deal about psychotherapy of this sort. We have a beginning objective knowledge of the kind of individual who is most likely to facilitate improvement, the kind of changes which most characteristically occur to a measurable degree. However, for working with the person who has no conscious desire for help we need a new term. It is an area in which relatively little has been developed in the way of theories and concepts. Until recently, there have been no therapists willing to expose to view their way of working with these individuals. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
We owe a real debt to such therapists as Frieda Fromm-Reichman, John Rosen, and Carl Whitaker, for their willingness to demonstrate publicly and to record their way of dealing with these individuals, their way of provoking a relationship where no desire for a therapeutic relationship exists initially. From our own experience in working with unmotivated schizophrenic individuals, it is my present conviction that working with a lack of conscious motivation in the individual is more difficult than working with the problem is psychosis. This is of course a subjective opinion, based in part on our general lack of success in trying to form a facilitative relationship with unmotivated “normal” of low socio-educational status. In so far as the two elements are separable, I believe that absence of conscious desire for help presents a greater challenge to the therapist than the presence of psychosis. In any event, If we recognize that dealing with the person who does not wish help is a clearly different undertaking from psychotherapy, and if we build up the concepts, theories, and practices appropriate to it, we will make more progress in this area. We should not be mislead by the fact that a relationship with such an individual may become psychotherapy when he chooses to seek help. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Illusions are the “if onlys” and “some days” upon which most people base their existence. In some countries, government lotteries offer the only possibility for Jeder to make his dreams come true, and thousands of men spend their lives, day after day, waiting for their numbers to come up. Now the truth of the matter is that there is that there is a Santa Claus: at every drawing, somebody’s number does come up and his dreams do come true. However, oddly enough, in most cases, this does not bring happiness, and many people let their winnings slip through their fingers and return to their former state. This is because the whole system of illusions is a magical one: not only will the reward arrive magically, but it will be magic in itself. A proper child knows that the real Santa Claus will come down the chimney while he is asleep and leave him a little red wagon or a golden orange. However, it will not be an ordinary little red wagon or orange; instead, a magical and unique one studded with rubies and diamonds. When Jeder discovers that the little red wagon or orange had indeed arrived, but that it is just an ordinary one like everybody else’s, he is disappointed and asks: “Is that all?” much to the mystification of his parents, who thought they were giving him exactly what he wanted. Similarly, the man who wins the lottery finds that the things he buys are the same as the things other people have, so he often says: “Is that all?” and blows it. He would rather go back and sit under the tree hoping for magic than enjoy what he has. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
That is, illusions are more attractive than reality, and even the most attractive reality may be abandoned in favour of the most tenuous or improbably illusion. Among the most remarkable examples of this are certain with a “Never Give Up” script. One of the things they are reluctant to give up are their bowel movements, so that they suffer from chronic constipation. The illusions is that is they only hold on long enough Santa Claus will come, or if he does not at least they have something of their own to make up for the gifts they will not get. Some of these people are in an excellent position to enjoy a rewarding reality, but they would rather “sit” at home, waiting for they know not what or whom to come and rescue them. One such woman, even when she was lying flat on the analytic couch, would say: “I’m sitting here thinking.” At home she spent a lot of constipated time doing just that. She found it hard to mingle with people, because wherever she went, she carried a psychological toilet with her, and no matter what her Adult was doing, her Child was sitting on its favourite seat. Actually, the Child almost never gives up its illusions. Some of them are universal, as Dr. Freud pointed out, and probably arise in the first few months of life, or even in the womb, which is a magical World man can only find later through love, pleasures of the flesh, or barbiturates (or perhaps, with vicious people, through massacre). #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Dr. Freud names as the three earliest ones: “I am immortal, omnipotent, and irresistible.” Of course, these primal illusions do not last long in the face of infant reality: mother, father, time, gravity, unknown and frightening sights and sounds, and internal sensations of hunger, fear, and pain. However, they are replaced by conditional illusions which are strong influences in the formation of scripts. There they appear as If Onlys: “If only I behave in the right way, Santa Claus will com.” Before the 1960s, the orthodox hive philosophy insisted that “for every little pleasure there is pain, pain, pain.” God was considered a beady-eyed accountant up there in Hive-Heaven keeping your hedonic balance in order. And if you overdrew on your pleasures account, woe be it to you! Because the wages of fun were death—as every Hollywood movie warned. The dom-species has come a long way from that prudishness, due in some part, to our friends from the Eastern philosophy department. We have learned that pleasure is not bound by some Newtonian conservation-of-energy-principle and thus balanced by pain. We understand that beauty is something that can be learned, can be engineered. Pleasure is not an ejaculation reflex. It is an art, a science, a skilled performance, like playing the concert piano. It is something that can be studied and, through disciplined intelligence, increased. And, indeed, the more you do it, the better you get at it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Thus, pleasure and intelligent hedonism are like tennis. Find someone who plays as well or better than yourself. The neurosomatic rebirth, the Body Resurrection which occurred in the sexual revolution is an accomplished fact. The Body has been uncovered. We are never going to return to prudish robot-hood. The other aspect of the contelligence movement of the 1960s—the neurological revolution—was the discovery of the brain itself. A hundred years ago, there was a taboo organ in Victorian England and in Freudian Vienna. Genitals were considered the unmentionable. Look at any newsstand and you will see that the genitals are no longer unmentionables, but rather the unavoidables. Now the taboo organ, the organ that we cannot talk about or study intelligently is the brain. The next taboo is DNA actualization. It is only since the development of neurology that science has begun to face the real meaning of the brain. The Brain is emerging from the closet. And it is scary, my friends! It is frightening to every static, comfortable social and philosophic hive-notion to realize that you are carrying around behind your forehead a 100 billion-cell bioelectric computer that creates realities. Through imprinting and reimprinting, the brain imposes the reality you inhabit. Everything you think and feel and sense and remember and learn is simply a process of brain functioning. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
When a species understands that the brain is a tool, then it starts to think about directing and understanding this incredible instrument. And it begins using it to ask such embarrassing questions as—who designed the brain? And what is it for? And how do we use the brain? Your brain creates your own reality. If the romantic rebel extols evil and the individual, this does not mean that he sides with mankind, but merely with himself. Dandyism, of whatever kind, is always dandyism in relation to God. The individual, in so far as he is a created being, can oppose himself only to the Creator. He has need of God, with whom he carries on a kind of a gloomy flirtation. Armand Hoog rightly says that, despite its Nietzschean atmosphere, God is not yet dead even in romantic literature. Damnation, so clamourously demanded, is only a clever trick played on God. However, with Dostoievsky, the description of rebellion goes a step farther. Ivan Karamazov sides with mankind and stressed human innocence. He affirms that the death sentence which hangs over them is unjust. Far from making a plea for evil, his first impulse, at least, is to plead for justice, which he ranks above the divinity. Thus, he does not absolutely deny the existence of God. He refutes Him in the name of a moral value. The romantic rebel’s ambition was to talk to God as one equal to another. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Evil was the answer to evil, pride was the answer to cruelty. To further highlight this illustration, Vigny’s ideal is to answer silence with silence. Obviously, the point is to raise oneself to the level of God, which already is blasphemy. However, there is no thought of disputing the power or position of the deity. The blasphemy is reverent, since every blasphemy is, ultimately, a participation in holiness. With Ivan, however, the tone changes. God, in His turn, is put on trial. If evil is essential to divine creation, then creation is unacceptable. Ivan will no loner have recourse to this mysterious God, but to a higher principle—namely, justice. He launches the essential undertaking of rebellion, which is that of replacing the reign of grace by the reign of justice. He simultaneously begins the attack on Christianity. The romantic rebels broke with God Himself, on the principle of hatred. Ivan explicitly rejects the mystery and, consequently, God, on the principle of love. Only love can make us consent to the injustice done to Martha, to exploitation of workers, and, finally, to the death of innocent children. “If the suffering of children,” says Ivan, “serves to complete the sum of suffering necessary for the acquisition of truth, I affirm from now onward that truth is not worth such a price.” Ivan rejects the basic interdependence, introduced by Christianity, between suffering and truth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Ivan’s most profound utterance, the one which opens the deepest chasms beneath the rebel’s feet, is his even if: “I would persist in my indignation, even if I were wrong.” Which means that even if God existed, even if the mystery cloaked a truth, even if the starets Zosime were right, Ivan would not admit that truth should be paid for by evil, suffering, and death of innocents. Ivan incarnates the refusal of salvation. Faith leads to immortal life. However, faith presumes the acceptance of the mystery and of evil, and resignation to injustice. The man who is prevented by the suffering of children from accepting faith will certainly not accept eternal life. Under these conditions, even if eternal life existed, Ivan would refuse it. He rejects this bargain. He would accept grace only unconditionally, and that is why he makes his own conditions. Rebellion wants all or nothing. “All the knowledge in the World is not worth a child’s tears.” Ivan does not say that there is no truth. He says that is truth does exist, it can only be unacceptable. Why? Because it is unjust. The struggle between truth and justice is begun here for the first time; and it will never end. Ivan, by nature a solitary and therefore moralist, will satisfy himself with a kind of metaphysical Don Quixotism. However, a few decades more and an immense political conspiracy will attempt to prove that justice is truth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
In addition, Ivan is the incarnation of the refusal to be the only one saved. He throws in his lit with the damned and, for their sake, rejects eternity. If he had faith, he could, in fact, be saved, but others would be damned and suffering would continue. There is no possible salvation for the man who feels real compassion. Ivan will continue to put God in the wrong by doubly rejecting faith as he would reject injustice and privilege. One step more and from All or Nothing we arrive at Everyone or No One. This extreme determination, and the attitude that it implies, would have sufficed for the romantics. However, Ivan, even though he also gives way to dandyism, really lives his problems, torn between the negative and the affirmative. If he rejects immorality, what remains for him? Life in its most elementary form. When the meaning of life has been suppressed, there still remains life. “I live,” says Ivan, “in spite of logic.” And again: “If I no longer had any faith in life, if I doubted a woman I loved, or the universal order of things, if I were persuaded, on the contrary, that everything was only an infernal and accursed chaos—even then I would want to live.” Ivan will live than, and will love as well “without knowing why.” However, to live is also to act. To act in the name of what? If there is no immortality, then there is neither reward nor punishment. “I believe that there is no virtue without immortality.” And also: “I only know that suffering exists, that on one is guilty, that everything is connected, that everything passes away and equals out.” However, if there is no virtue, there is no law: “Everything is permitted.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Let him accept others as he accepts himself, with all their and his defects, but with the addition that he will constantly aim at improving himself. He persists in showing a proper courtesy to those who themselves behave badly. If others wish to do so, he may argue, but he will never argue acrimoniously. When the actions or words of others provoke us, it is easy to become irritable, resentful, or indignant; it is hard to practise a bland patience and exercise a philosophic tolerance. However, that is just what the aspirant must do. A child whose parents fail to discipline it at the proper occasion in the proper loving way will be encouraged by omission to continue its mistaken attitude. If they cared enogh, they would show it in being affable, pleasant, kind—that is, they would suppress their egoism sufficiently to make such decent manners possible. However, they do not: they care too much for their own ego to let it happen. Knowing the nature of human nature; knowing, too, the universality of God’s laws, existence and applicability: there is no need to be surprised at anything which anyone does. If he must assess men’s motives and examine their characters, he will do so only to understand them, not to judge them. He will not use it to gossip about their personal frailties. Ingratitude fails to embitter him—does not even make him feel hurt. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
To a person of refined feeling, the crudeness of animal passion is repellent. It was an act of reverence among pious Chinese, or of courtesy among polite ones, to hold the hands with the right palm inside the left one. Those who make a virtue of bad manners, who know nothing or want to know nothing of the laws of decent social intercourse, should be avoided. If his family failed to bring him up to practise self-discipline, to control behaviour and refine his speech, to avoid violence and roughness, then he must himself supply these things and acquire these habits. He not only learns that it is impossible to please everyone but that it is impossible even to avoid giving offense at some time to some human beings. It is true that fine manners may be put on, to make a more favourable impression on his victim, by the exploiter, the swindler, or the seducer. However, this is the misuse of manners and offers no valid criticism of them. He naturally feels a warmer emotion about his own kith and kin, his own friends, than about other people. He not only knows them better but they affect him more deeply. All reaching out towards the transcendental is to be encouraged, however elementary it be. The philosopher does not exhibit the common fault of rejecting and condemning every other standpoint in order to supper his own. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Neither the mockery of insensitive sceptics nor the malice of sectarian fanatics should be allowed to sway him from a fixed resolve to accord goodwill unto all, including them also. He should try to keep discussions of opposing views within the codes of amicable courtesy and good manners. Why must we be always grabbing at others, staking out claims and making demands upon them? Why not leave them free? He has not only to separate himself from his own lower principles, but just as much for other people’s when he is in contact with them. If disunion reigns in the psyche within, then disharmony must reign in the life without. An emotion is a patterned bodily reaction of either protection, destruction, reproduction, deprivation, incorporation, rejection, exploration or orientation, or some combination of these, which is brought bout by a stimulus. The emotion becomes felt tendency toward anything appraised as good, and away from anything appraised as bad. A quarrelsome man carries his emeimes with him for he creates them wherever he goes. There is no peace in his outer life because there is no in his inner life. When it is not possible for his relatives or friends to share with him the acceptance of spiritual ideas, he should be tolerant, understanding, and patient toward such disagreement. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The logic of a higher life compels him to recognize the divine element in the hearts of those who hate or malign him, and he honours them for it; but it does not compel him to waste precious years in unnecessary struggles against them. The years which are left to him and to them on this poor Earth are too few to be lost in unworthy squabbles. Each society and subculture has stereotyped ways in which persons express, and hence communicate, their feelings to one another. The behavioural, gestural, and facial expressions can be faked—someone can pretend to experience feelings he or she does not actually have. Perhaps the only one who knows with certainty what feelings someone is experiencing is the actual person, and even that person may be unaware that he or she is in an emotional state; it is a human possibility to repress the affective quality of experience. In spite of these qualifications, we can identify some common feelings and emotions and recognize them in ourselves and others. From the standpoint of healthy personality, it is desirable to be free to express the fullest gamut of emotion, because of the enrichment it affords to the quality of life. Not to know emotion is to be like a robot or zombie. Further, it is vital that a person’s feelings be authentic rather than pretended. Pretended emotion falsifies relationships with other people; such inauthenticity undermines health and distorts personal growth. He will express his faith positively but not aggressively. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The Sacramento City Fire Department is recognized as one of the nation’s premier fire services, with its men and women delivering the highest quality fire and emergency response. The Sacramento City Fire Department is dedicated to improving the health, safety, and welfare of the community and firefighters. “I was involved in a rescue in Downtown Sacramento. Captain X, Y, and I went into a converted Victorian that was on fire. Starting our search, we went down a hallway and came to an apartment whose door was hot to the touch. As I pushed the door open, the sprinklers went off over our heads, and a big blast of smoke and heat came at us. I knew we had a good job ahead of us. The captain and Y went straight ahead into a bedroom area, but I thought I heard something from the other end, so I went down that way. As I was crawling down this hallway, I was pretty low because of the heat, I heard my name being called, ‘Z. Z.’ At first I thought, ‘B, Candid Camera. They’re tricking me.’ Then I thought it was one of the guys from the company, maybe the outside vent man had gotten in a window and saw me coming. Then I realized it was a female voice. I went a little faster down the hall, and I kept hearing my name being called. ‘Z. Z. Z.’ I came across a semiconscious woman on the floor at a point where the fire was just starting to roll over near the ceiling and take full possession of the back room.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“I asked her, ‘Who’s Z? Who’s Z?’ She started mumbling. I said, ‘Is Z your boyfriend?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Is he here?’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘Are you sure?’ She said, ‘He’s at work.’ Then she passed out. I had a good idea there was no other Z there expect me, so I carried her out and got her to the sidewalk. I have her a little forced air until she came around a little bit and was taken away in the ambulance. Two weeks later she showed up at the firehouse with a cake. I was off that day, but the guys told me the cake was great. I thought it was nice that the woman cared enough to come around and thank the fire department for their efforts. After I transferred from D Truck to Rescue E in Sacramento I was quiet, waiting for a chance to prove myself. I was there only a short time when I was involved in a rescue. Again it was one of those left-right deals. I went to the right, and this other guy went to the left. I got lucky. I found an unconscious man, and I had to carry him down seven flights of stairs. I injured my back a little. But I felt I had shown the men on rescue that I could go where they went, and I could accomplish the mission. Some jobs I remember better than others. One night tour I was working, it happened to be my birthday. We went out at six-thirty in the morning to this job. I had one of the outside ventilation positions, and there was a report of people possibly trapped in these apartments. The truck companies had already made a couple of good rescues. I started working my way up a fire escape, wearing an old Scott mask with the big bottle. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“I got up to the fire floor and was at the window of the next apartment, which was now taking off, though the window hadn’t vented yet. Since there was only one line going, I didn’t want to start venting windows. I wanted to get in from above, so I started up the fire escape to the next floor, which was the fifth, and all of a sudden the window beneath me let go. I was in a wave of heart and smoke shooting up the side of the building above the courtyard. I began getting a little bit concerned as to whether I was going to get myself out of this predicament I had gotten myself into. I was trying quickly to move past the fire escape ladder, but the Scott mask was making me too bulky to get near the wall. Like trying to get the square peg in the round hole. I climbed up on the railing to try to swing out. The fire was just starting to come out of the window beneath me. It was getting very got. I was more worried than I have ever been in a fire situation. All of a sudden I heard a whoosh and a slapping noise. I looked down in the courtyard, and there was H Engine shooting a line up and shoving the fire back into the window. They knocked it down enough so I could reposition myself, and I scrambled up, looked down, gave them a wave, and jumped into the apartment. I did okay. We searched the building and didn’t fire anybody else. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Afterwards, I made it a point to go down and thank the officer and the men of H Engine for saving me on that one. I had been a little bit concerned that I was going to spend my birthday in a hospital, or worse.” With empathy and understanding, the Sacramento Fire Department protects life, property, and the environment in their community through an all-hazards approach to fire protection, emergency medical services, community risk reduction and education. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. In an effort to keep the country cohesive, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ and buy American cars and other American goods and services. In China, the Buick has the same status as a Mercedez-Benz or BMW. American sedans and coupes and trucks are also status symbols in America. Also, please respect law and order, and treat others with kindness and respect. To ensure that you have a bright future, please take your education seriously, and be sure to actually read your books. And remember to “Just Say ‘No’ to Drugs.” Even marijuana can be deadly. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on three, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flow, confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! God never gave us express allowance, only He gave us reason, charity, nature and good example to bear us out. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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At the Altar, in Front of God, You Promised to Love Me Forever!
With each of us, there is a process of change taking place from within. It requires no conscious effort. It is called growth. Goethe observes that, “Man is like a plant, he grows. He is not a sculpture, made from the outside.” Yet the emphasis of many parents, teachers and behaviourists has been on “shaping up,” molding from the outside. This is manipulation. One can manipulate from the outside, but growth comes from the inside. And the growth process requires surrender. From our earliest childhood, we are taught to do; we are taught that goals are more important than experience. How, then, can we change? I believe change occurs when we learn to trust our deepest feelings and discovery our natural rhythm. To trust our deepest feelings means to surrender to a growth process within ourselves. To discover our natural rhythm is to become one with the growth processes of nature: the seasons, the tides, the rhythm of each day and night. These two interlocking processes are inherent in the nature of life and are known as the “growing edge.” We see it in nature; always vitality seems to be nestling deep within the heart of a dying plant. A kind of oak tree comes to mind. You have seen it. The leaves turn yellow and die, but they stay on the tree all winter. The wind, the storm, the sleet, the snow, nothing is able to dislodge these dead leaves from the apparently dead branches. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The business of the tree during the long winter is to hold on to these dead leaves. Then there begins to be a stirring deep within the heart of the tree. The expression of life reveals itself. Its function is no longer that of holding on to the dead leaves. It turns them loose. They fall off. In the place, buds begin to come. What wind, storm, hail, sleet, ice could not do during the long winter, now comes to pass very quietly because of the vitality inherent in the tree. In the growth of our lives, the same thing happens. As ten-year-olds, we know all things that happen to us are only the beginning. In our teen years, we know a new ripeness for many things, but also are aware that still other things will not be available to us under our twenties and thirties. Then in our thirties and forties, we must develop a new awareness that the wine of youth often grows turbid. The morning of life is for the development of the individual and for conquests: to do. The afternoon of life is for the development of wisdom: to be. The first quarter of life is when we are a problem for others. In the second and third quarters, conscious problems are ours. In extreme old age, we are again a problem for others. By the time of the third quarter, I believe we must make meaning and purpose paramount in order to live out our lives happily and healthily. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
In the past, we talked about a case study involving Trish. One of Trish’s problems revolved around the idea of commitment. To Trish, commitment is a feeling of conviction that a relationship will last through conflict and differences. Masters and Johnson (The Pleasure Bond) stress that there is a difference between a commitment of obligation and a commitment of concern. A commitment of obligation implies that you have to remain married because of your promise to do so; a commitment of concern implies, not that you feel compelled to meet the obligation but that you feel impelled to. By impelled, I mean that you have a conviction, deeply rooted in yourself, that comes from a core belief in the relationship. This strong belief gives rise to a feeling of confidence in the relationship and impels you to do what it takes to make it work, rather than abandoning it at the first sign of difficulty. Commitment then, is a feeling of confidence, not of obligation. From a logical standpoint, commitment as promise is impossible. Since all individuals are constantly changing, how can one logically promise to feel a certain way ten years from now? However, based on feelings of love and confidence, people can deeply believe in the process of maintaining a marriage through on-going resolution of conflicts. This requires facing the daily problems of life and trusting in the process of mutual sharing of feelings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
While it is ridiculous to say, “I promise to love you forever,” it is productive to say, “I love you now and I believe in this relationship. I commit to you that in the future I will do what it takes to make the relationship work, as long as we both shall love one another and want to be with one another.” Trish was so hung up on the promise, she refused to accept the possibility that her husband might want to leave her for good because she believed that it would destroy the marriage, and children. Also, because her husband made this promise to love her forever, at the altar, in front of God. Trish tried to make her husband feel differently than he did. However, with the help of therapy, she soon learned she could go nowhere with that. She eventually accepted his leaving, and he did not have to defend himself. This left him free to explore his reasons for leaving and perhaps his reasons for not leaving. The point is, is Trish’s husband is going to change, the change must come from within, not from Trish’s manipulation of him. If change comes, it will come out of just such a free, give-and-take atmosphere. However, Trish was only able to create this atmosphere by surrendering to the way things are. As a manipulator, Trish exaggerates her support at the expense of the opposite value, criticalness. Support and criticalness constitute a polarity such as the strength and weakness we often see in people struggling with life situations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When a relationship is not working out and one person wants to make it work, that individual needs to become more judgelike, not in the legal sense, but in the sense that there is a nonlegal system of justice which will reward and punish their spouses’ actions regardless of what the person wanting the relationship to work out might do. The values of support and criticalness then synthesize into appreciation of differences, a value Trish can say, “I love our home and children and marriage, but I can see that you do not. I feel sorry for you. You are throwing away a good thing and you might regret it one day. Still, it is not up to me to make you regret it. It is up to me to live my life and it is up to you to live yours.” Notice that this surrender, when it comes, is a nonact. It does not involve doing anything. It just involved accepting the way things are and being with them. One day, Trish’s husband may indeed regret his decision. However, the regret will come from inside himself. And Trish will have accomplished what she wanted without doing anything at all, simply by surrendering to being. As of now, Trish’s situation is still unresolved. She was able to have a conversation with her husband similar to the last bit of role playing she did in therapy. They are not yet divorced, nor is he back with the family. Trish is more comfortable with the thought of a divorce now, though she still does not want it. She is continuing in therapy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Trish’s husband is wondering if leaving his family permanently is such a good idea after all. If he too joined a therapy group, Trish thought it might help. So far, her efforts in that direction have been in vain. However, she is not pressing it. There is danger that those who begin by being spiritually insensitive may end by becoming spiritually offensive. He should bestow an intellectual sympathy on all, even though he cannot bestow an emotional sympathy. If you can go to a man you greatly dislike and remember that he, too, will one day discover his spiritual identity and express a finer, more loveable self, it will be easier to be calm, patient, just, and at ease with him. The relationships which develop between him and other people become a further channel for expressing what he had of this understanding, this peace, this self-control. He cannot meet hatred with hatred, but only with resignation. His answer to enmity is to condone it. His attitude to opposition is to be tolerant. Those who are not deceived by the fictitious good-fellowship of saloons and taverns may find his calm cool presence more truly cordial than those who seek emotional displays. It is not a virtue but a weakness to be unable to stand up for your own rights or to be unable to rightly say “No!” or to submit to being bored by someone you want to get away from. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
His actions will affect those with him, his dislike or hatred may provoke theirs, his kindness may create kindly reactions from them. A man needs to be careful in such matters. It is not easy for any man who has the ideal of living by truth. He will find himself forced to talk little, to cultivate a reticent manner and follow hos own way of life. Bad-mannered children become so partly because of their parents’ failure to correct them, which may be through having has similar parents themselves. And where this is shown by the child pointing out and ridiculing a stranger, neighbour, schoolchild, or foreigner because of his different or unusual appearance, clothes, and so on, it is also cruel. Do not expect nobler actions or higher motives from any man than experience suggests you should expect. Crime, which is the law of nature, singularly fails to appear distinguishes. Lacenaire, the first of the gentleman criminals, exploits it effectively; Baudelaire displays less tenacity, but is a genius. He creates the garden of evil where crime figures only as one of the rarer species. Terror itself becomes an exquisite sensation and a collector’s item. “Not only would I be happy to be a victim, but I would even hate being an executioner in order to feel the revolution from both sides.” Even Baudelair’s conformity has the odor of crime. If he chose Maistre as his master, it is to the extent that this conservative goes to extremes and centers his doctrine on death and on the executioner. “The real saint,” Baudelaire pretends to think, “is he who flogs and kills people for their own good.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the Earth for the purpose of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion. However, Baudelaire, despite his satanic arsenal, his taste for Sade, his blasphemies, remains too much of a theologian to be a proper rebel. His real drama, which made him the greatest poet of his time, was something else. Baudelaire can be mentioned here only to the extent that he was the most profound theoretician of dandyism and gave definite form to one of the conclusions of romantic revolt. Romanticism demonstrates, in fact, that rebellion is part and parcel of dandyism: one of its objectives is appearances. In it conventional forms, dandyism admits a nostalgia for ethics. It is only honour degraded as a point of honour. However, at the same time it inaugurates an aesthetic which is still valid in out World, an aesthetic of solitary creators, who are obstinate rivals of a God they condemn. From romanticism onward, the artist’s task will not only be to create a World, or to exalt beauty for its own sake, but also to define an attitude. Thus, the artist becomes a model and offers himself as an example: art is his ethic. With him begins the age of the directors of conscious. When the dandies fail to commit suicide or do not go mad, they make a career and pursue prosperity. Even when, like Vigny, they exclaim that they are going to retire into silence, their silence is piercing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
However, at the very heart of romanticism, the sterility of this attitude becomes apparent to a few rebels who provide a transitional type between the eccentrics (or the Incredible) and our revolutionary adventurers. Between the times of the eighteenth-century, Byron and Shelley are already fighting, though only ostensibly, from freedom. They also expose themselves, but in another way. Rebellion gradually leaves the World of appearances for the World of action, where it will completely commit itself. The French students in 1830 and the Russian Decembrists will then appear as the purest incarnations of a rebellion which is at first solitary and which then tries, though sacrifice, to find the path to solidarity. However, inversely, the taste for the apocalypse and life of frenzy will reappear among present-day revolutionaries. The endless series of treason trials, the terrible game played out between the judge and the accused, the elaborate staging of cross-examinations, sometimes lead us to believe that there is a tragic resemblance to the old subterfuge by which the romantic rebel, in refusing to be what he was, provisionally condemned himself to a make-believe World in the desperate hope of achieving a more profound existence. Whoever cultivates goodwill to others will inevitably throw out whatever ill will he encounter in himself towards particular persons. For as goodwill grows in a broad generous way so ill will dies in a personal way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Childhood illusions have mainly to do with rewards for being good and punishments for being bad. Good means mainly not being angry (“Temper, temper!) or sexy (“Nasty, nasty!) but it is all right to be frightened or ashamed. That is, Jeder is not supposed to express either his “instinct for self-preservation,” whose expression can be quite satisfying, or his “instinct for preservation of the species,” whose expression can be very pleasurable even at an early age; but he is allowed to have as many unsatisfying, unpleasant feelings as he wishes. There are many systems which make formal rules about rewards and punishments. Besides legal systems, which exist everywhere, there are religious and ideological ones. Half the World are “true believers” (about one billion Christians and half a billion Moslems) for whom the rules regarding afterlife are most important. The “heathen” half are judged during their earthly sojourns by local gods or by their national governments. For the script analysts, however, the most important codes are the informal, hidden ones which are peculiar to each family. For small children, there is usually some sort of Santa Clause who is watching their behaviour and keeping the accounts. However, he is for the “little kids,” and “big kids” do not believe in him, at least not in Santa Claus as a man in a masquerade costume who comes on a certain day of the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
In fact, not believing in that kind of Satan Clause is what separates big kids from the little ones, along with the knowledge of where babies come from. However, big kids, and grownups too, have their own versions of Santa, each one different. Some grownups are more interested in Santa Claus’s family than in Santa himself, and firmly believe that if they behave properly, they will sooner or later have their chance with either his son, Prince Charming, or his daughter Snegurotchka, the Snow-Maiden, or even with Missis, Mrs. Menopause. In fact, most people spend their lives waiting for Santa Claus, or for some member of his family. And then there is his opposite number down below. Where Santa himself is a jolly man in a red suit who comes from the North Pole brining gifts, his opposite number is a grim man in a black cloak who comes from the South Pole carrying a scythe, and his name is Death. Thus, the human race is split during later childhood into the Life Crowd, who will spend their lives waiting for Santa Claus, and the Death Crowd, who will spend their lives waiting for Death. These are the basic illusions on which all scripts are based: that either Santa Claus will some eventually bringing gifts for the winners, or Death will come eventually and solve all the problems for the losers. Thus, the first question to ask about illusions is: “Are you waiting for Santa Claus, or Death?” #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, before the Final Gift (immortality) or the Final Solution (death), there are meanwhile others. Santa can bestow a winning lottery ticket, a life pension, or prolonged youth. Death can bestow a permanent disability, a cessation of desire for pleasures of the flesh, or premature old age, each of which relieves the person of some of his duties. For example, women in the Death Crowd are convinced that menopause will offer succor and surcease: that all desires for pleasures of the flesh will vanish, to be replaced by hot flashes and melancholia which will excuse them forevermore from living. This sad myth, that Mrs. Menopause will rescue them, is living. This sad myth, that Mrs. Menopause will recuse them, is titled “Wooden Ovaries” in the language of script analysis. Some me also grab for this with “Wooden Testicles,” the myth of the male menopause. Every script is based on some such illusion, and it is the grievous but necessary task of script analysis to undermine it, hence the blunt titles which get this done with the most dispatch and the shortest pain. The transactional importance of the illusion is that it provides a cause, and a reason for saving up trading stamps. Thus, people who are waiting for Santa Claus will save either compliments to show how good they have been, or “suffers” of various kinds to arouse his compassion, while those who are waiting for death will save guilt or futility stamps to show that they are worthy of him or will welcome him with gratitude. However, any kind of stamp may be offered to either Santa Claus or Death in the hope that with clever salesmanship the desired merchandise will be forthcoming. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The illusion, then, has to do with the store where the trading stamps are turned in, and there are two different stores, each with different rules. By doing enough good, or enduring enough suffer, Jeder can collect enough gold or brown stamps to turn in on a free gift from Santa’s Store. By collecting enough guilts or futilities, he can get a free gift from the Death Shop. Actually, Santa and Death do not actually run stores. They are more like itinerant peddlers. Jeder has to wait for Santa or Death to come, and he never knows when they will. That is why he must save his trading stamps and always have them ready, because if he misses his opportunity when Santa or Death does pass by, he never knows when he will get another chance. If he is saving cheerios, then he must think optimistically at all times, because if he relaxes even for a moment, that might be the very moment of Santa’s arrival. Similarly, if he is saving suffers, he must not risk every looking happy because if Santa catches him off guard, he will have lost his opportunity. It is the same people in the Death Crowd. They cannot afford to risk even a single moment free of guilt or futility, for that might be the very moment of Death’s visit, and then they would be condemned to live until the next round, which might be—well, only death knows how long the suspense might have to continue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The notion of self-directed brain change did not exist in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was necessary to turn people on to this option. Evolutionary Agents were robot-programmed to perform this activation role, sending a futique signal to nervous systems. If they are ready for it, if the time is right and the signal is precise—ZAP! The new circuits will activate! People will open up like flowers in May—which is what happened in the 1960s. Remember this notion of bodily awareness was a predom-species concept in the 1950s. Before 1960 hive wisdom held that the body was an instrument designed for reproductive purposes. Sure, you were allowed to jump up and down on each other on Saturday night for breeding purposes—instinctual sperm-egg exchange. The notion of intelligent pleasure, hedonic engineering, bodily self-direction, didn’t exist. The notions of consciousness raising and body awareness and personal growth did not exist. Of course, you know what happened. Since the 1960s, the consciousness-pleasure hedonic-intelligence business has become the largest industry in the country. The Great American Consumer Society has co-opted the notion of “feel good.” And that is a step forward. Nothing is wrong with hedonic consumerism. It was bound to happen. It is a stage, of course. New ideas always get watered down and vulgarized. In every gene-pool, every caste is going to pick up on new energies. So, let us face the amusing fact. The self-directed pleasure business has become an American obsession. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
There is an enormous hedonic industry in this country which did not exist in the 1950s. We have water beds, satin sheets, diets, health foods, electric cars, stereo equipment, Internet, body shops, and more. We have yoga, massage, body building and martial arts. We have gurus, swamis and personal trainers. We have personal development and self-growth. Girl Scout Troops runs off twice a week to have consciousness raising episodes at the junior high school. Huge sums of money are involved. We spend more than $250,000,00—a quarter of a billion dollars annually—for the rolling papers and more than six billion for marijuana. For hundred million dollars are spent on jogging paraphernalia. The self-indulgent, self-improvement pleasure industry—entertainment, travel, recreation, sensual stimulation, aesthetics, style and fashion—is the largest business in America. The business of Uncle Sam has become self-actualization pleasure. There is no authoritative catalogue of emotional experience. Furthermore, there is precise differentiation of the physiological expression of emotion. Physiological psychologists have difficult naming the emotional experience that a person is undergoing when their only data are markings on a polygraph that depict alterations in autonomic nervous system activity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
In psychology’s earliest days, emotion was an awkward concept for behavioural scientists to define and accept. The effort tended toward minimizing the subject, considering it a part of the motivation process, and most of all, boiling down emotions to as few as possible. In 1919, Watson, the grand old man of behaviourism, suggested the existence of only three emotions in the infant—fear, joy, and lust. In the years following, the direction of the profession may be seen in that Bridges (1932) proposed just one response: undifferentiated excitement, a concept that matches the lack of differentiation in physiological symptomology characteristic of almost all emotions. Clinicians, counselors, and others who have dealt intimately with emotions and whose task it often is to help people understand their own emotional responses very accurately and specifically, do differentiate a far richer spectrum of emotions in the human. The complexity of emotions as seen by the humanists are numerous. Optimistic emotions include things like joy, ecstasy, pride, enchanted, warm-hearted, and more. Pessimistic emotions include feeling low, fear, lustful, anxiety and more. From time to time, humanists have pointed out that most psychology textbook, when they do give any space to emotions, concentrate largely on the negative emotions such as hate and depression. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to serve their community by preventing emergencies through education and inspection Minimizing injury, death, and property destruction due to fire, natural disaster and other emergencies while providing timely and effective emergency medical services. “In California we have what we call the Santa Ana winds, usually in August and September, where the winds come off the desert and bring a real dry heat all the way across the coast. I had my six-moth probationary test coming up, and I was studying all the time. I was with Engine X. This particular afternoon a young guy was flying a kite southeast of town and the kite caught on some high wires, causing an arc that jumped to the heavy brush and started a fire. So they dispatched the Forest Service and nearby unit, leaving us to protect our part of the city. We looked out our back door and watched the fire grow, we listened to the radio traffic, and finally we were dispatched. On the way to the fire, I was sitting in the jump seat behind the driver. The fire was in a hilly area, with roads winding around and up and down the hills, an awkward place to fight a fire. Our assignment was to go up this narrow little road. The second house on the left was on fire. A police lived there with his wife and two children. We couldn’t do much about the house. All we could do was make sure they got out. We did that. Then we went up to the next house. There were houses all over the place beginning to burn. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“With some difficulty we backed into the driveway next door. I was with Captain Y and Engineer Z. There was a Chevy pickup in the driveway and a great big eucalyptus tree in the back. We pulled off a 150-foot preconnect and went to fight the fire. The house was on the side of a bank. The lower part of the bank was covered with brush, and that was all burning. The upper part of the bank was also covered with brush, and that was all burning, and the big eucalyptus tree was on fire. I noticed the house was preheating, and white smoke was beginning to pump out of it. There wasn’t really any fire yet, but I knew it was about to burst. A very unusual thing happened to me at that point. I had been in forest fires before, and you normally have 21 percent oxygen in the air. But here the fire was so widespread around us that it was consuming the oxygen in the air and we couldn’t breathe. We had bandannas on our faces, but they were just filtering the smoke, not giving us oxygen. The captain and Z went across the lawn toward the house, and I lost track of them. I went back to the rig and grabbed a Scott air pack, and just about at that time the engine sucked an ember down the air intake, which burned the engine out, killed the pump, and prevented us from having any water. The hose in back of the truck was totally burned out, and I think the tires were, too. The three of us were in an open air oven. We had fire above us, below us and to the sides. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“We were in a little spot right in the middle of the backyard. I figured there were other people in the same situation or worse, and that we were basically on our own. Funny, but my main concern during this whole time was passing my probationary test. I was dedicated! So after I rejoined the other two, we all got into our fire tents. I think it was a miracle that we happened to be in a spot where there was a pocket of breathable air. I believe the Lord sent an angel down to protect us. There was so much fire around us. We shared the Scott pack, but it really wasn’t that important. One of the things that helped me was something I learned in the Forest Service, which is, always carry some chewing gum with you. It helps keep some of the moisture in your mouth, otherwise you get real dry, then you get smoke and embers in your eyes and it’s real uncomfortable. We lay beneath our tents then for about forty minutes and listened to the fire popping all around us. We also listened to the radio traffic to see if anybody has any emergencies as bad as we had, and in fact they didn’t. So we called for some help, for someone to come up to us. And Engine A and Squad A did try to come up to us. The driver of the engine got out, but the fire was so hot that he had to get right back in the engine. It was impossible for them to come through with hose lines and rescue us, because there was just too much fire and heat. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Usually brush fires pass over fairly quickly, but there was a lot of heavy brush which burned for a longer while, and, of course, there were all the buildings on fire around us. I noticed afterwards that the windshield of the pickup truck was just a clump of glass. It has melted. While we were lying in our tents, we communicated with each other. We had the option of either staying where we were or taking a chance on running out through the brush and getting away. The captain convinced us that our best bet was to stay there, and so we did. There were other fire companies in similar situations, but their engines hadn’t burned out, so that when they opened up the nozzle and water came out, they could put their faces close to the nozzle and breathe the cooler air with oxygen in it. I kept lifting my tent and looking around. The heat only twenty feet from us was probably about 900 degrees, but to me the heat wasn’t the problem, it was the lack of oxygen. It was difficult to breathe. And then there was the house. I remember looking at the house one time, and then, about twenty minutes later, the entire house was gone. All that was left was the chimney. It was like jumping from one scene to another in a movie. It was amazing. While I was lying there, I thought, “If this is it, then this it is.” I’m not a quitter, but I knew that we were on our own and that nobody in the while area could do anything for us. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“I figured there were probably people in worse situations than we were. I prayed. I have a strong faith, and I believe that the Lord provided a little pocket of oxygen for us to breathe, the fire consumed everything else. I knew that death was potentially nearby, as it is in a lot of the situations that we see. But I do appreciate life, and we all have a great concern for safety. Finally, after forty minutes or so, the fire had passed over and settled down a little bit. The guys from the bottom made another attempt to get to us, and they got the pump going, but they were still not able to reach us. The ones who did finally reach us came over the top from the other side of the hill. They knew we were still alive, because we had kept in radio contact and given them updates of our situation. When we got out, the fire was still going on. I would have stayed and gone through the whole thing, but during this time I had somehow cut my left eye. I don’t know how, but I had scratched the cornea pretty good, and it got to the point where it bothered me so bad, I couldn’t concentrate, and I couldn’t do anything to get relief for it. So they took me to the hospital, where they cleaned out my eyes, put in some medicine, and packed both of them. Actually they were more concerned about the black in my lungs. I had inhaled some smoke, which is common. So they cleared out the black stuff. I didn’t get to finish the whole fire. It stopped burning a couple of hours later, and that was it. History. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“And to think that it all started from a little spark from a guy flying his kite! In all, that fire consumed 270 homes, and I don’t think any lives were lost!” The Sacramento Fire Department provides professional life safety, property protection, and disaster preparedness services. They achieve this through extensive fire prevention and safety education efforts, along with quick and effective responses to emergencies. You can save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, it is absolutely important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic citizens. By loving God and Jesus Christ, we can keep America a cohesive country. By supporting our local businesses by buying American cars, and other goods and services produced by Americans, this will stimulate our economy and help produce more high paying jobs in America. It is also important to respect law and order. As God loving citizen, we make it a goal to treat our elders with dignity, care, reverence, patience and empathy so that we may continue to be blessed by God. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride, from every mountain side let freedom ring. Our fathers’ God, to Thee, Author of liberty, to Thee I sing; long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light; protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Beautiful, with a Beauty Unknown on this Earth
Romeo Montague was a romantic idealist and tragic hero who is well-known from William Shakespeare’s, “Romeo and Juliet.” He considers himself compelled to do evil by his nostalgia for an unrealizable good, and while exploring love, youth and human nature, Romeo meets with a tragic fate. Likewise, Satan rises against his Creator because the latter employed force to subjugate him. “Who reason hath equal’d,” says Milton’s Satan, “force hath made supreme above his equals.” Divine violence is thus explicitly condemned. The rebel flees from this aggressive and unworthy God, “Farthest from him is best,” and reigns over all the forces hostile to the divine order. The Prince of Darkness has only chosen this path because good is a notion defined and utilized by God for unjust purposes. Even innocence irritates the Rebel in so far as it implies being duped. This “dark spirit of evil who is enraged by innocence” creates a human injustice parallel to divine injustice. Since violence is at the root of all creation, deliberate violence shall be its answer. The fact that there is an excess of despair adds to the causes of despair and brings rebellion to that state of indignant frustration which follows the long experience of injustice and where the distinction between good and evil finally disappears. Vigny’s Satan can no longer find in good or evil any pleasure nor of the sorrow that he causes take the measure. This defines nihilism and authorizes murder. Murder, in fact, is on the way to becoming acceptable. It is enough to compare Lucifer of the painters of the Middle Ages with the Satan of the romantics. An adolescent “young, sad, charming” (Vigny) replaces the horned beast. Beautiful, with a beauty unknown on this Earth” (Lermontov), solitary and powerful, unhappy and scornful, he is offhand even in oppression. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
However, his excuse is sorrow. “Who here,” says Milton’s Satan, “Will envy whom the highest place…condemns to greatest share of endless pain.” So many injustices suffered, a sorrow so unrelieved, justify every excess. The rebel therefore allows himself certain advantage. Murder, of course, is not recommended for its own sake. However, it is implicit in the value—supreme for the romantic—attached to frenzy. Frenzy is the reverse of boredom: Lorenzaccio dreams of Han of Iceland. Exquisite sensibilities evoke the elementary furies of the beast. The Byronic hero, incapable of love suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive actions. To love someone whom one will never see again is to give a cry of exaltation of as one perishes in the flames of passion. One lives only in and for the moment, in order to achieve “the brief and vivid union of a tempestuous heart untied to the tempest” (Lermontov). The threat of mortality which hangs over us makes everything abortive. Only the cry of anguish can bring us to life; exaltation takes the place of truth. To this extent the apocalypse becomes an absolute value in which everything is confounded—love and death, conscience and culpability. In a chaotic Universe no other life exists but that of the abyss where, according to Alfred Le Poittevin, human beings come “trembling with rage and exulting in their crimes” to curse the Creator. The intoxication of frenzy and, ultimately, some suitable crime reveal in a moment the whole meaning of life. Without exactly advocating crime, the romantics insist on paying homage to a basic system of privileges which they illustrate with the conventional images of the outlaw, the criminal with the heart of gold, and the kind brigand. Their works are bathed in blood and shrouded in mystery. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The soul is delivered, at a minimum expenditure, of its most hideous desires—desires that a later generation will assuage in extermination camps. Of course, these works are also a challenge to the society of the times. However, romanticism, at the source of its inspiration, is chiefly concerned with defying moral and divine law. That is why its most original creation is not, primarily, the revolutionary, but, logically enough, the dandy. Logically, because this obstinate persistence in Satanism can only be justified by the endless affirmation of injustice and, to a certain extent, by its consolidation. Pain, at this stage, is acceptable only on condition that it is incurable. The rebel chooses the metaphysic of inevitable evil, which is expressed in the literature of damnation from which we have not yet escaped. “I was conscious of my power and I was conscious of my chains” (Petrus Borel). However, these chains are valuable objects. Without them it would be necessary to prove, or to exercise, this power which, after all, one is not very sure of having. It is only too easy to end up by becoming a government employee in Algiers, and Prometheus, like the above-mentioned Borel, will devote the rest of his days to closing the cabarets and reforming morals in the colonies. All the same, every poet to be received into the fold must be damned. Charles Lassailly, the same who planned a philosophic novel, Robespierre and Jesus Christ, never went to bed without uttering several fervent blasphemies to give himself courage. Rebellion puts on mourning and exhibits itself for public admiration. Much more than the cult of the individual, romanticism inaugurates the cult of the “character.” It is at this point that it is logical. No longer hoping for the rule or the unity of God, determined to take up arms against an antagonistic destiny, anxious to preserve everything of which the living are still capable in a World dedicated to death, romantic rebellion looked for a solution in the attitude that it itself assumed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The attitude assembled, in aesthetic unity, all mankind who were in the hands of fate and about to be destroyed by divine violence. The human being who is condemned to death is, at least, magnificent before he disappears, and his magnificence is his justification. It is an established fact, the only one that can be thrown in the petrified face of the God of hate. The impassive rebel does not flinch before the eyes of God. “Nothing,” says Milton, “will change this determined mind, this high disdain born of an offended conscience.” Everything is drawn or rushes toward the void, but even though man is humiliated, he is obstinate and at least preserves his pride. A baroque romantic, discovered by Raymond Queneau, claims that the aim of all intellectual life is to become God. This romantic is really a little ahead of his time. The aim, at that time, was only to equal God and remain on His level. He is not destroyed, but by incessant effort He is refused any act of submission. Dandyism is a degraded form of asceticism. The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. However, it is an aesthetic of singularity and of negation. “To love and die before a mirror”: that, according to Baudelaire, was the dandy’s slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy, is by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance. Up to now man derived his coherence from his Creator. However, from the moment that he consecrates his rupture with Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility. Therefore, he must take himself in hand. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
The dandy rallies his forces and creates unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is coherent as an actor. However, an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live. He plays at it until he dies, expect for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear. Their rebellion thrusts its roots deep, but from the Abbe Prevost’s Cleveland up to the time of the Dadaists—including the frenetics of 1830 and Baudelaire and the decadents of 1880—more than a century of rebellion was completely glutted by the audacities of “eccentricity.” If they were all able to talk of unhappiness, it is because they despaired of ever being able to conquer it, except in futile parodies, and because they instinctively felt that it remained their sole excuse and their real claim to nobility. That is why the heritage of romanticism was not claimed by Victor Hugo, the epitome of France, but by Baudelair and Lacenaire, the poets of crime. “Everything in this world exudes crime,” says Baudelaire, “the newspaper, the walls, and the face of man.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
The conflict we see going on in this World is a conflict that too often goes on in all of us. It is a battle between the way things are and the way they “ought to be.” People move to rich and expensive communities to escape the problems of the World. Early in life, many develop some firm notions of the way things ought to be. Going with those notions, people set about the task of making them look that way. As long as their conditions in life conformed to these notions, they are able to be happy. However, when things change and are no longer the way they feel they ought to be, their problems begin. One of the problems most people have is their inability (or at least unwillingness) to admit that things are not all right. They prefer to live with the illusion that they are. Yet living with this illusion takes a heavy toll on people, physically and psychologically. An important aspect of the concept of being is that it is “now-oriented.” Being implies being in the here and now, in this moment, with things just the way they are. You can think about the way things used to be or wish that they be different in the future. However, you can only be—here and now—with things as they actually exist. When people refuse to admit that things are not all right, they are refusing to be with them exactly the way they are. They are trying to impose their own notions upon reality. This effort is doomed to failure because the unalterable fact of life is that things are the way they are. They are not the way they once were and they are not the way they are going to be—but they certainly are the way they are. A man’s refusal to accept this does not change anything. At most, his refusal just changes the way they look. Then a problem arises when people by choice or necessity choose to ignore the dysfunction and start taking medication to cope with life. This can put one in danger because they are turning off their senses and boosting their serotonin to help project an image of peace, happiness, and normalcy. However, it may leave them open to become victims of crime because they are not really being. It is important to see the World as it is and take action to better manage situations. The acceptance that things are the way they are is an act of surrender. When you see that things are the way they are and that there is nothing you can do to make them different, you give in to them. This does not mean that you do not have the power to change things in the future. This simply means that you do not have the power to change the way things are right now. All you can do, is just be with things the way they are. All you can do is surrender to being. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
For a long time, many men do not allow themselves to do this. They are more concerned with trying to make things the way they ought to be—a futile effort, at least in the context of right now. There are two phrases which can guide us in allowing being to happen. One is “Let go and let be,” and the other is “You do not always have to do something.” Doing is an attempt to change things, which is all right when the situation is mainly external. However, when the situation is internal, it requires the use of an inner process which does not respond to external effort. With the inner process, results are obtained by feeling, and feeling takes place within: in the heart, the soul, the guts, call it what you will. Thinking is a more indirect way of handling reality than feeling is. Our feelings tell us when something is painful, because our feelings are hurt, directly. Our thinking explains the hurt, justifies it, rationalizes it, analyzes it. In the intellectual sphere, words—not feelings—are used. On the other hand, feelings—the subjective awareness of an emotional state—are internal directives essential for human life. They are means and ends in themselves. All pleasure and pain are perceived in the realm of feelings. Now, to tie these ideas together, being is equated with feeling. You cannot make, generate, or manufacture a feeling any more than you can make being. Feelings and being must arise spontaneously. They are involuntary. When an activity has the quality of “flow,” it belongs to being. When it has the quality of “push,” it belongs to doing. All productive activity requires doing, but creativity also requires an element of being. A healthy person, a master, finds a rhythmic balance between thinking and feeling, doing and being. If, for example, you are a secretary typing a letter for your supervisor, using shorthand notes, you are engaged in a process of doing. If you are asked to correct the sentence structure, grammar, and wording, you are also doing, but to accomplish it, you must draw from your own personal knowledge, experience and taste to create a more understandable communication. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
If you are composing the letter yourself, taking it a step further, you are creating a communication in your own unique way and allowing the activity to become a part of your self, of who you are. This is what is known as creative endeavour. However, if you are doing the activity because you have to, because you are forced to, you are in a state of doing. If you are doing it because you enjoy the activity, you are in a state of doing and being. We are taught early in life that feelings are dangerous and that some feelings are undesirable, even taboo. Values are attached to them, both good and bad. An emotion with an intellectual element attached is, according to our definition here, a value. However, we are afraid of these values. If we give in to sadness, we are afraid we will fall into a fit of despair. We fear that in giving in to anger, we might kill someone. This is what we were taught to think. However, each emotion we are capable of expressing has a purpose and an intrinsic worth. Each is valuable, and to deny an emotion exists deprives us of the value which it can bring. When we become afraid of these values, afraid of being, we mask the fear by doing. We become busy, busy, busy so we will have less time available for feeling, being, living, contacting. We measure our lives by what we accomplish rather than by the richness of our experiences. I remember having read in the verbatim reports of the Utah Conferences on Creativity, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that an air force testing officer reported that in their search for creative men they found that “those who get the answer without knowing how they got it are the ones we want.” The usual insistence on figuring things out first results in many things not being done because we have not got them altogether figure out first. In an education seminar a psychologist asked, “How is it that we know so much and nobody does anything?” We cannot always take credit for our “smartness.” We cannot feel proud, just happy, when things work out especially well. Many of us like the feeling of happiness better—a word that springs from another word, “happenings.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
When people live this way, the World seems so full of happenings. We do not always figure out how to do things first. This is just the way some people live. The following anecdote illustrates how easy it is for a Martian to understand the concept of psychological trading stamps. A woman came home from a group meeting one day where she had heard it for the first time, and explained it to her twelve-year-old son. He said, “Okay, mom, I’ll be back soon.” When he returned, he had made a small roll of perforated paper stamps and a little dispenser to hold them, together with a paper book with the pages ruled off into squares. On the first page he had written: “This page when full of stamps entitles you to one free mad, hurt, guilt, or fright, and a few of these add up to one free suffer.” He understood perfectly. If people do not spontaneously provoke you, insult you, entice you, or frighten you, then you start a game in order to make them do it. In this way you collect a free mad, hurt, guilt, or fright, and a few of these add up to one free suffer. There is another similarity between psychological trading stamps and commercial ones. They are both canceled once they are used, but people still like to talk nostalgically about the ones they turned in. They key word here is “recall.” Real people, in ordinary conversation, say, “Do you remember when…” whereas “do you recall…” is usually used in referring to trading stamps that were used up and canceled long ago. “Do you remember the good time we had in Yosemite?” is reminiscence, whereas: “Do you recall what happened at Yosemite? First you dented the fender on the BMW, and furthermore you forgot to…and then, as I recall, you…and in addition…” etcetera is a worn-out reproach which is not good for a justified anger any more. Lawyers habitually used the word “recall” rather than “remember” in the exercise of their profession, when they bring out the plaintiff’s often faded and sometimes counterfeit trading stamps to show the judge or jury. Lawyers are, in fact, philatelists, connoisseurs of psychological trading stamps; they can look over a collection, large or small, and estimate its current market value at the big redemption store in the courthouse. Crooked spouses can con each other by pulling out used or counterfeit trading stamps. Thus, Francisco discovered that his wife Angela was having an affair with her employer, and in fact, rescued her when the employer threatened her with violence. After a tempestuous scene, she thanked him and he forgave her. However, afterward, whenever he got drunk, which was often, he brought the matter up again, and there was another scene. In trading-stamp language, in the first scene he got a justified anger, she genuinely thanked him, and he generously forgave her. That was a decent settlement, and all the trading stamps were canceled. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
However, as noted, “forgive” in practice means to put the stamps in the drawer until they are needed again, even though they have already been cashed in. In this case, Franciso pulled out the old canceled stamps every Saturday night and waved them in Angela’s face. Instead of pointing out that they had already been used, Angela would hang her head and let Francisco have another free anger. In return, she would fob off on him some counterfeit thank-you stamps. The first time she thanked him, she gave him true stamps of golden gratitude, but after that her thanks were tired and spurious, “fool’s gold” or iron pyrites, which he, in his drunken foolishness, cherished like the real thing. When he was sober, both of them could be honest and regard the matter as settled. However, when he was drinking, they became crooked with each other. He blackmailed her with phony reruns, and she paid him off in kind. Thus, the analogy between commercial and psychological trading stamps is almost perfect. Each person tends to handle both kinds in the same way, according to his upbringing. Some people are raised to cash them in and forget it. Others are taught to save them and savour them; they keep their paper stamps and gloat over them as they mount up in anticipation of the day when they will be able to cash them in for a big prize; and they deal the same way with their angers, hurts, fears, and guilts, keeping them bottled up until they have enough for a really big payoff. Still others have permission to cheat, and sue considerable ingenuity in doing so. Psychological trading stamps exist as emotional memories, which probably take the form of molecular patterns in a continual state of agitation, or electrical potentials which go round and round in a circle of Jordan curve; and neither of them is completely exhausted until there is some kind of discharge of the piled-up energy. The rate at which the configurations or the potentials decay is probably based partly on genes and partly on “early conditioning” which in our terms falls into the category of parental programing. If a person brings out the same old trading stamps again and again to exhibit to his audience, they begin to look more and more tired and shopworn, and so does the audience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The new culture which emerged from the 1960s was fabricated by newly activated teenage nervous systems. These nervous systems had been printed by signals urging self-indulgence, self-discovery and self-actualization. This generation was caste-out far beyond hive limits where reputations, and at the times, bodies were placed on the lines. The first benefit of this out-caste behaviour was that college education is better today. There is a caste which benefits from anger and stirring up trouble. It is called the legal profession. Left-wing lawyers say, “Well, what’s wrong with the college students today? They are not angry as they were in the 1960s.” Well, some might say they are even more angry today. Much like in the 1960s, we have some very irritable and irritating bureaucrats running the colleges, and running the country. In the 21st Century, some college administrators, college presidents, and college professors are allowing students to be threatened and harassed on campus, and encouraging students to change their genders. They have become more tolerant of, sometimes even more supportive of abnormality, than of normalcy. Young people should enjoy a certain serenity and relaxation that is becoming impossible. People have been fighting hard to end peace and quiet. Some people say these cultural changes are phases, temporary hula hoop fads. However, they are not. You cannot go back. The culture changes of the first quarter of the 21st century is irreversible. There many aspects of this gender confusion and male gentile mutilation that did not exist before the Obama administration. I am sure no parent wants their son to chop off his private parts, and this is why so many people are upset that youth are being exposed to atypical sexuality in the classroom. They are also upset that this is a political agenda that is being hyped up by the media and celebrities. And this gentile mutilation is irreversible and will cause much unnecessary pain. It is good to accept others and protect their rights, but we also must accept boys are boys and girls are girls and teach them proper gender roles, so not to confuse them. Even young adults of legal age are still figuring themselves out and are young and impressionable so it is important that are not persuaded or convinced to make changes to their bodies that they may regret later in life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
Emotionality represents a heightened state of being, but use of “cold logic” with an absence of emotion may also be thought of as a heightened state. In the midst of an emotional experience, a person will show definite physiological symptoms: flushing, tremours, and increased heart rate, according to Isaacson and Hutt. However, the physiological symptoms are not necessarily different for each different emotion. Emotion may be defined as a group of organized feelings, all heightened or strengthened, either in reaction to a threat to the person (such as in anger or indignation) or in reaction to a perceived enhancement of the person, as in joy or ecstasy. Whereas the use of cool objectivity also has survival value for the person, the inhibition of emotion or the overcontrol of emotional experience is often associated with adjustment problems. The free expression of one’s feelings or emotions—as long as it is within control of the person—is considered to be a characteristic of the healthy person. A high-level state of humanness includes the opportunity for the person to express self emotionally, as freely and spontaneously as a hearty laugh, for example, and with a reasonable level of control, as in the case of an angry parent who refrains from physical punishment of a child, and who rather chooses to explain and reason with the child concerning the misbehaviour. Emotions assists life’s intensity and meaning. We are amused and we laugh; someone insults us and we become angry. A young woman has just received a proposal of marriage from the man she loves; her excitement and joy are dramatically evident. Emotion is a quality of experience and an expressive quality of action. We can speak thus of emotional experience and emotional expression. The former is emotion viewed from a phenomenological perspective, that is, from the standpoint of the person, whereas emotional expression is the way emotional experience appears to an observer. Some may still believe that caste is a fact in Nature, but man will be without that pride in social rank which has too often ended in some sort of arrogance or even cruelty to those of lower status. The refinement, manners, and culture which Jesus Christ wishes to see in a properly developed human being may be different in outer form from those which a modern Christian would wish to see, but they are not different in spirit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Those who now denounce them angrily as class-marks must therefore praise grossness, crudeness, coarseness, and ignorance as ideal. And others who can see no spiritual usefulness being served by fine quality simply do not look far enough. The practice of true philosophy should reduce, or remove, coarseness of character, behaviour, and speech. He will find less and less pleasure in the chatter of society, clubs, and drawing rooms, which when it is about self, is quite inane, and when about other people, is often cruel. In this World he has to deal with people. To deal efficiently with the, he needs to understand their characters. However, to turn a blind eye towards their weaknesses will only mar this understanding and spoil this efficiency. Even where he seeks to help them, such results will only hinder is compassionate aim. The range of his goodwill excludes none, includes all. He recognizes on enemies, only unevolved men. By “good manners” is not meant “formal etiquette” although the two may often coincide. Teach elementary manners, that is, a warm smile. In a truly civilized society, courteous manners and refined tastes would be the rule. One mane can hate another man, but if the first has renounced his ego—the source of hatred—how can he continue to do so? A smile will say to others what words may fail to do, will express your basic attitude of, in Jesus’ phrase “good will unto all men.” He will in the end unfailingly draw to himself what he gives out. If hate, hate returns; if love, love returns/ We may dislike a man and disapprove of his opinions but this ought not prevent us from giving him our goodwill. If thought irritates and feeling boils, it is not enough to show an outward good temper, excellent discipline though that be. There is a tolerance which springs from mere indifference, but there is also a tolerance which springs from inner largeness of spirit. Differences between men—whether in external things or internal thinking—there must be. However, they need not become the occasion of hate between men. With enough goodwill on both sides, a compromise can usually be reached in most disputes. By refinement, I mean a quality of good breeding, either natural or acquired. The easiest way to express this feeling, described by Jesus as “goodwill unto all,” is to be courteous to all. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The Sacramento Fire Department delivers fire suppression, emergency medical services (EMS), technical rescue including urban search and rescue, hazardous materials mitigation, fire prevention, domestic preparedness, fire and EMS safety education, and fire investigation programs. Choosing to be a firefighter or to work in the Sacramento Fire Department means someone is dedicating their life to protecting and serving others. Frontline staff members put their lives on the line every day, and that selflessness extends outside the workplace. “It was about nine-thirty in the evening. I was getting ready to go to my job at midnight. The phone call said it was an explosion. There were some fuel storage tanks in the area, and I thought it might be one of them. I drove to the station, and some of the guys were already getting the engines out. I told them I’d go on ahead to the site in my own car. We arrived there together, and the guys hooked the engine to a hydrant. I didn’t know it was a plane crash until we got there. The only thing that was really identifiable as part of a plane was the front part of it, the cockpit area. I was kind of shocked. I didn’t know what to expect. I grabbed a fire hat off the engine, and I ran down to the scene itself. I had the line, and I put the nozzle on and was spraying the whole area. The water came down like an easy rain. It wasn’t like a major fire, like from fuel. I just found the little hot spots. Actually, all it was was bodies burning as far as I could see, the little bits of clothing that was left on them. It was dark, but I could see about a dozen bodies that were recognizable as people. I didn’t really know how many were scattered all over the place. I didn’t see that until daybreak. I felt I was in kind of a helpless situation, just knowing that nobody was going to survive. I had never seen anything like that before. I was standing there hosing the area down in a fog spray, and I didn’t hear anything. Then I thought I heard the moaning, and I shut the water off to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. It’s possible that the water squirted on the litter girl and revived her. Anyway, I heard what sounded like moaning. All I could see was a pile of rubber with a few bodies here and there, but mostly rubble. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
“I called my partner over, and I point to the spot where I thought the moaning was coming from. I thought it was a man. I could see a guy right there. I thought it was him. Well, my partner, X, started moving things around, and I took the hose and went off, thinking that maybe somebody would survive, though it wasn’t likely. X heard the moaning, then it quit and he didn’t hear it. He checked the bodies for any sign of life. He moved things aside to get to some of them. There wasn’t much light there, and everything was black and charred. Meanwhile, I put out the rest of the fires on the bodies. X moved aside a charred airplane seat. Then he heard the moaning again and saw that it was coming from the seat he had put aside. It was upside down, and he pilled it up, and there was the little girl strapped in it. He called our EMT over, and he did a quick survey of her body to see if there were any broken bones. Then they cut her out of the seat belt, put her on a backboard, and rushed her to the hospital. There was some controversy about whether she was on the plane or a passenger in a car that was on the ground. About four or five hundred feet away was a Blazer. The thing was on fire from bumper to bumper when we got there, and there was somebody inside it. They thought she might have been a passenger in that car. They didn’t listen to us. It was an airplane seat that she was strapped into. Her mother was there, too. The little girl was facedown on top of her mother. The report was that the mother was trying to shield her from the flames. Nobody could hold onto something in the kind of impact. It may have been a freak thing that she landed on top of her mother. We didn’t want to debate anybody on that point, so we just left it at that. I was there for twenty-two hours. This was in our station area, so we were more or less a standby unit until everything was pretty much cleared up. I did a lot of walking. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t sleep, that’s for sure, because of the smell and the things running through my mind. We had a command post with a catering van and Red Cross wagon, giving out coffee and food. I walked back and forth to there quite a bit, but I really couldn’t eat. I don’t know how you describe a lot of burning bodies. We knew enough not to touch anything until the FAA and the other people got there in the morning. They came in and went over some of the bodies, covering them up. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
“Three other stations were there, plus the airport fire department and other fire departments from other communities. We were scattered all over the place, squirting down the whole are. We weren’t specifically prepared for anything life this, but everybody kept their cool, saw what they had to do, and did it. We didn’t think about the plane crash until later. Everybody there did a heck of a job. We knew this sort of thing would probably happen someday, we just didn’t know where or when. It was the EMTs and the coroners who put the corpses in body bags, and then we took the body bags and put them in the coroner’s van, which took them to the temporary morgue. The smell there was unbearable. They had lain there all night, and then in the morning the sun started hitting them. Some bodies were pretty much intact, just burned real bad. But they could tell if they were male or female. Both others, all they had was just parts, like a hand or a foot or a leg. The parts were lying all over the place. My wife called my company that I wouldn’t be to work that night because of the plane crash. They marked it down as leave without pay. I think that in all the commotion, they weren’t thinking. I had to put in a grievance to get my pat. It was hard for me to talked about what I saw. I could relate to everything that was splattered all over the ground there. It kind of threw me off there for a little bit. I had recurring memories of what I did at the scene. I think the thing brought all the guys in the department closer together, since we were all in it together. They have a counseling team for this kind of traumatic situation. We had a guy come in about two weeks after a crash, a cop with thirty years behind him. He met with us to get us to talk about it. Most of the guys really didn’t want to say anything because you don’t want to talk to them if you don’t know them personally. The guy had good intentions, but unless it was somebody like your pastor, it was kind of hard to open up to him. He said it himself: he had thought he had seen it all, until he came to the crash. He said, ‘I guess I didn’t see everything.’ I guess there are guys who are still having a hard time with it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
We may practise goodwill untainted by selfishness towards all mankind without becoming mushily sentimental about “universal brotherhood.” The hermit who behaves rudely may be showing his individualism, as he believes, but he is also showing his lack of spirituality. Polite manners imply thought for others. Nor is his tolerance grown out of laziness. It is grown out of understanding mated to kindliness. In his upward climb, he should slowly learn to drop the emotional view of life and to replace it by the intelligent view. Thus, he will show his passage from a lower to a higher level. However, it is to be an intelligence that is serene in activity, impersonal in judgment, warm in benevolence, and intuitive in quality. There should be no room in it to hold bias or bigotry, one the other hand, or dead logic. He will not only take care not to exceed his own rights, not only be scrupulous not to invade other people’s rights, but he will even take care not to interfere with their free will. Be strong without being stubborn. Much good behaviour is thinly veneered, being the consequence of social prudence rather than personal virtue. Because of the Sacramento Fire Department, Sacramento City has been blessed with a great and noble heritage that offers a pathway to salvation. The dedicated EMTs, Fire Fighters, CHP and Police risk their lives to protect that community and keep people safe. The people of Sacramento do not underestimate the worth of emergency services. The Sacramento Fire Department has a firm adherence to a code of moral and ethical standards: Honesty, Trust, and Accountability. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. It is also very important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
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How is it that We Know So Much and Do Not Do Anything?
Many across the nation and the World currently face weighty challenges in their lives. In difficult periods of the past, leasers have recognized the collective need to give thanks amid turmoil and to turn to God. Living in thanksgiving daily is a habit that will enrich our lives and the lives of those we love. One of the most enduring and endearing of American images is the Thanksgiving holiday family dinner. The turkey, cranberry sauce, and the array of pies have attained nearly iconic status, and Norman Rockwell has provided a Saturday Evening Post fantasy of ordinary gratitude from which no one can escape and to which everyone aspires. Not for nothing is this the most heavily traveled day in the American calendar. Thanksgiving is the American holiday that embraces all that we value without stressing any of the things that make a public holiday problematic. Thanksgiving is a big deal in American because we American believe it to be our unique holiday, hardly found in this form anywhere else on Earth. And wherever on Earth Thanksgiving is celebrated, it is invariably associated with America and its founding virtues and values. Thanksgiving is a time when generations around the hearth and are renewed by generational proximity within. Shocks of corn and heaps of pumpkins decorate the fields and fill the barns as the strutting monarch of the farmyard, the fattened Thanksgiving turkey and prepared for the glorious meal. Pies are drawn steaming from ovens in stoves in which bubbling pots foretell the coming feast. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Following the Revolutionary War and ratification of the United States Constitution, President George Washington issued a proclamation designating Thursday, 26 November 1789, as an official holiday of “sincere and humble thanks” for God’s “care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation.” In October 1863, amid a bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln made the traditional Thanksgiving celebration a nationwide holiday to be commemorated each year on the fourth Thursday of November. President Lincoln’s proclamation enumerated the blessings of the country, then urged that those blessings “be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.” He recommended that Americans “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation.” As Thanksgiving is upon us, those who have homes and/or families are called to reflect on the good despite difficulty and division. Many Americans are facing the crisis of not being able to afford a home. They have worked hard and many of them are good people. They have a long, uphill battle ahead, and we pray that God shines down upon them and lets them know that he loves them and that every human soul is valuable. We pray that our Great Lord blesses them with a home where they can feel safe and be protected from the elements. We pray that every day, they can wake up and enjoy a hearty meal and know that they are loved. While there is much that is wrong in the World today, there are many things that are right and good. Our lives are blessed in countless ways. The things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities and the love we receive from those around us. Unfortunately, these are some of the things we allow ourselves to take for granted. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deeply enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given. May we willingly serve one another. May we pray for the inspiration to know of the needs of those around us, and then may we go forward and help. Difficulties come into our lives, problems we do not anticipate and which we would never choose. None of us is immune. The purpose of mortality is to learn and to grow to become more like our Father, and it is often during the difficult times that we learn the most, as painful as the lessons may be. Our lives can also be filled with joy as we follow the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We hope that all people will see this Thanksgiving holiday as a time to express gratitude and to serve those around them. You are worthy of love every day. After a dangerous, frightening, and thoroughly uncomfortable 66-day voyage cooped up in the dark, dank, bowels of the Mayflower, the Pilgrims were immeasurably relieved to sight land on November 9. Following a fruitless attempt to continue to their original destinations at the mouth of the Hudson River, they decided to stay where they had ended up, in New England. They anchored in Cape Cod harbour (now Provincetown harbour) on November 11, 1620. As they were now outside the legal boundaries of their charter, some of the Strangers asserted that they were no longer obliged to live under the dominion of the “Saints” (as the Separatists commonly referred to themselves), but could strike out on their own. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the men of the party signed a momentous document called the Mayflower Compact that not only saved the colony by requiring all to live together under a government of their own making, but also introduced democratic principles of government to America and in time inspired the United States Constitution. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Following a month of exploration on Cap Cod, which included a brief, bloodless foray with the Indian inhabitants themselves as well as the discovery of vacant Indian homes, providential corn supplies (which they took but later paid back with interest), and graves, an exploring party arrived at what is now Plymouth. It was a dark and stormy December night of wind and sleet as the little shallop (a coastal craft brought over in pieces of the Mayflower and reconstructed on Cape Cod) approached the entrance to Plymouth harbour. Although both sail and rudder were lost in the storm, the boat entered the harbour and safely anchored. Its passengers found themselves on an island in the morning, and there they spent the weekend before crossing over to the mainland on Monday, December 11 (or December 21, by the New Style or Gregorian calendar), when they made the climatic landing on Plymouth Rock. The Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay a week later, and on Christmas Day (which the Separatists did not believe in), work began on the new village. There followed the terrible First Winter, during which all but a few persons suffered from exposure and disease, and half the Mayflower’s passengers and crew died. Nevertheless they persevered, and when spring came planted their first crops and built homes and storehouses. On March 16, a lone Indian entered the settlement and astonished the colonists by greeting them in English. This was Samoset, a Native Sagamore from Maine, who had learned the language from English fishermen who made annual voyages to the Maine coast each year. On March 22, he introduced them to another Native man, Squanto, who had once lived at Patuxet, the site of the new Plymouth settlement, before being kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery in Spain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Remarkably, Squanto had escaped and made his way to London, from where he returned to America as a scout for the Newfoundland Company. When he finally reached his old home, he found it abandoned—the result of a plague that had decimated the coastal population of southeastern New England. He, too, spoke English, and became the little colony’s translator, as well as its instructor in planting corn and finding local recourses. That same day, the “great Sagamore” Massasoit arrived with his retinue of sixty men, and with the help of the English-speaking Native men, entered a treaty of peace with the colonists that would last more than fifty years. The following autumn, the all-important corn harvest that would insure Plymouth Colony’s survival proved successful, although some of the English crops were a disappointment. In honour of this 1621 harvest, Edward Winslow noted that Governor William Bardford sent four men out to hunt wildfowl “so that we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.” They brought back enough fowl to feed the community a week, including “many of the Indians [who came] amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men.” They hosted their guests for three days of feasting, to which the Indians contributed five deer. This ecumenical outdoor harvest feast and November celebration was America’s “First Thanksgiving”; it was later adopted by other New England colonies in memory of that momentous event. The holiday remained a regional observance until 1789, when George Washington declared the first nationwide Thanksgiving for the new Untied States (an earlier Thanksgiving for the thirteen colonies had been declared by the Continental Congress in 1777). The custom of national Thanksgiving lapsed after 1815, until Abraham Lincoln, urged on by Sarah Josepha Hale (editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and fervent advocate for a nation Thanksgiving holiday), declared a traditional November Thanksgiving in 1863. Since that time, the holiday the Pilgrims established has been celebrated without fail each fall, and the memory of that First Thanksgiving has been indelibly coloured by the famous images of colonists and Native neighbours sitting down to dine in autumnal splendour, surrounded with the bounty of the harvest. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
If you will, think for a moment of someone you know who is truly happy. We have all met those people who seem to radiate happiness. They seem to smile more than others; they laugh more than others—just being around them makes us happier as well. Now think of someone you know who is not happy at all. Perhaps they seem ten years older than they are, drained of energy—perhaps they are angry or bitter or depressed. When is the difference between them? What are the characteristics that differentiate happy from the miserable? Is there something that unhappy people can do to be happier? It is time to stop when such a flexible all-things-to-all-men attitude begins to destroy strict honesty of purpose and truth of speech. No self-actualized Christian can stoop so low, but pseudo-Christians may. With each coming of this experience, there is a going of bitterness out of his heart. More and more he sees that people cannot help being what they are, the products of their own experience and present characteristics, the living milestones of a cosmic evolutionary process. How can he blame, resent, or condemn them? More and more, therefore, does tolerance suffuse his attitude and acceptance mellow his contacts with the World. The blood and violence, the fear and suffering associated with the production of meat, should be enough to make kindhearted, sensitive people shun it. In the sphere of human relations, he will hold himself to certain attitudes which eradicate the negative tendencies in him and stimulate the beneficial. When thrown among those who do wrong and practise evil, he will not fall into angry, hatred, resentment, or bitterness, but will use occasion to rise into patience, detachment, or indifference, knowing that such persons will sometime and somewhere infallibly receive the painful return of what they have given out. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
When, on the contrary, he is brought into the company of those who do right and practise virtue, he will rejoice in their goodness and be glad to witness their conduct. When he finds himself among those suffering misfortune, he will pity, and when among those enjoying good fortune, he will feel no envy. It is not possible for every man to establish harmony with every environment in which he finds himself, but it is possible for him to understand all environments so thoroughly as to react rightly to them. You must neither defraud your neighbour nor allow him to defraud you. If he must resist the influence and pressure of society in many directions to keep his spiritual integrity, he need not do so in an aggressive uncouth, or tactless manner. Some have unfortunately behaved in this way, not because philosophy bade them do so, but because their individuality was strong and their ego pronounced. Unless some quirk of destiny puts him in a public situation where duty and responsibility compel attention to negatives and criticisms, he may prefer to draw attention to the good and the beautiful, to spread harmony. So long as we let other people’s faults or blunders evoke our own in angry response, so long do we foolishly add an inner hurt to whatever outer hurt their fault or blunder may have caused us. Where harshness, coarseness, brutality, and vulgarity reign, where no touch of kindness, beauty, gentleness, or love enters the atmosphere, there the soul stifles. He is neither a sentimentalist nor a simpleton, but expects from humanity that dual nature, that thorn with the rose, which corresponds to the positive-negative nature of the universe itself. One may note these defects in a man’s character not to judge, certainly not to condemn him, but solely to understand any person with whom one must deal in some way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Good has existed in all countries, always, among bad people and at bad times. We ought to welcome them as people whatever low opinion we hold of their kindred. The idealist who expects too much from people is as mistaken as the cynic who expects too little. His tolerance is such that he accords to others the right to be, to act, and to live the way they want to be, to act, and to live. He trusts the evolutionary laws to take care of their corrective education. It is of the highest importance for older people to look after the manners of younger ones. However, the bad behaviour of many parents towards one another as well as in society is reflected in that of their children. Aggressive, naughty, ill-tempered, or disobedient traits in children need a measure of discipline from parents, or life will provide it in later years much more harshly. However, there is a special need for parents to provide it lovingly as education, not scolding and punishing. If we can give nothing else, we can always give others our kind thoughts and not our personal troubles. We are to cause no offense whatsoever to anyone. It is not always fair to scorn someone as a hypocrite for past frailties and lapses of the bygone past who behaves properly in the present. There may have been a genuine awakening accompanied by moral reform inwardly and outwardly, so that instead of condemnation, the attitude should be congratulation. His duty himself calls on him to protect the personal interests. However, his duty to the All calls on him to respect others’ interests too. There are rude and wild young people who assert that civilities and politeness intensify class divisions and status differences. They claim that in being wild and rude they are simply being natural and sincere whereas the others whom they denounce as holding bourgeois values are hypocritical and insincere. If the background of these misguided young persons is scrutinized, it will usually be found that at least three-quarters of them belong to working class origins while the others who are themselves probably of comfortable middle-class origin are pathological, mentally disturbed, emotionally upset persons. No, the courtesies of decent social intercourse are part of the proper evolution of humanity, and its refinement from the grossly animal to the truly human. This is an evolutionary advance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Good breeding is a quality which must be acquired through the incarnations, for it is a quality of good Quality itself. Nobody knows, ultimately, what human beings need in order not merely to survive, but to prevail and to develop their full possibilities. Our most basic needs include the need to affirm life itself; physical gratifications; love, status, and self-esteem; freedom and space; challenge; prayer; cognitive clarity; meaning; variety and change; intimacy in solitude; and contact with nature. There may be more basic needs, and some of those mentioned, such as excitement, may not be essential to life itself, but they certainly make for a richer existence if they have been met. Prolonged deprivation may bring about a state of frustration, when a person loses contact with reality and may engage in destructive tension-reducing action. Aggression and regression are characteristic responses to frustration. Frustration thresholds are heightened by good health, recognition of meaning in life, and opportunities for release. Prolonged deprivation of basic needs can sicken a person through diminished resistance to infection, which is brought about by stress or dispiritedness. The healthy personality acknowledges dispiritedness in self when it occurs and seeks help. Needs and emotions that threaten a person’s self-esteem and sense of security may be repressed; they operate as unconscious influences upon action and experience. Such unconscious motives may appear in the content of dreams, in accidents and errors, in body postures, in forgetting of intentions and promises, and in certain projective tests of personality. The unconscious harbours one’s possibilities for achievement and growth as well as for action that is personally or socially reprehensible. Guilt can be a healthy indicator of something being wrong in one’s behaviour. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Once a person has gratified the basic needs, his or her energies and experience are liberated so that the person can turn to projects beyond basic need satisfaction, such as the pursuit of freedom, justice, beauty, or truth; in other words, B, or being motivation, including self-actualization. The problem is to find goals and projects that are challenging, fascinating, and that keep your mind free. Any choice of a meaningful commitment outside of self must include one’s free choice to change one’s mind. Psychological trading stamps follow the same pattern as commercial ones. They are usually obtained as a by-product of legitimate transactions. Marital arguments, for example, usually start over some actual problem, which is the “groceries.” While the Adult is carrying on its business, the Child is eagerly waiting to receive bonuses. People who collect psychological trading stamps have favourite “colours,” and if offered other colours, they may not bother to take them. A person who collects angers will let guilts and fears go by, or let someone else pick them up. In fact, in a soundly structured martial game, one spouse will pick up all the angers while the other picks up all the guilts or inadequacies, so that they both “win” and add to their collections. There are some people, however, who will collect any kind of trading stamps. These are starved for feelings and will play “Greenhouse,” happily showing off any kind of feeling that comes along. Psychologists are especially prone to pick up windblown feelings from the sidewalk, and if they are group therapists, to encourage their patients to do likewise. Some people go over their hurts and angers every night before going to sleep; others do it less frequently; while still others only do it when they are bored and have nothing better to do. Some wait until they need one big justification, and then count all their hurts and angers in the hope that they have enough to warrant an outburst of anger, a “free” sulk, or some other dramatic emotional display. Some people like to save them and some like to spend them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
People like to show their collections of feelings to others, and to talk about who has more or better angers, hurts, guilts, fears, et cetera. In fact, many saloons become showrooms where people can go to boast about their trading stamps: “You think your wife is unreasonable—well, list to this!” or “I know what you mean. It takes even less than that to hurt (scare) me. Yesterday…” or “Embarrassed (guilty, inadequate)? I coulda sunk through the floor!” The “store” where psychological trading stamps are redeemed has the same array of prizes as the commercial trading stamp center: little ones, bigger ones, and really big ones. For one or two “books” the person can get a small prize, such as a free (“justified”) drunk or fantasy involving pleasures of the flesh; for ten “books” he can get a toy (unsuccessful) suicide or an adultery, and for one hundred “books” he can get one of the big ones: a free quit (divorce, leave treatment, quit job), a free go to the mental hospital (colloquially known as a free crazy), a free suicide, or a free homicide. Some people learn that psychological trading stamps are not really free, and that the collected feelings have to be paid for in loneliness, insomnia, raised blood pressure, or stomach trouble, so they stop collecting them. Others never do learn about this. Some know it, but continue to play games and collect payoffs because otherwise their lives would be too drab; since they feel little justification for their way of living, they have to content themselves with collecting small justifications for small outbursts of vitality. Some people prefer to talk straight rather than play games: that is, they will not act provocatively in order to get trading stamps, and will refuse to respond to the spurious provocative behaviour of others. With the energy thus saved, they are ready when they meet the right person at the right time in the right place for more legitimate expressions of feelings. In some cases, people collect psychological trading stamps painlessly and someone else pays the price. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Thus, a criminal may enjoy all the pleasures of robbing a bank without feeling bad about it or getting caught; apparently, is they do not get too greedy and push too hard, some professional confidence men and card sharps can live very happily in this way. Some teenagers enjoy dismaying their elders without feeling any remorse or other ill effects. However, in principle, the person who collects trading stamps usually must pay for them sooner or later. Some people, particularly paranoids, collect “counterfeit” trading stamps. If no one will provoke them, they imagine provocations. Then, if they are impatient, they can get a free suicide or a free homicide without having to rely on the natural course of events to supply enough irritations for a legitimate outburst. In this respect, there are two types of paranoids. The Child paranoid collects counterfeit wrongs and says, “See what they did to me,” while the Parent paranoid collects counterfeit rights, and says, “They cannot do this to me.” In fact, there are “check raisers” as well as true counterfeiters among paranoids. Those with delusions can pick up very small trading stamps here and there and raise each of them into a very large denomination to get a large payoff quickly. Those with voice hallucinations can manufacture trading stamps ad infinitum right out of their heads. It is just as hard for a patient to give up a lifelong collection of hard-earned psychological trading stamps as it would be for a housewife to burn her commercial ones. This is one factor hindering recovery, since, in order to be cured, the patient must not only stop playing games compulsively, but must also forgo the pleasure of using the stamps he has collected previously. If he truly gives up his script, “forgiveness” of previous wrongs is not enough: they must become truly irrelevant for the future course of his life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
In my experience, “forgiveness” means putting the trading stamps away in a drawer, rather than disposing of them permanently; they will stay in the drawer as long as things go smoothly, but if there is a new offense, they will be pulled out and added to the new payoff in calculating the prize. Thus, if she slips up again, an alcoholic who “forgives” his wife will not go on just a little binge, but may throw in all the trading stamps he had got from all her slips or insults over the whole course of their marriage, and go on an epical bender perhaps ending in delirium tremens. So far, nothing has been said about “good” feelings such as righteousness, triumph, and joy. Righteousness stamps are made of fool’s gold, and will not pass as currency anywhere except in fool’s paradise. Triumph stamps glitter, but they are not collected by people of good taste because they are only gilt. They can be turned in, however, for a free celebration, and can thus be used worthily to bring fun to many people. Joy, like despair, is a genuine feeling, and is not the payoff of a game; thus we can speak of golden joy, just as we speak of morbid despair. The important clinical point about “good” feelings that that people who save “brown” stamps, the “bad” feelings or “feeling bads” discussed above, are often reluctant to accept “gold” stamps when they are offered in the form of compliments or “strokes.” They are quite comfortable with the familiar, bad, old feelings, but do not know where to put good ones, and so they will turn them away or ignore them by pretending not to hear. As a matter of fact, a zealous collector of “brown” stamps can turn even the sincerest compliments into veiled insults, so that instead of wasting them by refusing them or not hearing them, he will transform them into counterfeit browns. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The most common example is: “My, you look good today!” bringing out the response: “I knew you did not like the way I looked last week.” Another is: “My, that is a beautiful dress!” eliciting: “So you did not like the one I wore yesterday!” With a little practice, anyone can learn to transform compliments into insults, and by spraying a little mud over a pleasant gold stamp, turn it into an unpleasant one. Alcohol triggers mammalian reactions. Another powerful set of neurotransmitters reconstruct even more primitive realities. Narcotics reactivate first stage newly born amoeboid-like brain experiences and out the domesticate in touch with relaxed, floating, vegetative pre-terrestrial-marine neurological realities. Narcotic drugs are approved when used in sickness rituals. Symptomatic cries for help can stimulate shaman-doctors to offer the narcotic experience which activates lower-brain consciousness—ancient, infantile, vegetative. The taboo is necessary for maintaining hive discipline. The narcotic return to marine status is so tempting, so inviting, that it must be administered by an authority figure. The domesticate is not allowed access to first circuit neurotransmitters—chemical substances, such as acetylcholine or dopamine, that transmit nerve impulses across a synapse. Self-administration of narcotics to actualize infantile responses are not tolerated for fear that everyone will reject the busy, hectic, adult demands of the hive and escape back to vegetative-ocean bliss. The Doctor Ceremony is the method by which hive-society allows citizens to plug back into the early marine circuits. Intoxicant-narcotic behaviour engages earlier-slower-lower brains; hedonic behaviour engages future circuits. An amusing diagnostic sidelight on domesticated terrestrial civilizations is that it is acceptable to phone-in sick to the office and thus avoid work. Hive-society recognizes that the insectoid slavery it imposes is basically lethal to the workers. Consequently, the ceremony of sick leave is allowed. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
It is impossible, however, to phone-in “well” to the hive-center to announce: “I feel so good today, I am not coming in to work.” In the hedonic society of the future—when the dom-species is a fourth stage self-actualized adult—provision will be made for “well leave” in addition to “sick leave.” The difference between intoxicant-narcotic behaviour and hedonic behaviour should now be clear. The former engages earlier-slower-lower instinctual brains. The latter moves consciousness and behaviour into the self-actualized future, engages future neural circuits. The latter are genetic endowments, new brains presented, ready-or-not, by the evolutionary process—not earned, but grown-into. I remember having read in the verbatim reports of the Utah Conferences on Creativity, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that an air force testing officer reported that in their search for creative men, they found that “those who get the answer without knowing how they got it are the ones we want.” The usual insistence on figuring things out first results in many things not being done because we have not got them altogether figured out first. In an education seminar a psychologist asked, “How is it that we know so much and don’t do anything?” A seventeen-year-old tole me, “talk, talk, talk and nobody does anything. Sometimes I think I’ll go really crazy.” Many people—young people especially but it is not limited to them—try to do something “spontaneously” and it flops. A young girl throws all sorts of food into a bowl and mixes them up and sticks it in the oven, and it comes out pretty awful. A young man wages his personal war on “alienation” by inviting other people to live with him and then it does not work out the way he thought it would. Neither of these two young people were in touch with their own experience, of food or people. Their experience of food or people would have shown them a better way of putting them together, and in that case, it would have been done more tentatively, a little at a time, observing what happens and making corrections. ##RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The goal is non-specific, and in that sense, there is no recipe. However, all the information from the past is available in the present. Even if I have not cooked before, still, I have seen other people cook, and I have eaten. The goal of the Sacramento Fire Department is protecting the public and fire service through coordinated efforts in code enforcement, fire service training, public education, hazardous materials response, fire investigation, and urban search and rescue. “My friend A and I were paramedics in Rescue X. We were in the firehouse. It was a quiet day, and I forget if we were watching TV or working out with weights, and I was thinking about a date I had that night. And we got a call for a collapsed building. When we got to the collapsed building, the company had already gotten out a few people who were on the first floor. It was a three-story building that had collapsed down to the street level. No fire, it just collapsed. They had electric wires down, and you could smell the gas leaking. Chief Y said, ‘Watch out for the live wires.’ There was a woman there in front running around hysterically, saying, ‘My baby is still in the building.’ So I ran up to the collapse, where there was a crowd. Somebody handed me a little kid. So I took the kid and ran down to the squad where this woman was, and I said, ‘Here’s your baby.’ The kid was about four years old. She said, ‘No, that’s not my baby. My baby is about two.’ So I ran over to Chief Y. ‘Chief, there’s another kid in there.’ #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“There was a lot of confusion and hysteria, people running around. By that time we had looked over everything that we could, without seeing the baby. The whole building was mostly in the basement, and it was still pretty unstable. The first floor was a store, so you had freezers and refrigerators and a lot of heavy stuff that fell. So there were a lot of air pockets down in the basement. We looked and looked through every hole, and we couldn’t find anything, and we couldn’t hear anything. Finally there was one small hole that hadn’t been explored. I said, ‘Chief Y should send in a few small men to find out if anything’s in there.’ So we immediately shot right into the hole. Once inside, we had to crawl like snakes from one air pocket to another. There wasn’t a lot of room, and you could see that things were barely held up by just a few things. All it took was for something to shift, and the rest of the stuff would come down on us. The electric wires were outside, and we could smell the gas. We were in there for three of four minutes when Z asked if we needed a hand, and we said, ‘Yeah.’ We were moving stuff around and Y came and helped us do that. I remember telling A, ‘A, it’s time to go.’ We had been there long enough. I didn’t hear anybody, I didn’t see anybody. And if there was somebody, he wasn’t alive anymore. He said, ‘But I’m not leaving here, because there’s somebody in here and I couldn’t live with myself.’ This sticks in my mine because we all knew that this was a little black kid we were looking for, and A is white and Z is white, too. So I said, ‘Okay, let’s look some more.’ He was looking maybe harder than I was. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“Then there was a little door that had fallen on a bunch of debris, and the kid was under that door. We didn’t realize it. As a matter of fact, a couple of times we were nearly on that door. Then we started digging around the edge of the door, which let air under it, and when the kid got the air, he started crying in a muffled way. I sat right there and said, ‘We have him. We have him.’ I got Z to the Halligan. When he handed it to me, I used it to pry up the edge of the door. He looked under, and said, ‘I can see him. I can see his leg.’ Then A reached under the edge of the door and pulled the kid out. He handed him to me, I gave him to Z, and Z passed him out of the hole. I said, ‘Well, now let’s get out of here.’ Afterwards, it was funny and it was gratifying, but the whole time we were in there, it was very scary. You could smell the gas, and I knew there were lives wires outside. And the debris was still shifting down, and at any time it could have finished collapsing. And there was so much stuff over us, I knew that once it came down on us, there was nobody that could have gotten us out of there. Fortunately, it all worked out for the best. The child had only minor scratches. I don’t think he was conscious at first. Maybe all the moving around stimulated him and woke him up. If we had left him, he would have died. I’m sure of that. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to save lives, protect property, and serve their community with courage, commitment and compassion. However, when vehicles are parked in loading zones and red zones, it can be a hinderance to the fire department and prevent them from saving lives or putting out a fire in a timely manner. Also, when you see an emergency vehicle and the lights are flashing, obey the law and safely get out of their way. Even 30 seconds are critical when it comes to saving a life or putting out a fire. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
The Sacramento Fire Department works hard to save lives and property and often risk their own lives. Awaken compassionate thoughts and actions by helping others realize that, like our Saviour, they too have compassion for others. Please make donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to asset them in their fire prevent duty and other programs. To help keep America a God loving, Christian community, please raise your children to love America and to love God and Jesus Christ. In a afford to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars and other American made good and services. Also, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. The practical realistic desire to live well whilst he is living on Earth can still leave plenty of room for idealism and spirituality. Free from the mental fatigue of ghost-haunted traditions and emotional poisons which weigh so heavily on others, he can search vigorously for great art, vital religion, inspired mysticism, and the highest philosophy—and appreciate them adequately when found. Toleration does not mean acceptance of anything, however evil it be. It means the avoidance of fanaticism, the practice of goodwill, and the recognition that by reason of their past re-incarnationary history, many wide differences of opinion, belief, practice, and character do and must exist in human beings. The ultimate discovery is of the oneness and infinitude of Mind, hence of all mankind as arising out of That. This provides the basis of his ethics, and makes him seek the common welfare alongside of his own. The person who cultivates tidy arrangements and orderly habits in the little things of everyday living unconsciously imitates the tidiness and orderliness of the Mind behind the whole Universe. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
The Winchester Mystery House
The mansion is now fully decorated in Victorian Christmas charm! Come step back in time and enjoy the holiday magic ✨🎄 🎁
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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It is the Cry of Outraged Innocence
When I went to Hawaii in 1934 and the traffic in Honolulu looked like madness—totally disorganized—this was because it was so different from the order that I was used to. I was like the little boy who had has a crooked body all his life and when the doctor straightened it, he turned to his father and said, “He made me crooked!” The Honolulu traffic looked “crooked” to me. However, as I walked around doing errands on many different days, still failing to find any order in the driving, gradually I became aware that there were no accidents, not even near-collisions—and nobody got angry at anyone else. Then I became aware that the drivers of the cars—especially the Hawaiians without formal educations, and the other natives—were doing what I did: noticing. There were some rules—like driving on the right-hand side of the road and stopping for pedestrians, but the drivers went clear over on the left-hand side any time that was appropriate either to moving on their way or to getting out of someone else’s, and cars stopped as soon as a pedestrian stepped from the sidewalk to the street, even if this happened in the middle of the block. The driving was very much person-to-person, with recognition on both sides. Usually there was just an instant of this recognition between driver and driver or pedestrian and driver, but there was this moment of awareness of each other, of human “speaking” to human, and although I did not know anyone I felt surrounded by friends. When I had got the hang of it, I went right into Honolulu and drove the way that everyone else did. I have never had so much fun driving in my life. It was even more fun than driving in the Southwest where people were scarce and noticed each other when they passed on the road. In Honolulu there was no lack of people and cars, and still there was this noticing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In Hawaii then, when I was thirty-two-year-old, there were many ways in which I arrived at my own normal, which I could know by the feeling of ease and happiness, of having left an alien World and come home for the first time in my life. I had felt that way before with a place—the land, the country—as in the Southwest, but never with so many people. It seems to me that the present “chaos” in psychotherapy has something in common with the “chaos” that I saw in Honolulu traffic. I have read several books in which many or several psychotherapists were included, sometimes presenting their cases separately, sometimes discussing cases or psychotherapy together. There is so much difference and differing among them that when I first read them it looked like madness: Does not anyone know what he is doing? (If they knew what they were doing, they would all be doing it the same way—going by rules which I could recognize.) Gradually they sorted themselves out in my mind into two groups: those who are following some Authority by copying him, and those who are struggling to find their own way, which seems to have the common base (or direction) of spontaneity, or responsiveness, of being in touch with myself and what is going on in me (the therapist) as well as what is going on in the person who has come for help. Should we live with people in any other way? These individual strugglers, as far as I know them, have a good deal of acceptance of and respect for each other even when they disagree, and although their apparent methods are so different that they seem not to be the same thing. There is “client-centered therapy” and there is “communication” therapy and there is therapy through swimming instruction and there are therapists who fall asleep repeatedly during therapy sessions, as part of the therapy, and when they wake up report their dreams to the person who has come for help. There is therapy by “guided daydreams,” and there is “transactional analysis” which makes clear to people the games that they are playing with each other and helps them to give up these games. Essentially, all of these methods achieve, when successful, a switch from dishonesty and competition to honesty and cooperation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
All of them attempt to relieve us of what is binding us. However, when a therapist (or anyone) tries to copy what is spontaneous, immediately this is defeated. When I try to copy, spontaneity is lost. I reverse what I have seen and liked and want to follow. With my intellect I have picked up a picture of what I think I “should” do or be. The more that I do this, the more inflexible I become, and spontaneity cannot happen no matter how much I wish it to. What I have seen in the therapist (or other person) whom I am “copying” is the result of an effort toward spontaneity and free response. I am copying the result. The more that I hold myself to it, the farther I am from my aim. (My aim is not a goal, but my direction.) The happenings which preceded the result are missing. What should come second has been placed first. Then, what should come first has become impossible. It is very easy for me to read myself incorrectly afterward even when I have moved in the right way. I mistake what happened for what I did myself. It happened by itself through me. However, later, I take credit for myself, as for something that “I” have done. A young therapist described a therapy session to me in this way: “This fellow—a young guy, nineteen—was laughing at himself and his friends for sitting on the beach day after day laughing at themselves for the way they were ‘all messed up’—mixed up in homosexuality, doing crazy things that got them nowhere. They called themselves names and ridiculed themselves, and he went on doing this with me. I could not get him to feel anything. He just kept on laughing at what dopes they all were, including him. So then, I started laughing too, laughing with him at his being such a dope—and then he got mad, and began to say how he really felt about it. Then he knew that what he was really feeling was not funny.” After that, they began to move in therapy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
I asked the therapist, “Was that something that you figured out and then did, or did it happen and afterward you saw the sense of it and why it was successful?” He looked a bit disconcerted and unhappy for a moment—the way that I have often felt when I have realized that what I have taken credit for happened through me but was not done by me (except in the objective sense that it could be observed as having been done by me). Then he said that it had happened to his surprise, and afterward he figured out why it had worked the way it did. The way that he told it sounded as though he had figured it out first. I do this too, in part because this is our habit, but also because the other way around is acceptable to very few people. The Age of Reason insists that we figure things out first, then do them. Any other way may seem unrealistic. However, if consciousness does not prematurely share in the perceptual experience, in this connection there are many situations in ordinary experience which demonstrate that much can be reacted to more effectively. There are many illustrations, to further highlight this illustration, of man’s capacity to register perception accurately in space and time categories provided that conscious cognitive processes are postponed. With this knowledge of man’s superior judgment when using his precognitive capacities for certain tasks, the army trains its artillery observers to utilize their capacities to the utmost. The observers must always call the position of a shot as quickly as possible—there must be “zero delay” between noting the fall and shouting out the location. All beginners wish to estimate with the aid of rational judgment, but experience has shown that there is unquestioned superiority of performance when rational estimation is suspended. The first flashing quick guess turns out to be the best guess. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Hive-moralists for the millennia have lamented the innate, pervasive tendency of human beings to kick-out in bursts of irrationality and pleasure seeking. It is looked on as extra-social self-indulgence. There is a distinction between two very different hedonic reactions. Pleasures are hedonic experiences caused by activating higher-faster-future brains at the service of and controlled by self. Satisfactions are intoxication and narcotic escape experiences caused by activating slower-lower past circuits. Both experiences take consciousness away from domesticated robot-hood. Pleasures move one up from hive routine into the self-actualized future. Intoxicants, tranquilizers and narcotics move one back to the past—down from domestication, to primate and mammalian instinctual satisfactions. Civilized terrestrial humans, robotically and blindly harnessed to species tasks, and dependent upon gene-hive rewards for duty well-done, need to slowdown, turnoff, escape domesticated pressure. Boredom and social inefficiency would result without some sequential opportunity to regress from hive morality, to activate the primitive circuits of the brain. Intoxicants and narcotic escapes are built-in devices to allow ritual regression to earlier, lower, slower stages. That they are conventionally naughty is their power and delight. The dutiful domesticated adult brain and the retiring elder brain insectoids live in a reality centered upon hive duty. The ten earlier brains are there, but are taboo, often blanked from consciousness. Brains are turned on and off by means of neurotransmitter chemicals. Civilization provides ritualistic means of allowing reactivation of the earlier brains—temporarily naughty immorality, programed animalism—permissible retrogression in every successful eleventh and twelfth stage domesticated adult and retiring elder brain. Each civilization produces ritualistic drug taking which allows temporary animalistic reversion. This process is best seen in the Japanese culture—surely the most insectoid society in World history. The Japanese have developed ritualistic inebriation which permits even the most dutiful to regress to animalism as seen in stages four to six—rodent-brained toddlers, mammalian-brained demanding kids, and monkey-brained territorial children. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The German culture, another highly domesticated-duty society also allows its citizens a scheduled intoxication-regression in the Fasching-Carnival. Even the sober, tidy Swiss permit each other a Springtime return to pseudo-bestiality when these paragons of the domesticated adult get tipsy and lurch around like sodden bears shamelessly littering the streets of Basel with confetti! Masks are worn at these carnival regressions—the Burghers do not want to have their inner animals seen. Other methods for ceremonial return of the animal-brain-stages involve totems exhibited at athletic events, parades, and social gatherings. The unrepressed emotions released at these events are not sexual, however. Genital satisfaction is not the central motive. Middle-age, middle-class folks return to preadolescence and become exhibitionistic monkeys or noisy, often savage mammals as when thousands of spectators engage in physical violence directed against the territorial rival in soccer games around for the World, for example. The orchestrated revival of earlier brains is a basic issue in any stable gene pool. Each of our twelve terrestrial brains has its own ego, demands activation and must be allowed to cut loose on some regular basis. The best-run civilizations have worked out a weekly return of the regressed. Domesticated adults work dutifully Monday through Friday. On Saturday they are allowed to assemble in animal-totem competitions—the Bulldogs of Yale versus the Horned Toads of Texas Christian. Saturday night the socially approved intoxicant is imbibed, permitting a temporary explosion of mammalian territorial competition and sexual low-jinks. Sunday morning the chastened and hung-over domesticate attends a DNA adoration ceremony in which the dignified gene-hive Creator is recognized, the brief foray back to animalism exercised. Purged and reborn, the domesticate adult hum-ant is ready to start the next week of hive duty. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Psychological “trading stamps” are called that because they are used the same way as the little blue, green, or brown stamps that people get as a premium when they buy groceries or gasoline. The following are some observations concerning commercial trading stamps. They are usually obtained as a bonus in the course legitimate business transactions; that is, the person must buy groceries to get trading stamps. Most people who collect them have a favourite colour. If offered other colours, they may not bother to take them, or may give them away. Some people, however, will collect any type of trading stamp. Some people paste them into their little “books” every day, and others at regular intervals, while still others leave them lying around until some day when they are bored and have nothing better to do, and then they paste them up all at once. Some neglect them until they need something, and then count them in the hope that they have enough to get it free from the trading-stamp store. Some people like to talk about them, look through the catalogue together, boast about how many stamps they have, or discuss which colour offers better merchandise or better bargains. Some people save only a few and then turn them in for trivial premiums; others save more, and get bigger bonuses; and still other become deeply involved in trying to collect enough stamps for one of the really large prizes. Some people know that the trading stamps are not really “free” because their cost must be added to the cost of the groceries; some really do not stop to think about this; some know it, but pretend they do not, because they enjoy both the collecting and the illusion of getting something for nothing. (In some cases, the cost of the trading stamps is not added to the cost of the groceries; in such cases, the grocer must take their cost as his own loss. However, in principle, it is the customer who pays for the trading stamps.) Some people prefer to go to “straight” grocery stores where they pay only for the groceries; with the money they save, they can then buy their own merchandise wherever and whenever they want to. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
For those who are eager to get something “free,” it is possible to buy counterfeit trading stamps. It is usually hard for a person who seriously collects trading stamps to give them up. He may put them in a drawer and forget about them for a while, but if he suddenly gets a large fistful in some special transaction, he may pull them out again to count them and see what they are good for. Psychological trading stamps are the currency of transactional “rackets.” When Jeder is young, his parents teach him how to feel when things get difficult” most commonly, angry, hurt, guilty, scared, or inadequate; but sometimes stupid, baffled, surprised, righteous, or triumphant. These feelings become rackets when Jeder learns to exploit them and play games in order to collect as many as possible of his favourite, partly because in the course of time this favourite feeling becomes sexualized, or is a substitute for feelings involving pleasures of the flesh. To further highlight this illustration, much “justified” grownup anger belongs in this category, and is usually the payoff in a game of “Now I Have Got You, You Male Chauvinistic Pig.” The patient’s Child is full of suppressed anger, and he waits until someone does something to justify his expressing it. Justification means that his Adult goes along with his Child in saying to his Parent: “No one can reasonably blame me for getting angry under such conditions.” Thus relieved of Parental censure, he turns on the offender and says in effect: “Ha! No one can blame me, so now I have got you,” et cetera. In transactional language, he gets a “free” mad, that is, free of guilt. Sometimes it works differently. The Parent says to the Child: “You are not going to let him get away with that, are you?” and the Adult sides with the Parent: “Anyone would get angry under such conditions.” The Child may be only too happy to comply with these urgings; or on the other hand, he may be as reluctant to do battle as Ferdinand the Bull, but is forced to enter the fray. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Even after Sade’s time, men of letters continue to dominate the scene. Romanticism, Lucifer-like in its rebellion, is only useful for adventures of the imagination. Like Sade, romanticism is separated from earlier forms of rebellion, at this stage, forgets its positive content. Since God claims all that is good in man, it is necessary to deride what is good and choose what is evil. If not to the exercise, hatred of death and of injustice will lead, therefore, at least to the vindication, of evil and murder. The struggle between Satan and death in Paradise Lost, the favourite poem of the romantics, symbolizes this drama; even more profoundly in that death (with, of course, sin) is the child of Satan. To combat evil, the rebel renounces good, because he considers himself innocent, and once again gives birth to evil. The romantic hero first brings about the profound and, so to speak, religious blending of good and evil. This type of hero is “fatal” because fate confounds good and evil without man being able to prevent it. Fate does not allow judgments of value. It replaces them by the statement that “It is so”—which excuses everything, except for the Creator, who alone is responsible for this scandalous situation. The romantic hero is also “fatal” because, to the extent that he increases in power and genius, the power of evil increases in him. Every manifestation of power, every excess, is thus covered by this “It is so.” That the artists, particularly the poet, should be demoniac is a very ancient idea, which is formulated provocatively in the work do the romantics. At this period there is even an imperialism of evil, whose aim is to annex everything, even the most orthodox geniuses. “What made Milton write with constraint,” Blake observes, “when he spoke of angels and of God, and with audacity when he spoke of demons and of hell, is that he was a real poet and on the side of the demons, without knowing it.” The poet, the genius, man himself in his most exalted image, therefore cry out simultaneously with Satan: “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, farewell remorse…Evil, be thou my good.” It is the cry of outraged innocence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If God has a favourite place on Earth, she thought, it must be Colorado. Surely God would be proudest of his handiwork in that magnificent state: the overpowering beauty of the mountains, with their dancing crystal streams and tall sweet-smelling pines. Of all the places she had lived, Trish loved Colorado and its mountains the most. The solid, reliable, never-moving mountains symbolized everything Paris wanted her life to be, but seldom was. As the daughter of an Air Force officer, Trish lived in seventeen states during her first seventeen years. In those years, her family never bought a house, joined clubs or made any lasting friends. Trish longed for one good, reliable friend, but because of the constant moving, she made only casual acquaintances. Her personal relationships were limited almost exclusively to her family; her father, mother, sisters, and two brothers. Trish’s father was hard to love—easy to pity, but difficult to cherish. He seemed to live on the verge of disaster. He drank so heavily that it damaged his career, and that caused him to drink even more. In his early Air Force years, he had loved to fly, but later his superiors wisely kept him on the ground and passed him over for promotion again and again. The burden of keeping the family together fell to Trish’s mother, a matronly, above average weight woman who seemed to draw from a cornucopia of love and support. She kept her husband’s uniforms pressed and shoes polished. In the morning, she would nurse his hangovers enough so that he could at least report for duty standing up. And when he could not stand up, she would call and make excuses for him. She managed the family budget, helped the children with their homework, and sand them to sleep at night. She was the bedrock of Paris’s life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
During Trish’s last two teenage years, her father was stationed in Colorado. They were the best two years of her life. She felt she had at last found a home: in the safe, dependable, protective mountains. However, they were transferred again—to California, where everyone moved constantly, and the mountains were a fuzzy image on the horizon. She went to small college and majored in home economics. She wanted to get married and make a comfortable, stable home. Yet she finished college without marrying and took a job as a clerk at the Air Force base. She lived alone in a small apartment, and hated it. Emile came into her life in an ordinary way. She met him at the complaint desk of the electric company, where she had gone to check a mistake in her bill. He was courteous in handling her problem, handsome behind his wire glasses and bold enough to ask her to dinner. She felt a ruse in her pulse as she dressed for the date and thought, this must be how love begins. And so it was. The dinner date led to movies, motor trips, ski weekends and finally an engagement ring. Their bouts of pleasures of the flesh were hot, but restrained, she having no intention of going to bed with a man who was not her husband. Emile was patient, and seemed more interested in her as a potential wife than someone as just a partner for pleasures of the flesh. Though she did not know it at the time, what attracted her to Emile the most was his reliability. He had worked for the electric company for four years when she met him and was prepared to spend his entire career reporting to the same building in the same city. He drank a single whiskey and water before dinner and nothing afterward. At parties, his limit was a self-imposed two drinks. He arrived home at five-thirty every evening, went to bed after the eleven o’clock news and was content to take the same vacation every year. For the first few years of their marriage, Trish felt she had everything she could ever want: her husband, her son and daughter, her own house, her neighbourhood, and, most of all, an address that never changed. She loved it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Them Emile got The Promotion. From the time he first started talking about it, Trish thought of “The Promotion” in capital letters. It was an unheard-of opportunity—the chance to jump over three levels of management to Senior Vice President, Customer Relations. His salary doubled, but so did his responsibilities. He seldom got home before eight o’ clock in the evening and often went to the office on Saturdays. Trish did not know whether to be ecstatic or depressed. The extra money was marvelous, but the new job upset her routine. Emile spent less time with her and the children. He began to drink more—straight whiskey, without the water, sometimes without ice. Odd-jobs about the house simply went undone. When she reminded him about them, he would growl, “Hire someone. We can afford it.” By the time Trish found out about Kim, Emile had been sleeping with her for more than three years. Trish was not shocked as much by the fact of the affair as she was by Emile’s ability to keep it from her as long as she did. She knew husbands had affairs and that eventually wives found out about them. What she did not expect was that the affair would go so long undetected and that when confronted with it, her husband would admit to it without shame or remorse. “Of course I’m sleeping with her,” Emile had said. “Every chance I get. Do you think I go to all the trouble of meeting her just so we can play gin rummy?” “But now that I know about it, it has to stop,” Trish had demanded. “What the hell for?” he had laughed. “Kim’s a lot more fun to be with than you are, and one hell of a lot better lay. Face it, Paris, you’re a great mother and queen of the homemakers, but as a wife, not so much.” Panic-stricken, seeing her perfectly neat and orderly life crumbling around her, Paris had begged Emile to consider the children, their home, their thirteen-year marriage. She appealed to his sense of duty, of right and wrong, of stability. None of it worked. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
She told her Elder about it in confidence; he suggested a trial separation. However, this she would not do. It would bring down the framework of domestic normality she had so carefully built around them. She told Emile’s parents about it. When they confronted him and demanded he end the affair, he merely laughed again. All of Trish’s friends recommended the standard California solution: divorce. She balked at the idea for several reasons, not the least of which was her devout Mormon faith. Also, she feared the effect a “broken home” would have upon her children. And she felt that the promises she had made on her wedding day created an unbreakable bond. Paris was married, for better or worse, for life. It was her duty. Refusing to let anything upset the stability of her home life, Trish continued to cook the meals, chauffeur the children, and wax the floors. However, the gnawing sense of loss and disruption was taking its toll on her. She too began to drink a lot, and with the drinking came fear and guilt, two emotions which eventually led her to seek therapy. I felt she would mesh neatly with our group, and I overcame her early objections to joining it. I was right. The trouble was, she helped with everyone’s problems but her own. After a time, I began to view our discussions about Trish’s problems as a series of paths leading to brick walls. When the conversation progressed to a point at which she held a strong position, it would stop. Trish was sad when her husband was gone late at night, but as soon as he came home, she would feel a sense of relief. However, moments later, she would feel dirty because she knew he had been with that other woman. It made her want to cry and scream, but she never did because she felt it was her duty to be married for life and the children getting their sleep was more important than her feelings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
What has been lacking in your life at times when you have found yourself bored, miserable, or even sick? What can you do about these lacks? Upon whom do you depend to gratify these needs? What does your dependency “cost” you in the way of submission to the wishes of the person upon whom you are dependent? What you do believe you cannot do without? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed that it is possible not only to survive, but moreover to transcend lethal circumstances; he struggled to survive and was ultimately murdered to end segregations and demand that African Americans be protected under the law. Can you identify what you need to enhance your life, and learn the skills that will enable you to gratify these needs? This is how to overcome insecurity through action—the way of independent security. Whenever you become sick—with a cold, influenza, mononucleosis, or other illness—reflect upon your life and see if you can identify an episode of dispiritedness brought on by loss of someone’s love, an abrupt change in way of life (such as moving to another residence), or some failure. Or consider whether your style of life or family role is preventing you from gratifying certain basic needs; prolonged deprivation may have stressed or dispirited you. Sickness is a splendid opportunity to reflect upon your way of living, so that when you have recovered, you can make changes that will reduce the likelihood of becoming sick again. Sickness is often an indication that one’s habitual way of life has not yielded those basic need gratifications that sustain health and keep a person growing in vital ways. When all is not well in your life, it is good to record dreams for hints as to possible changes you could make to revitalize yourself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Getting back to nature—a walk in the woods or by the sea, away from machinery and work—can provide an opportunity to meditate and gain perspective upon an unsatisfying life style. Sometimes dispiritedness will hit one without the symptoms of physical illness, but rather in signs of disinterest in life, loss of ability to enjoy life, and feelings of worthlessness. The healthy person can recognize these as indicators of time to seek professional help, time to make changes, or time to seek out good, listening friends. In choosing commitments, one needs to examine deeply the possibility of being able to change one’s mind, to keep the mind free and to leave psychologically, spiritually, or physically when one chooses. Avoidance of false, unworthy commitments is an indicator of the healthy personality. Especially during periods of dispiritedness, you are vulnerable to persons who offer easy ways out. Racial animosity is really a pathological state which clouds vision and falsifies judgment. It raises prejudice to the dignity of a principle. Hate is a mental poison. It is the worst possible sin of our thought life. It damages those we hate, infects our own environment, and in the end, it severely damages ourselves. The ability to treat all kinds and classes of people equally, and with universal goodwill, does not imply the inability to observe the comparative differences and even defects among them. It is not enough to possess a wide tolerance in these matters; it should also be a wise tolerance. Otherwise one may merely condone and increase self-destruction. Not to tell another person “No!” when all prudence, intelligence, foresight, and experience bid us do so is simply moral and verbal cowardice. He can be polite without being fulsome and effusive. His sincerity will dictate the proper measure. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The need for finer manners where coarse vulgarity, aggressive obscenity, and raucous noisiness prevail speaks for itself to those who seek escape from materialism. In an atmosphere of disorderly or non-existent manners, materialistic thought flourishes even more. He has much contempt for human folly but much tolerance for human weakness. He will keep serene, even-tempered, detached amid the recurring irritations of life and the petty provocations from persons who cross his path. They may face him, but they cannot hurt, much less infuriate, him. However, if he identified himself with the ego alone, all this aloofness of spirit would not be possible. However, it is not only inner calmness that he needs to acquire; inner clearness is also requisite. Both the intellect with its ideas and the character with its qualities should share this effort to secure greater clarification. His tolerance is so vast that he will not intrude upon others’ freedom, not even to the extent of seeking the betterment of their character or the improvement of their mind. As a man advances in inward development, gaining ever richer experience in fresh embodiments, he comes to see that he will gain more by practising co-operation than by selfishly seeking his own isolated benefit alone. It is as such moments of remembrance that he is here also to ennoble his character that it becomes easier to extend goodwill to those he dislikes, or who dislike him, those who have brought him trouble and others who radiate materialism or destructiveness. It would be a mistake to believe that because he makes no sharp exclusions and practises such all-embracing sympathy toward every possible way of looking at life he ends up in confusion and considers right and wrong to be indistinguishable from each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Instead of falling into mental vacillation, he attains and keeps mental integrity, a genuine individuality which no narrow sect can overcome. Instead of suffering from moral dissolution, he expands into moral largeness which sees that no ideal is universal and exclusively right. Although generally he will be infinitely considerate of other persons, there will be certain situations wherein he will be infinitely hard upon them and utterly indifferent to their feelings. All are benefited by always remembering the practice of harmlessness towards all creatures in thought, word, and action. He should not consider himself alone, but ought also consider his duty to those other beings who cross his path, including animal beings and trees. Elegance is often found as an accompaniment of refinement. This is not only true of physical things, behaviour, and conduct, but also of character and mind. The true gentleman does not cast aside fine manners however much one may become intimate, familiar, or friendly with him. The man of exemplary manners will always have an advantage over those who have none. The charm of dealing, or conversing, with him gives him the preference, all else being equal. Assert the ego aggressively against others and you provoke their egos to assert themselves. Hostility breeds hostility, violence encourages the others to be violent. He keeps this composure. If he has moods, ups-and-downs of feeling, others will not know it. By presenting them with an imperturbable front, they are helped without his particularly seeking to do so. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
A well-mannered child is a testimony to a well-mannered home. It does not mean that he is to force himself to like everyone under the sun equally well, or that he is to negate every personal preference and deny every personal repulsion. It does not mean that he is no longer to discriminate his perceptions of human status and quality. He is never the enemy of any human being, but only of the sin in that being. All his social-relational thinking is governed by goodwill, but his conduct is ruled by reason added to the goodwill. In that way, he does not fall into unbalanced sentimentality nor harm others under the delusion that he is benefiting them. He shows an uncommon patience because that is Nature’s way. He expresses an impartial understanding because that is Truth’s way. He accepts people just where they are and is not angry with them because they are not farther along the road of life. He is not only different in that he seeks both to commend and to criticize, whereas the ordinary man seeks only to do the one or the other, but also in that he seeks to understand the World view and life-experience which have given rise to such a viewpoint. He must be ready to bestow an intellectual sympathy towards the attitudes of other men, no matter how foolish or how wicked these attitudes may be. Such sympathy enables him to understand them, as well as the experiences and the thoughts which have led to them. However, it does not necessitate acceptance of the emotional complexes and spiritual ignorance which accompany them. It is not necessary to be sullen to be serious. The man who walks rudely through the crowded streets of life, who flings his contempt from mien and speech, is but a melancholy misanthrope, not a philosopher. He thinks he has surrounded himself with an atmosphere of detachment, when he has merely succeeded in surrounding himself with an atmosphere of surliness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Sacramento Fire Department has a wide range of responsibilities to ensure the safety of their citizens. It is equally important to recognize the significant work and effort involved in managing the department. “In the same ways fire fighters have a hard job, with EMS it can be worse because of the blood factor. In fires, people are burned, and they look awful. In EMS, you have the blood factor and severed limbs. And sometimes the trauma and the violence. We see quite a bit of violence. At times we are there before the police arrive in violent situations. Our response times are so quick that we sometimes get there in the heat of the battle, when the shooting is still going on. We have to be very aware and cautious. That can be stressful. We have some old neighborhoods that are low-income areas, where the crime rate is high, arson is high. These are mostly single-family homes, no tenements. One summer we had ten or eleven homicides near downtown, where I worked. Sometimes we had two in a night. We provide basic life support until the paramedics get there. You’re concerned for yourself. You’re surrounded by people. You look for an area of refuge. You advance cautiously. It’s a hectic, hyper type situation. We went to one nightclub downtown where we had five people who were shot. When we arrived there were only two, but three more were subsequently shot while we were there, right near where we were operating. Captain X was a seasoned veteran who had seen a lot of things, but he was upset after that incident. We all were. I have never seen him sit down in a chair, put his feet up, and smoke a cigarette. He didn’t talk. The whole company was kind of lethargic after it was over. It was the emotional stress, dealing with gunshot wounds in a large crowd without much police protection. There was so much going on. We went from one victim to the next to the next. We just followed the trail, logistically getting the equipment there. One person did all the shooting. Apparently it was the result of a rivalry between high school football teams. The neighborhoods here are very involved in their high schools, which is good. They are very proud of their sports teams, which is good. Until it ends up in a shooting, which is not good. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“Not too long ago they had a big drug shoot-out. An automatic weapon was used, several hundred rounds were shot, and eight or nine people were transported to the hospital. To get back to the blood factor, I’m absolutely concerned with AIDS just as much as I am with hepatitis. We try to take the precautions of wearing gloves and cleaning up very well afterwards. We keep a mental list of known cases, and we wear masks as well as rubber gloves when we deal with these people, whether they have hepatitis, tuberculosis, or AIDS. We wear paper masks, like surgical masks. The city is also providing us with hepatitis vaccinations now, which I think is a great thing. It’s an expensive series of three shots, about a hundred dollars per man, but they realize the need for us to have that kind of protection. You don’t get blood on your person every day, but the big problem is, the blood spurts. So we take those precautions not to come into contact with the blood. And maybe they’ll cure these things some day. You’ve just got to keep going. You have to say to yourself, ‘When the alarm comes, I’m going to be ready.’” The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to providing exceptional service and adapting to the evolving needs of the community. Specifically, the desire to prevent the loss of life and property by responding to emergencies in a professional manner. Parents, please be sure to raise your children to love America and make them aware that being patriotic is our duty. Also, it is a good idea to buy American made cars and other products to endure the longevity of this great nation. We also want to respect law and order, love God and Jesus Christ and treat every human being with care and compassion. You can also help save lives and property and protect the future of our community by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All! Come, O Sabbath-day, and bring peace and healing on thy wing; and to every troubled breast speak of the divine behest: Thou shalt rest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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The Next Baby Will Go to House 17
All creatures are rooted in the same primal Being, but all remain at different levels of awareness or distance from this Being. Because of the oneness we must practise goodwill to all, but because of the distances we must see them for what they outwardly are. Those who object—as so many young people do today—against formal social behaviour or convention courtesy such as Confucius propagated and such as well-brought-up persons were taught to accept in our own modern West until recently, do not see how much it smooths everybody’s way including their own and how much it oils the wheels of social existence for all of us. Behing time and ego, behind all the conditions in which we find others to be, there is that which is divine within them. For the sake of that we may honour them even when their outer self is unworthy of it and dishonourable. It is not a question of defective social manners or wrong accents but of two traits of good character—consideration for others and respect for oneself. The conventional and not seldom hypocritical smile, the pretense of goodwill where there is none, constitute false manners, not good manners. Courtesy is the oil which lubricates the wheel of life. At a time when goodwill and courtesy seem to be fading out, we need all the more to support them staunchly. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
What is called correct social behaviour can vary from period to period, century to century. It is not the same as, and not to be confused with, courtesy. There are those who dismiss the subject as unconnected with philosophy, unessential to spiritual self-cultivation. However, Jesus Christ constantly exhorted his disciples to cultivate courteous manners and gentlemanly behaviour. It is not better that men should learn to discipline their unpleasant traits, instead of inflicting them on other people? It is not only better for society but also for the men themselves, for it is part of their spiritual evolution. If it becomes an empty arid formality, devoid of the corresponding feeling, it is not courtesy, but hypocrisy. If we are asked to resist our innate natural selfishness and include other people’s welfare along with our own, it is only because in this way they too are being asked to include ours. This at least helps us and them. This is the practical benefit of politeness. Refinement is not so much a matter of birth as of quality, which may be born in a man or fashioned for himself. The young child should be taught how to grow up into a civilized well-behaved person, who naturally and not hypocritically behaves with consideration for the feelings of others. Culture is not only the enrichment of personal experience: it is the enrichment of the person himself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Supposed you know that this was to be your last day on Earth. How would you behave towards others? Would you not sink all short-range attitudes and rise above the petty selfishness, the pitiful enmities, and the harsh discords which may have marred your past? Would you not try at least to feel goodwill toward all men? This is how philosophy bids you behave at all times and not merely on your deathbed. We must see men not only as they are today, but also as they shall be in an evolutionary tomorrow. If we listen to the voice of experience, we tend appraisal of humanity should combine the two, recognizing and not denying unattractive faults and dark frailties, but at the same time being graciously tolerant and forgiving. He is opened-eyed enough to see men as they are, but also generous enough to see them as they must one day become. As the full meaning of reincarnation and of the universal law sinks deeper and deeper into his mind, a generous tolerance will rise higher and higher in his feelings. He will begin to see that every wrong-doer is what he is because of his past experience and present mentality and has to act in the way he does and cannot act in any other way. The life of such a man develops inevitably and naturally out of his character, out of his mode of thought, and out of his experience on this Earth in the present and in former lives. If a man’s attitude towards spiritual truth is determined by the fact that he was born in a particular place and not by wide search and deep thought, he does not deserve and will not find the highest truth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
If the practices goodwill to others, it is more likely that the higher power will bestow grace upon him through others. There is never any justification for being unmannerly, or worse, rude. The man of such immeasurable goodwill will express it in all ways all the time. The more he refuses to let negative emotions capture him, the more will an inner harmony permeate him. He will keep a secret untroubled poise amongst those who are utterly bereft of any reverence for life’s higher meaning as amongst those who possess it. Beaware of projecting your own negative reactions, ideas, colourings, or feeling son displeasing situations and abrasive persons. If he is to keep his inward peace unruffled, he must live above the level of those who have it not. Only if he obeys the practical injunction of Jesus Christ, only if he keeps out of his emotional systems all the negatives like resentment, bitterness, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, spite, and revenge this can be done. If philosophic calm is to be the supreme fact and philosophic wisdom the guiding factor in his life, these lower emotions must definitely be outgrown. When other men show their enmity and meanness toward him, he is to retaliate by showing his indifference and generosity. When they falsely assail his character or enviously calumniate his work, he is to forbear from harsh feelings and not let them forfeit his goodwill. He is not to succumb to the human temptation to retaliate in kind. For he is engaged on a holy ascent, and to succumb would be to slip grievously back. Indeed, out of the base actions of others, he may kindle noble reactions which assist his upward climb. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Whoever expands his consciousness in advance of the contemporary level must not expect more than a few to understand him. Yet it is his business to understand them as it is their misfortune to misunderstand him. Marquis de Sade, the French writer and activist, suffered and died to stimulate the imagination of the intelligentsia in literary cafes. However, that is not all. Sade’s success in our day is explained by the dream that he had in common with contemporary thought: the demand for total freedom, and dehumanization coldly planned by the intelligence. The reduction of man to an object of experiment, the rule that specifies the relation between the will to power and man as an object, the sealed laboratory that is the scene of this monstrous experiment, are lessons which the theoreticians of power will discover again when they come to organizing the age of slavery. Two centuries ahead of time and on a reduced scale, Sade extolled totalitarian societies in the name of unbridled freedom—which, in reality, rebellion does not demand. The history and the tragedy of our times really begin with him. He only believed that a society founded on freedom of crime must coincide with freedom of morals, as though servitude had its limits. Our times have limited themselves to blending, in a curious manner, his dream of a universal republic and his technique of degradation. Finally, what he hated most, legal murder, has availed itself of the discoveries that he wanted to put to the service of instinctive murder. Crime, which he wanted to be the exotic and delicious fruit of unbridled vice, is no more today than the dismal habit of a police-controlled morality. Such are the surprises of literature. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Later childhood, from six to ten, is called by psychoanalysis the latent period. It is a “locomotor” phase, when the child locomotes himself around the neighbourhood to see what he can see. So far, he has only a sketchy idea, a protocol, as to how he is going to put his script equipment together to make himself into a person with a goal in life. He is ready to turn from animals who eat people or who act like people, to people themselves. A child who starts out wanting to live forever or love forever can be made to change his mind in the course of five or six years, until he decides, quite appropriately in view of his limited experience, to die young or never to risk loving anyone again. Or he may learn from his parents that life and love with all their risks are worthwhile. Once the decision is made, he knows who he is, and begins to look at the outside World with the question: “What can happen to people like me?” He knows what the payoff is supposed to be, but does not really know what it means, how it will feel, or how to go about getting it. He has to find some sort of plot or matrix into which all his script equipment will fit, and some sort of hero to show him the path. He also looks wistfully for heroes with similar equipment who have followed different, and perhaps happier, paths, hoping to find a way out, or a way in. The matrix and the hero are offered to him in stories which he reads in books or which are read to him or told him by some reliable person: mother, grandmother, or children on the street, or perhaps a carefully indoctrinated kindergarten teacher. The telling of these tales is a story in itself—more real and fascinating than the rale that is told. What happens between Jeder and his mother, for example, between the time she says? “After you have brushed your teeth, I will read you a story,” and the moment when she smiles, “That is all!” and tucks him in? What is his final question, and how does she tuck him in? #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Those times help form the flesh of his life plan, while the tales told or the book story give him the bones. What he ends up with, bonewise, are a hero—someone he would like to be; a villain—someone he may find an excuse to be; a type—what he knows he has to be; a plot—a matrix of events which enables him to switch from one to the other; a cast—those others who will motivate the switches; and an ethos—a set of ethical standards which will justify him in feeling angry, guilty, righteous, or triumphant. If external events permit, his life course will then be the same as the life plan he forms around this armature or matrix. For this reason, it is important to know what his favourite story or fairy tale was as a child, since this will be the plot of his script, with all its unattainable illusions and avoidable tragedies. During this period, Jeder also makes a definite decision about what kind of feelings he will work for. He was previously experimented with this, feeling by turns angry, hurt, guilty, scared, inadequate, righteous, and triumphant, and he as discovered that certain of these are treated with indifference or outright disapproval by his family, whole one of them is acceptable and gets results. That is the one that becomes his racket. The favoured feeling becomes a sort of conditioned reflex which may persist for the rest of his life. For clarity, we can use the roulette-wheel theory of feeling. Suppose there is a housing development with 36 houses built in a circle around a central plaza, and suppose that there is a baby waiting to be born wherever it is that babies wait to be born. The Great Computer in charge of such matters spins the roulette wheel, and the ball falls in slot 17. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The Great Computer then announces, “The next baby will go to house 17.” He makes five more spins, and comes up with 23, 11, 26, 35, and 31, so the next five babies go to the houses with those numbers. Ten years later, each of the children has learned how he is supposed to react. The one in house 17 has learned: “In this family, when the going gets rough, we feel angry.” The one in house 23 has learned: “In this family, when the going gets rough, we feel hurt.” The babies at 11, 26, and 35 have learned that when the going gets rough their respective families feel guilty, scared, or inadequate. The baby in 31 learns that “In this family, when the going get rough, we find out what to do about it.” It should be apparent that numbers 17, 23, 11, 26, and 35 are likely to be losers, and 31 is more likely to be a winner. However, supposing when the Great Computer made the spins, other numbers had come up, or the same numbers in a different order? Perhaps Baby A, instead of anger, and Baby B, in 23, might have traded places with Baby F in 31. Then instead of Baby B being a loser and baby F a winner, it would be the other way round. This is another way of saying that aside from a doubtful influence of the genes, favourite feelings are learned from the parents. If he had been born in a different household, a patient whose favoured feeling is guilt might go for anger. Yet each will defend his favoured feeling as the natural or even inevitable one in a given situation. This is one reason for having treatment groups. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
If those six babies were in such a group twenty years later, and Baby A related an incident, ending: “Naturally, I felt angry!” Baby B would say: “My feelings would have been hurt”; Baby C: “I would have felt guilty,” Baby D: “I would have felt scared”; Baby E: “I would have felt inadequate”; and Baby F (who would presumably be the therapist by this time): “I would have found out what to do about it.” Which of these babies is right? Each one is convinced that his is the “natural” reaction. The truth is that none of them is “natural,” really; each one has been learned, or rather decided upon, in early childhood. To put it in simpler terms, nearly all angers, hurts, guilts, fears, and inadequate feelings are rackets, and in any well-run group it is not difficult to distinguish the few such reactions which are genuinely appropriate. A racket, then, is a feeling, out of all the possible feelings, that is habitually turned on by a given person as his payoff in the games he plays. Group members soon recognize this, and can predict when a certain patient is going to collect a hurt trading stamp, and so on. The object of collecting such trading stamps is to turn them in for a script payoff. Each person in the group is scandalized at the idea that his favoured feeling is not a natural, universal, and inevitable response to the situations he meets. When their feelings are questioned, just as people in the hurt racket feel hurt, people in the anger racket, in particular, become very angry. One of the most misunderstood ideas of modern times is the thing we call “support.” Most people think of it as paying someone’s way, or at least providing for a person’s necessities. It usually implies a great sacrifice or price to be paid by the person doing the supporting. The meaning I prefer is: to promote someone’s cause or interests. To me, this implies helping another, yet without hurting oneself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
When you are trapped on the support polarity, you become a manipulator with an overdeveloped mother complex. Even men can have this complex, characterized by a compulsion to meet the needs of others. Unfortunately, in this position, your frequently feel like a martyr because you do so much for people, who never seem to appreciate your efforts enough. You also feel resentful that your sacrifices go unnoticed. Often, you are physically and emotionally exhausted from carrying the burdens of so many. Ironically, you lose contact with your own being trying to do only for others. If, on the other hand, you experience support as a master, you have learned to balance your needs with the needs of others. Although you believe in helping others when they are in trouble, you do not make helping your main vocation—because you have confidence in their ability to care for themselves. By the same token, you are not afraid to express criticism because you know it can be a beneficial force in creating honest, caring interaction. Mastering the support polarity improves your life because it frees you of impossible burdens and growing resentments. It enables you to care for others without sacrificing your own being. It allows you to “flow” with life rather than fight for it. You are at ease in your relationships, which now are determined, not by obligation to, but by concern for others. Your friends respond to you, not for what you have done for them, but for what you are to them. When we look at the condition of schizophrenia as an absence of a certain type of felt interaction (an absence rather than an illness or a content) has important consequences. It seems that we think of ourselves not so much as working with something ill in the person, but rather as providing the necessary personal relationship in the context of which someone can again come alive as a person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
As for “schizophrenia,” how we love to think that we know what is wrong with those others. What about ourselves? How many of us can accept people as we can accept the sea? There are of course people who are foolish enough to want to change the sea, who want to change the weather, too, instead of living accord with it. However, why are so many of us so hell-bent on the madness of changing other people to suit ourselves, and forcing them to do what we want them to? Perhaps all the sensitive human people get scrapped and sent off to mental hospitals? Perhaps “mental illness” is a sign of health—of a person who refuses to knuckle under to a distorting and inhuman society? Who is healthier, the German youth who had no conflicts about shoveling people into hospitals, or the one who has a “nervous breakdown” because of his conflict about being pushed into doing something he did not approve of? Offered a choice, I say No to both. When I say no to both, I have to find my own alternative. When I am going someone else’s way, I require that others go along with me. When I am going someone else’s way, I have to let myself be sold on this—it does not come from me. Coming from outside as it does, I have an image of “what is good,” and then it seems to me that all others should follow this image too, and do “what is good,” “is right,” “like me.” At a deep level I am afraid, but it is not the fear which has made me follow the image, but having images that has separated me from myself and so I am afraid. In my fear, then I need others around me to do the same things that I do, to reassure me. When I am going my own way in freedom, I wish most for everyone else to go their way in freedom. When all of us are moving in freedom, there are no collisions. Only if I have a picture in my head of “how things should be,” this freedom looks chaotic to me because it does not match with what is happening. With established society actively discouraging recruitment into the pleasure professions, how do we account for the fact that in every gene pool and in every age a certain percentage of young adults pop up as pleasure-dispensers? We have to look into the genetic caste to understand this phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Good looks and chemistry are the giveaways. Observe any group of children at play and you can forecast those who are robot-templated by DNA to play hedonic roles, who give off the radiation of magnetism and the flamboyant self-confidence of the budding performer. An interesting dilemma appears at this point. We do not have a formal, precise language to classify and describe the various pleasure-roles and hedonic processes. Indeed, before The Principles and Practice of Hedonic Psychology was written there has been a little scholarly attention to pleasure in Western literature. Whereas there exists an enormous nosology or disease classification of pain, an endless clinical listing of negative pathological states. There is no psychiatric or psychological classification of the states of excellence, elite accomplishment, or pleasure. It is true that a crude literature of beauty-pleasure exists in the East—pillow books, Tantric Hindu text, and Islamic-Sufi works. Neurocensorship is why there is no terminology for beauty-pleasure in the West. If words are invented for these myriad hedonic delights, then people will talk about them and enjoy them—a turn of events which Christian-Marxist hive establishments can not tolerate. Before the 1960s, in Western culture, hedonic bliss was taboo—reserved only for the aristocracy. Sexual pleasure was limited to martial intercourse—and then only for hive reproductive purposes. The taboo against the recognition of pleasure began to crumble in the 1960s and for the first time in the history of humanity a mass middle-class awakened to self-actualized hedonism. We can justly use the term “awaken” to describe the sudden insight that the body is a pleasure instrument, designed to receive a wide range of sensory stimuli that can be self-directed and self-controlled. Aesthetic artist sensory castes: Hedonic Consumer—those who receive pleasure. Hedonic Director—those who create pleasure realities for themselves and others. Hedonic Producer—those who exchange pleasure. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
If a person is successfully satisfying basic needs, his or her energy and thoughts are freed for other interests. The exact nature of these interests will differ from person to person, but the diversity and intensity of involvement in matters outside the self is a good indicator of healthy personality. Dr. Maslow has suggested that having successfully dealt with these basic needs, the person can move on to B-motivation (being motivation), which involves giving joyous vent to the highest aspirations and needs; fullest self-actualization and attending to aesthetic needs; and appreciation of beauty, art, and the higher realms of thought or cognition. When we cease to be a problem to ourselves, because we have fulfilled our needs for security, love, and status, we will begin to see the World in a manner that differs from the way “deficiency-motivated” persons see it. We can forget ourselves and become involved in play, or in another person’s problems, and perhaps with the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. When one is in the midst of such privation oneself, it is difficult to become concerned about the hunger or enslavement of another person. When we have experienced and transcended these conditions, we can empathize with (id est, imagine vividness) the experience of others and devote ourselves to serving them. Many interests and values grow out of a person’s earlier quest for the means of gratifying basic needs. Thus, someone may become a physician as a means of assuring economic security. However, once the person is earning the money he or she was seeking, that person may (indeed should) find intrinsic fascination in the challenges posed by illness. The motivation for the practice of medicine changes then from a quest for money to a quest for knowledge of new ways to relieve suffering. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Whenever an interest in some activity comes into being as a means of satisfying basic needs, and then changes into a spontaneous fascination, the motive is said to be functionally autonomous of its more basic origins. We do not fully understand the mechanisms by which functional autonomy of motives occurs; it appears to be a matter of commitment. Human beings need meaningful activity to give direction and value to their existence. We have little difficulty understanding much human action, because it clearly serves the most basic needs. However, when a person has assured access to the basic requirements, the question arises what shall I do now with the time and energy that have become available? What is worth doing? One can consume only so much food, one can only be loved a certain amount, one can only be safe to some degree. What will I do next with my time and resources? We are dealing fundamentally with the question of persuasion. Some challenges, tasks, hobbies, and vocations that have little to do with one’s basic needs are “invested” with value and worth by our observation of someone else. We see someone doing something with his or her time that seems to give that person much satisfaction. Either by invitation or by self-initiative, persons explore ways to spend their time, and commit themselves to such activity. The billions of interests that absorb persons attest to the fact that we can give value to anything from collecting speedpods to scaling mountains at great risk to life and limb, because they are there. The capacity to commit oneself to activities and projects beyond basic need fulfillment is a further defining characteristic of healthier personality. While almost all writers in the field see attention to the self as the primary, basic preoccupation of the normally healthy person, all also see commitment outside of self as being characteristic of the healthy personality. This includes commitment to activities such as political change, social welfare, problems of the aged, commitment to an abstract ideal such as freedom or beauty, preservation of the environment, or commitment to another person—a beloved friend, wife, lover, or trustworthy leader. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
It is important also to note that in the search for a direction of commitment, once can choose an unworthy and even dangerous commitment, especially when it is presented under the cloak of religion, politics, or even of psychology or some other abstract ideal. Thus, the many people who accompanied the Reverend Jim Jones to Guyana and to their deaths in 1978 were committing themselves to a leader, charismatic and hypnotic, who destroy them. There are many effective, meaningful religious and political commitments that a person can make that will better self and society. Some of the false commitments will offer false, cheap surcease for one’s personal pain. A wise young person will select commitments with care and with attention both to the maintenance of the freedom of the mind and to the assurance that one can change one’s mind and one’s commitment without fear of coercion, whether psychological or physical. No commitment or choice should ever be made to renounce your freedom to think for yourself. The man who is no longer disturbed by the presence or working or characteristic of his own ego will not be disturbed by that of others. No negative feeling will enter his attitude toward them. Although the repulsions to uncongenial persons may be acknowledge frankly, he can and should rise high above them. On the practical level, it is necessary to rectify the outer and visible causes of the disharmony between him and the other person, as far as that is possible. On the mental level, it is necessary to deal with the inner and invisible causes. The easiest way to begin such work is to begin it in creative meditation. There he should take up the picture of that person and mentally rectify the relation with him, adjust the thought of it to what it should be from the highest standpoint. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
He should finish by prayerfully sending good thoughts for his inner improvement, and by forgiving any sins against himself. Thus, instead of criticizing or attacking the person against whom he has a grievance, with results that may provoke still more trouble, he should remain emotionally undisturbed whilst using constructive endeavours in right meditation and unselfish prayer for that person. This may bring about a remarkable change in him, or lese in the relationship with him, or at least in the aspirant’s own attitude towards that person. For whatever is given out to others, in the end comes back to oneself. When a superior patrician ancestry, or higher education, or greater wealth, or influential social position, lead in speech or behaviour to arrogant hauteur and scornful contempt for the less fortunate, it leads to the snob. In him, outward and formal good manners do not come from the heart; in him, the spirit contradicts the letter. Consequently, they are not really good manners at all. The question has been asked: what is one to do in the face of another person’s rudeness pushed to a point which is almost insulting? If on the belief in reincarnation it is viewed as a sign of the other person’s ill-formed character and low caste, this could be ignored in many instances. However, when it is not of such a kind and where one is constantly thrown into contact through work or relationship or residence so that one is exposed constantly to the same kind of contact, how should a spiritual aspirant deal with it? Regard it as a test and a challenge. It is a test of certain qualities which must be sought within oneself and drawn upon, such as patience, calmness, and learning. It is a challenge, and if one lacks those qualities, it is necessary to seek deeper and try to draw from the inner resources of the Higher Self. This means working previously both in meditation and in thought to picture the needed emotional and mental response, plus the resulting physical conduct, as a daily exercise, until this reaction has become somewhat regular. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Or we can supplement this with moving to the metaphysical field and remembering at the end that it is all part of the dream-like experience which, in appropriate conditions, or on sufficient degree of mental perception being attained, one sees life to be. When one has had a large experience of the World with widely different groups of people, races, tribes, nations, classes, and castes, one is unwilling to offer admiration without some sort of qualification to any human institution or any human being. And when one has studied the human entity metaphysically and psychologically, discovering the place and power of the ego, one finds philosophical support of this mental reservation. However, this need not imply cynicism: the presence of goodwill and the faith in ultimate salvation of all would preclude it. Since he needs to rule emotions and not let them rule him, to overcome passions and not become their victim, he must cultivate a diamond-like hardness. However, this is not directed toward others, only to himself, unless evil or foolish influences are seeking to sway him. No person who is really refined, that is to say by character and taste and not by birth or wealth, can bear the crudity, the unattractiveness, and the decadence of those literary, artistic, psychoanalytic, or “progressive” circles which take a delight in uttering filthy four-letter words. Spirituality shrinks into silence in such garrulous company, takes curtained-off refuge in its own natural fastidiousness and refinement; but again, I say these develop from within and are not imposed by the family of the “finishing school.” Whatever superficial interest these circles may take in so-called mystic experience, materialism and egotism are their real religious creeds, just as courtesy is not a genuine characteristic of their behaviour, whatever outward show of it they may hypocritically have to make at times. The noisy cheap mannerless and brassy cafes of Montmarte and Montparnasse are their familiar spiritual homes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to life safety and protection of property for all residents and visitors of Sacramento, in addition to the safety and continuing education for all Sacramento Fire Department members. The Sacramento Fire Department is acutely aware of the importance of training and preparedness and works with many external groups and organizations to ensure that Sacramento is as prepared as any metropolitian city can be. The Sacramento Fire Department is committed to having a membership that mirrors the communities it serves, and for the Department to be an inclusive work environment for all members. “The fire happened about two in the afternoon, a quiet Saturday. It was an old hotel, which had two wings, one about five or six stories high and other six or seven stories, with a penthouse with a bay window on the top floor. Originally, it was a grand hotel, but it was under renovation for several months at that time. It was going to be restored. The only thing that was open was a restaurant on the ground floor. There were four alarms. There was very little fire to be seen, but a tremendous amount of smoke. We did an aggressive interior attack. There were all kinds of plywood partitions the workmen had put up to make temporary hallways. So the windows weren’t much help, and ventilation was poor. We went at it, and we thought it was a touch fight but a good fight, and we managed to knock this thing down. Some of the fire was in the coping and parts of the cockloft, and not too accessible. At about give o’clock we were relieved by the night tour. We had our lines up to the top floor, and the relief guys came in and they found us. Oh, yeah, here you are. Okay, we’re around the corner with the pumper. Okay, everybody’s here, we’re going to take off, see you later. The fire was pretty much knocked down, so we left. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“The station was only six blocks away, so we walked back. There were a million sirens going, and the firehouse was empty. One guy, who was late coming in for the night tour, was there. I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘The hotel collapsed!’ And we went, ‘Holy God, it can’t! The fire is out! It can’t!’ Being young and on the job just short of two years, I was in a total state of shock. I couldn’t believe this. How could it happen? So we ran back. We were only gone about fifteen minutes. The whole back end of the building had collapsed from the top floor down to the basement. The pile of rubble was in a pyramid shape, about three stories high. Our ladder company, Ladder X, was in the back alley, and they had their stick up, their aerial ladder, and the entire rig was just crushed to a pulp. The whole scene looked like pictures of a bad earthquake. Just mountains of bricks. And nobody knew, especially with the change of tours and all the running and milling around, who had been inside the building and who hadn’t. There were innumerable roll calls, trying to figure it out. And then we started on it, brick by brick. Some of the guys were right there on top of the mountain, because they had been on the top floor. The top of the heap was apparently the way it had been on the top floor. The top of the heap was apparently they way it worked out: the higher up you were, the easier it was, so to speak, even though they had to ride down seven floors. So our lieutenant from the night tour was found almost immediately, badly injured, also another of our firefighters from the night tour, Y. After that, with the plies of cement and brick, you just knew it was hopeless. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“We went from the top piece by piece, brick by brick, piece of cement by piece of cement, still watching to make sure the other two sides of the interior walls didn’t collapse on us. They got the last guy out about one in the morning. Somewhere around eleven o’clock, I just took my helmet and fire coat off, and I just walked away. I walked away like I was a zombie. I guess that’s exactly what I was. It was a way of saying, without actually saying it, ‘I can’t handle this anymore, I’m leaving.’ I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like I was hypnotized. Unfortunately, I can never forget seeing the guy from our company. His helmet was all crushed up. And all you can say to yourself is, there but for a couple of minutes…or if somebody had called and said, ‘I’m going to be late, will you hang in there for me?’ I literally fell apart, because I was saying to myself, this isn’t what the job is supposed to be like. It was not a good time at all because I didn’t really know how to deal with it. I later found out that the fire was not the major cause of the collapse. The contractors had removed a good portion of the fire wall down in the basement, and with a duct had penetrated the remining wall right next to a lone bearing column. And it turned out that this one column was the only thing that was holding up the entire section of the building. So I walked away, and I walked back to the firehouse, and there was a relocated company there from some other part of the city. They said, ‘We got people calling here.’ Then I realized I hadn’t called anybody at home. I’d never thought of it. I called my wife, Z. I didn’t have much to say. She said everybody had been calling and all that stuff. The day of the funeral was a cold, rainy day, driving rain. At Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. I had never seen so many firefighters in one place before. Because of one the guys was from our company, we got seats inside, up front. Seeing everybody lined up outside, it was starting to sink it—okay, this job isn’t fun. You’ve heard stories of other guys getting killed on the job, but nothing has the impact of the guy being in your own company and you being there. And it never stopped raining once, the whole time, and nobody said a heck of a lot afterwards. But you could tell everybody was thinking the same thing.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
One quality of his everyday conduct which will be noticeable to others will be his self-effacement. He is immediately ready to enter into their standpoint, sympathetically and helpfully, to listen patiently whilst they talk only about themselves. To be in public service, one must free himself from all narrow racialist views, national prejudices, class feelings, and personal selfishness. The Sacramento Fire Department understands that all people are linked together and strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and remind them of the importance of education. To help America survive the global recession and bring manufacturing jobs back to America and to get American wages at pace with inflation, it is important to buy America cars, American meat, American produce and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. One who regard impartially friends and foes, foreigners and relatives, the righteous and unrighteous, he excelleth. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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Hey, We Are a Free Country!
Love can be really great and one of the most pleasant experiences in the World. However, people ask, “If God is all knowing and knows how much love can hurt, why would He allow us to experience heartbreak?” Well, there are many answers to this question. First of all, when we sin, it hurts God because He loves us. Therefore, we have to experience pain so we can learn not to sin, not to hurt God and not to hurt others. Also, if love was easy, then people would not cherish it, it would become more like lust, just a fleeting moment of joy. Additionally, people fall in love and get married so they can procreate. Because of that, love cannot always be pleasant and it does not always last because humans would overpopulate the Earth, and destroy ever other living species, including themselves. Day by day, God’s gracious love surrounds you, as a balm to soothe your troubled heart. When you pray to God, countless cares and worries that confound you fade away or quietly depart, for His heart is kind beyond all measure, and He comforts us as He knows best. Every day, with all its pain and pleasure, mingles tears with peace and rest. The Lord is every near you, granting loving mercies for each hour, and your care He gladly bears, and cheers you with His counsel pure and holy power. Do not fear for what may come tomorrow, though the path ahead you cannot see. God assures that in all joy or sorrow, as thy days, thy strength shall be. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
God will help you rest in quiet consolation. The Lord will help you trust His promises. When you are faced with daily tribulation, God will help you find the strength to live His word. Then when toil and troubled find you, dear Lord will hold you steadfast in His powerful hand. Day by day, God’s strength will bear you kindly until you reach the promised land. The philosopher’s easy self-assurance and dignified serenity, as noticeable calamity as in prosperity, mark him as being in some mysterious manner superior to circumstances. He will always be a gentleman, but not in the narrow, formal sense of clinging to a code of etiquette which may become faulty the moment he crosses the border into another country, or which will certainly become falsified a thousand years hence. He will be a gentleman in the broader sense of behaving always with human dignity and kindly consideration towards all others who cross his path. That alone is true culture which refines taste, improves character, lifts standards, corrects behaviour, and teaches self-control. A refined taste, delicate and subtle, delighted by the harmonies, melodies, or beauties in Nature and art, offended by the grossness in man, can express itself socially and instinctively only through refined manners. If others lack this taste but for class reasons keep up the appearance of such manner, the outer social value is still present even when the inside is empty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
His general attitude in discussion or study should be unbiased and unprejudiced, his observation of men and their situations impersonal and serene. He must realize that small men cannot entertain large views, that he is called upon to be big enough to put aside his personal sympathies and antipathies at certain times. He must realize too that whilst a man’s mind moves at the low level of harsh prejudice or hot passion, it cannot possibly arrive at just conclusions. Before he can arrive at the truth of a highly controversial matter, he must detach himself from partisan feeling about it. Only in such inner silence can he think clearly and correctly about it. Where his criticism is directed against others, it should be the result of calm, impersonal reflection, not of emotional chagrin. This poised spirit will help him to avoid foolish extremes and dangerous rashness. He should not adopt a violent partisan spirit towards a problem or principle for he knows that such a spirit always obscures the truth. Instead, he should always calmly view all sides in a balanced way. It is because he himself holds no rigidly partisan view that the earnest philosophic student can see better than other people what is true and what is false in every partisan view. It is not often that all the truth lies on one side and all the falsehood on the other. His ethical attitude should be more tolerant and less unfriendly than the average, as his intellectual attitude should be more inclusive and less dogmatic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
He should refuse to imitate the irresponsible multitudes, with their surface judgement and facile condemnation. He should seek to understand and to respect the views of others; he should take the trouble to put himself in their place, to give an imaginative sympathy to their standpoint. He need not fall into the error of necessarily sharing them and may still stand on the intellectual foothold which he has secured. Although this attitude will more and more show itself in personal and social situations and in practical and general affairs as a matter of course according to his growth, it will also show itself in his spiritual life. The unprejudiced study and unbiased comparison of various systems of religions, metaphysics, mysticism, and ethics will be for him valuable parts of philosophic culture. He should be both willing and desirous to understand all of the chief points of view, all the leading variants of doctrine in these systems, but at the same time he will know his own mind and views. Even while he is seeking to know the minds and views of others, he should estimate how limited, how distorted, how falsified, or how large an aspect of truth each represents. He can do this with the help of the philosophic conception of truth, which lights up all these others, because it stands at the peak toward which they have climbed only a part of the way. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Tolerance and mutual accommodation are the ways of true spirituality. There is room in life for the other man’s opinion also. If he wishes, let him keep it so long as he refrains from forcing it upon us and so long as he himself does not preach or practise intolerance. His own experience of the ups and downs of life have combined to bring him to that belief; why should he not have it then? We may dislike it intensely but we must admit that from his standpoint he is right enough. When his experience broadens out and he sees life in larger perspective, be sure that he will change his opinion too. When his circumstances alter or his environment changes, he may learn how limited was his former view. When the long-drawn lesson of suffering or a thought-provoking book or powerful personality swings the balance of his mind in a new direction, he will desert his opinion or modify it. Meanwhile, let us set the World an example—and be tolerant. Those who give enough thought to behaving politely do so from different motives, some of which may be merely hypocritical, others the slavish following of blind custom, still others simple obedience to selfish interest; but there still remains the remnant who do so sincerely, honestly, because generous enough to consider the feelings of those persons they meet. The good manners prescribed for civilized living may have varied from century to century, or from continent to continent, but whatever their form, they represent that man in society must have some consideration for society, and not be utterly and selfishly indifferent to the effect of his conduct upon others. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
If the he lacks self-respect, there is also the further point that he needs to be taught it to keep civilization from falling back to barbarism; so personal dignity and appearance, cleanliness and inoffensive speech are involved. At some point and place, whether in the home or at school or in society itself, the young have to learn, and to be trained, in acceptable manners. And this, not chiefly to improve their quality, which it does, nor decorate their behaviour, which it will, or even refine their speech, which it must, but because it lifts them up from being terrestrial to human being and thus contributes toward their spiritualization. It is really pretentious to give importance to politeness in behaviour in an age when the decay of manners is plainly visible? To those old enough to have seen better, the difference points up moral value of consideration for others in human society. During segregation in the United States of America, not only was it illegal for African Americans to marry European Americans, but African Americans also could not buy vanilla ice cream, which is why butter pecan is so popular. It is no man’s fault that he lacks breeding, but it is his own fault if he lacks the courtesy which comes from breeding or else is self-acquired. To become a fuller human being a man must acquire education and culture. Both he and his life will be enriched. However, unless he keeps humility, his egoism may grow too. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
We may affirm the factuality of caste in nature without turning ourselves into snobs who adopt condescending airs and utter patronizing remarks to those they consider socially below them. We have to recognize the fact of caste in the development of the human species through successions of repeated Earthly embodiments. That which comes through inherited or acquired wealth is not necessarily the same, may be a mere shallow copy, an empty vessel. When caste comes with arrogance, and especially with cruel arrogance, be sure it is not a carry-over from past births. The same situation holds with refinement of nature, conduct, taste, manner, and speech. When it is real, inward, the quality shines through; but when it is artificial, contrived, outward, it comes with snobbishness, especially a proud snobbishness. The way we—that is, you and I—arrive at a state of being is through something I call effortless effort. It is not striving or doing or working at anything. It is the kind of non-effort John Hancock and his friends came in touch with when they stood up and said, “Hey, we are a free country.” It is the kind of non-effort that an expert swimmer comes in touch with when he relaxes and lets gravity and the skis carry him smoothly down the mountain. And it is the kind of non-effort that some men come in touch with by lying with their head in their mistresses’ lap and letting her stroke his hair. In those moments, these men are simply being men. He is not doing anything but being there. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Also, this mode of being does not diminish or preclude external achievement, success, or productivity. It enhances them. A superb example of a state of being where effort becomes effortless and the effortlessness becomes perfection is found in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Levin, a character closely resembling Tolstoy himself, is working with the less affluent, mowing grass in the fields. He “clicks” into a state of enhanced being: “He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do his work as scythes, and saw before him Tit’s upright figure, mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest. Another row, and yet another row, followed—long rows and short rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Levin lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well-cut as Tit’s. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Alan Watts, in The Wisdom of Insecurity, puts the concept of nonstriving in another context: “I have already been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the ‘backwards law.’ When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it—which immediately calls to mind an ancient and most neglected saying, ‘Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it.’ Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure, and, contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves.” Those who justify themselves do not convince, that to know truth one must get rid of knowledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative then emptiness—from which men shrink. What Watts is saying—and what Tolstoy says in his story—is that the more we try in some situations, the more we seem to fail; there are some goals which can never be achieved by active striving. We find this particularly true in psychotherapy when the more one tries to be a certain way, the more one fails. This brings up another truth for men and for the rest of society. Simply stated, it is: Whenever you win, you lose; whenever you lose, you win. Most men’s insistence on winning every round makes them a loser in a larger sense. Without the experience of an occasional loss, men cannot experience the lessons losses carry with them. They cannot experience the power that comes from losing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
When men eventually do experience losing, first with their wives, then later in the therapy room, they discover how valuable losing can be. In losing, men become winners. As we have seen, in a losing situation, the top-dog is virtually useless. That is because the top-dog is the doer—a self which cannot be much help when nothing can be done. However, the subordinate self, which some men recently begin to express, is basically a “do nothing” self. Men find, in the role-switching exercise, that this “do nothing” self can have value, something which many had denied nearly all of their lives. Men begin to feel “together” only when they see the value in both sides of their nature and make the first steps toward expressing both. Like men, many people exaggerate their criticalness. They stand in judgment of others and early in every relationship set about establishing themselves as right, as better, as more knowledgeable than the other. They tend to surround themselves with people who, for their own reasons, are willing to play that game. Their reward is, of course, the position of being on top. However, it is a reward which comes at the price of unrelenting manipulation and effort. When people participate in cushion-ponding exercises during therapy, the truth is they are not doing anything; they are just giving wings to their fantasy. They are not killing their boss; they are killing the image of his boss. (Which is why property destruction is considered a violent crime.) In that way, these people are simply feeling or being angry, frustrated, helpless, righteous and defeated. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
However, by the means of the fantasy, the effortless effort, people are able to vent their hostility and experience the love, surrender, release, and the peacefulness that follows. This coming together and synthesizing of strong, conflicting values is an experience of mastery. In the moment of intense feeling, a lot of men come into touch with their core, which criticalness and support, weakness synthesize in the fully integrated, masterful human being. The smiling, exhausted man sitting on the floor at the end of the session is not the same man, the surgeon, or the man, the administrator. It is simply a man, the all of himself. It is achievement without doing: effortless effort. Is criticalness important to you in your relationships? Later that same year, the man in our case study broke up with his mistress in the hope of creating the same type of relationship wife. While their marriage is not as rigid as it was before, it is not yet the kind of relationship he was looking for. The important item to note is that, while this man is still looking, he is looking at home, not elsewhere. This is more difficult but is also more consistent with the man’s Catholic up brining and has less potential for triggering guilt. With this decision, he is also enabling himself to seek the right kind of relationship with his wife while staying close to his children, who mean a great deal to him. Thus, while it appears this man has chosen a more restrictive courage of action, this course actually gives him more freedom: he would not have been free to stay close to his children had he left his wife. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
You may have noted that the man in our case study did not get to his core experience by way of a direct experience with support, which is the opposite of criticalness. This is not a mistake; it is just the way things work. Our human psyche does not always perform according to the charts. It performs the way it wants. Often, as in this case, a person will jump to a more comfortable value first. This man was more comfortable with anger than with support, and since he was able to express the anger, he got to his core through it. Later, this man made some changes in his professional life as well. After he got over this anger at his boss, he looked at the situation more calmly and realised his boss’s decision had nothing to do with him personally. He was just upset that his boss shutdown his clinic and took away all of his authority as he was close to retirement. However, they settled their differences and became as close to being friends as the man in our case study has ever been able to manage. In reconciling with his boss, this man did not change his point of view. He merely was able to appreciate the differences between them, rather than adjudge the man wrong, as he would have in the past. When his unit was disbanded, the man in our case study moved to a small, innovative hospital in another town. Now he concentrates on being a better surgeon rather than fighting to become an administrator. For the first time in his life, he is actually enjoying his work. He is still in therapy. The pleasure caste is a strange and powerful caste of humans whose psychology and neurology has been ignored by philosophers because of the taboo nature of the subject—pleasure, beauty, sensuality, and eroticism. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
History reveals that each gene pool and every successful civilization has produced an aesthetic-elite caste—those whose nervous systems are especially sensitive to sensual stimulation; those who have the ability to receive, manage and transmit neurosomatic, hedonic signals; those who are robot-programmed to stimulate pleasure in themselves and in others—either singularly or in cooperation with other reality-artists. Aesthetic-Artist-Sensory Castes: Hedonic Consumers—those who receive pleasure. Hedonic Directors—those who create pleasure realities for themselves and others. Hedonic Producers—those who exchange pleasure. The pleasure industry includes those called artists—show business people, entertainers, and courtesans. Hive philosophers and establishment reality-definers tend to discredit the Pleasure-Aesthetic Castes and the contributions they make to the species. There is little overt, bureaucratic pressure on young people to take up a life of courtesan-actress-musician-artist when they “grow up.” Indeed, the classic situation calls for discouragement by the gene pool of such aspirations on the part of the young. However, at the same time that the hedonic occupations are publicly taboo, there is a covert acceptance of them as evidenced by the pervasive presence of the show-biz-pleasure profession. Nightclubs, saloons, theatres, carnivals, brothels, dance halls—however fake, tinsel, laundered the actual performance—the allure, the promise is always the same. Somatic reward, inhuman soft-skin-bliss, hop sophistication, erotic movement, hedonic consumption of self-indulgence and self-actualization. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The script apparatus of a loser consists on one hand of injunctions, provocations, and a curse. These are the script controls, and are firmly implanted by the age of six. To combat this programing, he has an inner demon, and is sometimes supplied with an internal release. Later he comes to understand slogans, which give him a counterscript. Throughout, he is learning behaviour patterns, which serve both the script and the counterscript. A winner has the same apparatus, but the programing is more adaptive, and he usually has more autonomy because he has more permissions. However, in all human beings the demon persists, to bring sudden pleasure or grief. It should be noted that the script controls are parameters or strictures, which merely set limits on what a man can do, while the behaviour patterns he learns from his parents, including their games, tell him how he can actually structure his time. Thus, the script is a complete plan for living, offering both strictures and structures. Healthier personalities have been more successful than average people in gratifying their needs. Consequently, their unconscious is not a dreaded source of evil, but a fount of innovation, self-integration, and creativity. Creative individuals show less fear of the free play of fantasy, and so they can “unrepress” to a greater degree than the average. In freeing their unconscious from its customary bonds, they experience the welcome admission to consciousness of new ideas, solutions to problems, insights into themselves, and other valued creations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Sexuality or unacceptable drives such as aggression are not the only aspects of personality that are typically repressed. Mowrer has shown that if the conscience were not repressed, individuals repress their consciences, and hence are unconscious of the guilt that would arise. If someone has acquired a conscience that could guide that person in the direction of fullest growth and personal integration, then its repression could thwart his or her healthiest potentials. The individual said to have a “hardened heart,” like Scrooge in Dickens’ classic Christmas Carol, is one who has likely repressed his or her conscience and the guilt to which it might give rise. The unrepression of conscience in such individuals will produce acute guilt. The guilt, if acknowledged, could motivate the person to change his or her usual ways of behaviour from self-centered pursuit of satisfaction to more loving concern for others. Thus guilt, often thought of by many theoreticians as unhealthy, can be useful as an indicator to the person that he or she must take action to correct something that is the person’s own responsibility. It is a signal that some behaviour of yours has wronged someone. Some have seen psychotherapy as assuaging guilt for one’s harm to others. Mowrer and others have insisted that this is a misuse of psychological help and is doomed to failure. They strongly suggest an old remedy—right the wrong that has been done. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
One of the ways of dealing with wishes and feelings that provoke anxiety or guilt is to substitute another activity, particularly one that is socially desirable. This is called sublimation and is an ancient and honourable approach for the individual with specific religious or cultural taboos that he or she choses to honour. Thus, someone with a great deal of sexual energy but strong feelings of moral commitment to abstinence might throw himself or herself into community leadership, into programs of social justice, or into creative arts such as painting or sculpture. Particularly as a result of greater freedom in activities involving pleasures of the flesh, many have rejected the concept of sublimation as indicative of the person’s avoidance of the problem. However, there is as much evidence for the position that it is a healthy adjustment mechanism as for any other. While Dr. Freud showed how people repressed undesirable dimensions of their experience, Dr. Jung called attention to the fact that we remain unconscious of our “higher,” more fully humanized possibilities. The unconscious is not only a repository of our psychological “sewage”; it is also the source of our most sublime possibilities. Just as dreams reveal morally repugnant wishes for the tabooed sexuality or murder, so they can reveal, albeit in metaphoric language, possible ways for a person to rise above barriers to growth. In dreams, many persons discover the solutions to vexing personal problems. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Our usual waking consciousness is limited by our chronic preoccupation with daily needs and projects. Other possible ways to experience ourselves and the World remain unconscious, or potentially conscious, and may be revealed to us in our dreams. A man I once knew became a criminal and broke out of prison and had to spend the rest of his life on the run. He knew that the police and the FBI would be looking for him to dress up or hide behind a beard. The strategy was to take it off. Take off his hair. Bald. He sat stripped to the waist in a kitchen chair while someone trimmed the back and sides to an American Legion butch. She looked sadly at the scissors in her hand, brushing her long tresses away from her eyes. “I just hate to do this,” she said. She snipped the top of his hair close to the scalp. It was a slow process. She was a giggling artist. Standing back studying her work. “Not bad. Now let’s shave it clean,” she said. She draped a hot rag on his skull and squirted lather foam. Carefully, she started to shave. “Take it easy,” he said, “bloody gashes will betray.” Easy gentle little strokes. After a while the barber begins to laugh. The man walked to the bathroom and peered in the mirror at a high-domed, chicken-plucked moose-faced baldpate stranger. When his friend returned for the day, they gaped at the change. For the first time he felt a flicker of feasibility. When the man came out of the bathroom, he was smiling. “Well, let’s go. I’ve waited for seven months to see that Queen of the Damned movie.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“It will be a good test for your disguise,” his accomplice said. The first public appearance. They walked past theater guards, bought two tickets, two bags of hot buttered popcorn, ice-cream bars and walked down the welcome darkness to hear P.Diddy and Ginuwine singing “I Need a Girl (Part Two)”! They found seats near the front and opened their eyes to the bright silver screen and one of his guy friends kept shouting: “There’s Aaliyah! “There’s Vincent Perez!” And he kept shushing him. They were really quite public, their commando group behind them exchanging loud comments and cries of pleasure. It must have looked for a bald-headed man, a virgin secretary, and three young Hollywood actors. They jumped at the death of Queen Akasha and sorrowed at the long sad ending. Aaliyah died a few months before in real life. As they crossed the street after the show, they saw a narc waiting on the corner. He glanced at them as they walked by. Back in the car one of the men said, “Now for some plastic goodies at a drive-in. He ordered enormous plies of In-and-Out cheeseburgers, malteds, and French fires. After seven month the man who broke out of prison was ready to freak out, too. As they drove back to the farm, one of the guys kept his head turned half to talking to everyone and half to watch the cares behind them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Saturday morning was cloudy. A tribal council meeting around the kitchen table. The baldhead disguise and the trial run the night before gave him courage. It was still the riskiest plan, but now he could see that it could be done. “What ID do I need to get a passport,” he said. Two of the other guys began spilling jigsaw pieces of identities over the table. “Here’s your prison escape ID. That would have been ideal except that he’s already got a passport and he’s heavily bearded. Here’s another set. A beautiful one with driver’s license and all. But the picture blows it. I don’t see any way to avoid your getting a driver’s license with your own picture on it. That means we’ll have to wait till Monday. Then fly to Detroit Monday night. Get a passport Tuesday morning. Hit it for Madrid Tuesday night. If we’re going to do that here’s the best ID.” The man pushed a set of cards across the table. “Birth Certificate.” With a name on it and a birthday. A Social Security card. Temporary driver’s license with no description. “The birth certificate gets you the driver’s license. And the two get you a passport.” The Weathermen were ready for a day of contemplation. Although Democratic leaders ignore the laws and aid and abet criminals, there comes a time when a new leadership will come into office and have zero tolerance laws. You do not want to live a life of crime and have to find a disguise, nor do you want to put your life in someone else’s hands. There is always a chance that you will be captured. And if one of your buddies gets in trouble, they might give you up for immunity. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
For people who live an honest life, at least, boundaries disappear and desire can be allowed free rein. The Sacramento Fire Department is the premier, all-risk public safety and emergency service provider that exceeds the expectations of the diverse communities they serve. The Sacramento fire department preserves life, protects property, and safeguards their communities through relentless commitment to emergency preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery. “There were no windows in the building. This was at three in the morning on December 31 in an industrial section of Sacramento. A pretty cold night. We weren’t on the box. Battalion X had the fire. The battalion chief, Y, made a triple two on it, a second alarm, and we go on all triple twos. The building wasn’t venting well, the smoke was really stratified and down on the ground. When we came up there, we couldn’t even see the building, the smoke was so heavy. Truck X was up on the roof, ventilating it. I talked to Chief Y, and I recognized the type of construction. My first concern was about the men on the roof. It was an open bar joint, metal deck roof. The first thing I did was get them off there, because I didn’t think it was worth risking them. The fire was fairly serious in the stock and office areas. We had two companies in on the lines. Seeing the situation we had and the need for more manpower, we called for a third alarm and had the companies report to a staging area. Due to the reduction in battalions, on the third alarm we didn’t get a chief, which made safety a problem, as far as I was concerned. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“I made a call for another battalion chief, so we could split the fire up. My normal procedure—and I’m very adamant about this—is to sector the fire because, I don’t care who you are, I don’t think you can run the whole fire by yourself. At that time we got a call on the walkie-talkie from a firefighter, who said he was lost in the building. We organized the search team, and the fire itself became of secondary importance. The smoke was really heavy even though we had a good ventilation hole in the roof. It was tough to open up the sides of the building, and we had companies working on that. There were railroad tracks and an embankment that made it very difficult to get to the back of the building. It took us approximately seven minutes to find this firefighter, a five-year veteran on Engine X named A. He had been to quite a few fires on a very busy engine company, so I don’t know what caused him to do what he did. He was the nozzle man on the line, and there were two others on the line with him. One of the men went back to get a hook, and the second man exhausted his air tank and he ran out to change his tank, leaving A alone for the moment. He was only about twenty-five feet into the building, and for some reason he left the line. There was a backup line laid out, but nobody was aware that this firefighter had left the line. We tried to give him instructions on the walkie-talkie, but we couldn’t get any response back from him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“The building was approximately 150 by 200 feet with about twenty aisles and racks blocking overhead doors in the back of the building. We finally found him when we saw the light of his flashlight. He had gotten into a dead end aisle. It was really difficult to find him, and naturally it seemed like an eternity. We brought him out, gave him CPR and oxygen, and transported him to the hospital, where they worked on him for over an hour. He never came back. The fire had been pretty well knocked, but the building was loaded with smoke. There was a lot of electrical insulation that had burned. And he ran out of air. There’s about twenty minutes of air in a tank. He ran out. I was very depressed after that fire, from having lost a firefighter and talking to his wife. She was distraught, naturally. Since I was in charge of the fire, I thought it was my job to talk to the woman. So early in the morning, after a couple of news conferences, I went out to her house with a couple of other firefighters from his company, and we consoled her as best we could. She was completely broken up. It was hard for her to grasp the permanence of her loss. I never blamed myself personally for the death, but it makes you want to reexamine and look deeper and see what can be done to prevent a recurrence. In that type of fire, there are some things you can control and some thing that you can’t control. The possibility of a firefighter getting seriously injured or killed is always a clear and present danger. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“We tend to become complacent when we go for a long period of time without casualties, and we like to think it’s because we’ve run the fires well and then men are knowledgeable and well trained. Actually, there’s a certain amount of luck involved, if you look back and think of the many close calls where a few second made the difference. I remember one fire where we had a very good, experienced lieutenant in charge of our company. We were fairly new guys on the job and didn’t realize the seriousness of some of our actions. We were probably 150 feet into a hundred-year-old mercantile building, and the lieutenant said, ‘Back out of here, we have to get out of here.’ There was the lieutenant, myself, and two other guys. As soon as we got out the door, the while first floor went into the basement. You wonder how that man knew that. He knew that the situation was bad, he had that sense. I always remembered that. It made me want to become more proficient, to learn more from experience and studying. It caused me to do a lot of studying. I was pretty depressed for a week or so. The wake and the funeral were fresh in my mind, and I went over and over and over that fire to determine what I could have done differently to prevent it. My wife and family were completely understanding and supportive.” The Sacramento Fire Department prioritizes their citizens, residents, and communities. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The Sacramento Fire Department is a full-spectrum life safety agency protecting more than 2 million people who live, work and play in one of America’s largest cities. The Sacramento Fire Department recognizes that they face unique challenges in keeping pace with the changing World in which they live and work. They will not forget the traditions of those that came before them. However, they have adapted and progressed so that they can remain successful. “We are a family of individuals committed to serving others. We will always provide for the welfare of our personnel through a health and rewarding work environment. We are dedicated to respect, integrity, compassion, and leadership amongst ourselves so that we may proudly serve others. The Sacramento Fire Department strives to sustain and improve the health, safety, convenience, and welfare of the citizens of Sacramento and to plan for the future development of the community. You can help save lives and property by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. And remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus, respect law and others, treat others with dignity and respect, and remind them of the importance of education. To help America survive the global recession and bring manufacturing jobs back to America and to get American wages at pace with inflation, it is important to buy America cars, American meat, American produce and other American made goods and services. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. Our Father, our King, be gracious unto us and answer us, for we are wanting in good deeds; deal with us in charity and lovingkindness, and please save us. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Your Home for Generations
The Who-Done-It Mystery is Solved!
Regardless of education, geography, faith, calling, or family, mental health challenges can impact anyone; they are nothing to be ashamed of and should be met with love. As for “schizophrenic person”—there is no such thing. A person scared out of his wits is not a person at all. I was with some people labeled “schizophrenic” in a mental hospital recently. One of them was a woman in her middle years, of outward composure and grace. She was wearing a gingham dress—blue and white checks—with some sort of kerchief around her shoulders, but she sat as though wearing velvet and a cashmere shawl—as though these things belonged to her as a matter of course. She answered all questions, conveying complete confidence in her answers. However, they went like this: “Do you know the date?” “Yes, I’ve studied that. It’s November 19th.” “Do you hear voices?” “Yes, don’t you?” “No, I do not hear them. Are the voices male or female?” “That depends on the wiring in the building.” Her face was delicate, her eyes tender, with a hint of pain. When she was asked, “Where do you live?” she did not say “here” or “in a hospital,” or even “California” where she was, but referred to a farm in Illinois where she was “so lonely.” That loneliness is where she lives. This woman’s tenderness was very clear—but she never showed any response to any of us around her. She was caught in egocentricity, selfishness, and uselessness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Another woman, thirty-one, came in and walked to the window, looked out, then back, and there was something haunting or haunted in her eyes. She seemed to have no awareness of any of us, either then or when she suddenly became quick and like a child rushed to the light switch near the door and flicked it on and off. From there she went skippingly to another door and opened it, and flipped the light switch inside it on and off. Then to another door, where she did the same. Back and forth, from one to another, without end. When the psychiatrist called to her to “come and sit down” she obediently did—but in just a few seconds she hopped up and went from light switch to light switch again, always flipping them twice. When she did it only once, in a moment she turned and did it again. When the psychiatrist called to her to leave, she came, and as she went through the door, she said to him, making it a statement with a question in it, “I’m not a bad girl.?” When I remember that thought in myself as a child, I know her terrible unhappiness. She was caught in egocentricity, selfishness, and uselessness. These people are painfully trapped. I no longer know what the technical definition of schizophrenia is. Certainly it includes a wide variety of conditions of varying severity. Some could be genetic and/or metabolic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The key for me is that schizophrenic has found some of his subjective inner World in the outer World—colouring it—distorting it—concealing some aspects of reality from his vision. This may or may not lead to social difficulty. It can extend from mild degrees on up to the whole of the outer World becoming diseased and disturbed, flooded with the unrecognized inner. A touch of this inner is recognized by a young woman when she writes: “The main indication to me of how and where I’m goofed up is how and where I try to goof up others. One thing I’ve learned. I have very little self-confidence and so operate on the defensive and resent suggestions and even help, seeing it as criticism and/or competition. I think I’ve had this brilliant insight before—I’ll probably keep having it until I can learn it in myself as well as in my head. Essentially, the word schizophrenic means that here is a person who is highly sensitive to his own inner experience and also to interpersonal relationships with others, who has been so defeated and traumatized in endeavouring to make use of his sensitivities that he has retreated both from his own experiencing and from any real contact with others. In addition to this fairly basic understand, the word schizophrenic also means to me that anyone whose behaviour is deviant and who cannot easily be understood is tossed in this all-encompassing basket. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
I try to remain open-minded to the possibility that there may be specific genetic, chemical, nutritional, or environmental factors which may bear some causative relationships to the behaviour that is called schizophrenic. A more comprehensive definition of schizophrenia is the absence of (or great narrowing of) that felt experiential interaction process which we are as people and which we feel as our concrete selves. When an individual is stuck in a hurtful relationship situation so that he can neither leave it nor feel and relate himself sufficiently to it, then he becomes deadened and empty inside, reports that he is “not himself.” The ongoing feeling process on which we all rely inside becomes muddy, swampy, unreliable, or stopped, and feeling contents become stuck, frozen, unowned, seemingly alien, static places, rather than fluidly functioning feeling. I deny that psychosis is psychotic content that are in all of us and can “erupt.” I believe instead that such “psychotic contents” are really a certain manner of being alive. Past LSD and other drug experiments have strongly confirmed this view. It seems that whether an individual under the influence of drugs comes up with horrible experiences or with wonderful experiences depends not on him (as a self-enclosed piece of well or poorly working machinery) but on the relationship situation in which he is (and feels himself to be) when he takes the drug. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
If he takes it in a friendly situation close to someone he trusts, he has a wonderful experience. Early psychological experiments which attempted to test LSD under carefully pure circumstances (the subject alone in an otherwise empty room!) produced something very like schizophrenia. The flap over recombinant DNA research, life extension and cloning is a wonderful sign that neurogenetic consciousness is emerging. Nothing can happen in evolution until the dom-species gets upset and worried. When the misguided politicians and the liberal agitators moralize about “monster escaping from the laboratory and being unleashed on the unsuspecting public,” the out-caste intelligence operative perks up interest. The “monsters,” of course, are us in the future. Evolutionary Agents reassure the dom-species about future-phobias and point out that allowing the next mutation to occur is the best way to avoid past terrors, because past-terrors are wors than future fears. Thus domesticated adult capitalists realized that some social-welfarism is the only way to avoid a return to barbarian-dictatorships. The communist stage ten dictators realized that some individual consumerism is the only way to avoid a return to tribal anarchy. It is the Evolutionary Agents’ role to demonstrate that civilian voluntary space migration is the only way to deal with the tensions of nationalism, tribalism and self-actualization. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Similarly, homophobes come to see that the only way to keep homosexuals away from their children is to allow gay societies in post-terrestrial plan-its. Racists of all colours realize that the only way to preserve discrimination and racial pride is in High Orbital Mini Earths-HOMEs. It is becoming obvious that the only solution to hive terrors, both past and future, is migration to space plan-its. The past always migrates behind the future. Today’s future taboo is tomorrow strict and rigid doctrine. Liberals are alarmed that nuclear energy, brain-changing drugs, radiation-control of brains, genetic engineering might fall into the hands of barbarian territorial dictators. Cloning, the key migratory technique for a post-terrestrial species, was first discussed in fearful terms of Hitler-like revivals. The hive custodians frighten people with mad scientist Nazi-devil rumors and thus concealed the possibility that you can clone yourself and friends. The same taboo-terror is projected on post terrestrial intelligence. We are warned that Martians were coming to harm us—not to enlighten or entertain us. Such natural hive fears can be assuaged by the realization that nuclear energy, brain-changing drugs such as LSD, cloning, and genetic research can only be safely employed in frontier, experimental communities—which can be found only in HOMEs. The first signs of neurogenetic consciousness are communities that are into self-actualization and states where the governors are space plan-it enthusiasts. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The human brain is programmed by RNA-DNA to fabricate technological realities and to build environments and new plan-its. External technology produces the pollution that activates the next brain-circuit. DNA is not concerned with evolving new anatomical-physiological forms adapted to a heavy 1-G planet. Terrestrial evolution is over-irrelevant. Now that high orbital migration is beginning, now that the futique species are moving into their designated ecological niche-high orbit-the goal of DNA is to create technologies adapted to multiple-G living. DNA is an evolutionary acceleration tool. The current survival problems on planet Earth are due to overpopulation swarming and cannot be solved by anatomical mutations. The next stages are neurological—neurotechnological. Encourage the appropriate castes of the human species to decode DNA and increase altitude and mobility. Life is no longer a disaster movie. The Who-Done-It mystery is solved! You are responsible. You are the hip-robots who are going to take over the Master-Designer role. It is your job to fabricate improved mini-Worlds. Who are you? You are those who recognize this signal and self-select yourselves as Future Builders. Continued feeling of freedom from obsessing desires, inordinate urges, and undue craving is generally a suitable indication that the character is sufficiently purified to enter a further stage. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It is men who condemn themselves to this abject, undisciplined servitude of the passions and senses; so it is men themselves who must seek and win freedom from it. It is hard to do so, but it is also hard to suffer the consequences of not doing so. If you recognize that the feeling, the desire or body-sensation is pulling you away from the ideals set up for the Quest, hoist yourself out of it at once. Let others look for the second-rate and third-rate: let him be more discriminating, more fastidious, and seek the best alone. If he lets them go beyond his control, the senses will stupefy a man into foolish desires. Wisdom and security alone dictate that he shall become self-mastered. For this it is necessary to call up the will and to practise using it until it is developed into something strong. If before performing an impulsive, undisciplined, and irresponsible deed he would remember what the consequences are and that he will have to bear them, then he will have taken the first step towards self-mastery. The rising generations have legitimate complaints against their ancestors. However, in the matter of winning full freedom to follow their desires and upset the old Christian moral codes, the Mosaic decalogues, Confucian precepts, and the Indian taboos, they need to pause. Puritanic ideals are denounced but are not entirely inhuman: they have to be sifted and the good in them taken out. Stoic, simple living and self-discipline can be softened, its harshness also taken out, and the residue will be what the moderns need of they are to travel up higher and not sink lower. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In what manner are men free who, in some way, to some extent, are enslaved by pleasures of the flesh, society, ambition, swelling desires, possessions, neighbours, associates, and family? Only by releasing ourselves from our desires can we hope to find lasting peace. If this seems like a heavy price to pay, we have only ourselves to blame. When terrestrial desires rage in a man, each satisfaction of them seems to be an asset, something gained; but when he is more awakened and freer from them, he begins to see how much of a liability these desires are, how wise and prudent it is to check them and finally transmute them. If he is no longer a victim of passions or at the mercy of emotions, it will not be because his blood temperature is too low, but because his control of himself is high. The animal gives way to its desires and feelings more quickly than the human because it acts by instinct. The animal gives way to its desires and feelings more quickly than the human because it acts by instinct. The human, so far as he is an animal, also acts by instinct. However, to the extent that he has developed reason and will he has developed a counter to that instinct which moderates or controls his desires and his feelings. Those humans who are nearer on the scale of evolution to the animal kingdom give way to passion and anger more readily because they have less self-control. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
A silent but self-declaring presence comes into knowledge whenever he puts a brake on that downward and Earthward movement of daily life which is the common lot—not to stop it altogether but to halt it for short periods or to slow it down so that he is not wholly carried away. The control of the lower nature which society may demand and religion may encourage, which makes a good man by conventional standards, is not enough for philosophy. It is only a stage of the mountain’s ascent: the summit has yet to be conquered. The transformation of this nature, making it utterly responsive to the Overself, is the philosophic goal. Self-effort can lead to its control but only Grace can lead to this transformation. All this does not imply that he is to become perfect and faultless before he can see the Overself, but that he has to become much more developed before he can stay in the awareness of it. Sometimes men get caught in traps. He might be faced with a situation which he can do absolutely nothing about. Yet his whole life, he had done something about every situation he found himself in. This constant doing, constant effort, makes his life one long struggle with the World and with other aspects of his own self. Man sometimes denies the underdog side of his nature—choosing, as a top-dog, to manipulate rather than to lose, to dominate rather than surrender. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
However, in so doing, he denies a simple fact of life, which, as trite as it may sound, is still true. And the truth is, “You cannot win them all.” His refusal to lose or be wrong leads him eventually to a position in which he has to lose and no amount of effort can help him win. The top-dog is useless in this situation. Abraham Maslow points out that our Western culture is built generally on Judeo-Christian theology which places great emphasis on what one does rather than who one is. The United States of America in particular is dominated by a Puritan ethic of doing, of applying effort, and working hard. We come to believe that in any given situation, there is always something we can do about it. There is a paradoxical nature of being and impossibility of striving for such qualities as wisdom, dignity, courage and humility. Understanding this concept is extremely important in your journey toward mastery, because it means that the most profound qualities of mastery cannot be striven for. They are qualities of being. You cannot do courageous, you can only be it. You can do a courageous act, but only after you have become courageous. The way to do is to be. In the summer of 1776, when the representatives of the American colonies were at the point of total frustration as to what to do about their differences with the British, they issues a declaration, which read, in part: “We…solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES…” #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Note that this is a state of condition, of being. The signers of the Declaration did nothing more than state who they were and what they were all about. It is significant that only after these words did they say: “…and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” First they made a statement of being, then they said what they were going to do about it. The doing followed out of the statement of being. And indeed it can be no other way. Had the colonies simply started making war, lining up allies, printing money, and doing all the things a free country can do, there would have been mass confusion among the colonists and among the people of the other countries. The first question would have been, “What are you, a British colony, a state, a country? What are you all about?” The statement of being, the Declaration of Independence, made clear what the colonies were all about and provided a firm foundation upon which the new nation could carry out its activities. Being, then, is not as un-America as it once looked. We can be vigorous, we can be dynamic and active, but our activity must flow out of our being, out of what we are and what we are all about. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
However, there are some people who rebel against their scripts, apparently doing the opposite of what they are “supposed” to. Common examples are the “rebellious” adolescent and the woman who says, “The last thing I want to do is be like my mother.” Such cases have to be evaluated very carefully, as there are several possibilities. They may have been living on their counterscripts, and the apparent rebellion is merely “an outbreak of script.” Conversely, they may have been living on their scripts, and shifted to their counterscripts. They may have found the spellbreaker, and be released from the scripts. They may have different script directives from each parent, or from two different sets of parents, and are shifting from one set to another. They may be merely following a special script directive that tells them to rebel. The person may be a “script failure” who has despaired of carrying out his script directives and has simply given up. This is the cause of many depressions and schizophrenic breakdowns. On the other hand, he may have freed himself and “got out of his script” through his own efforts or with the help of psychotherapy. However, this must be carefully distinguished from “going into an antiscript.” These many alternatives emphasize how thorough the script analyst must be if he (and his patient) are to understand correctly the origin of certain changes in behaviour. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
An antiscript resembles closely what Erikson calls “identity diffusion.” If the script is compared to a computer punch card, then an antiscript is attained by turning the card around. This is a very rough analogy, but it makes the point. Where a mother says, “Do not drink,” the man drinks. Where she says, “Take a shower every day,” he does not wash. Where she says, “Do not think,” he thinks, and where she says, “Study hard,” he drops out. In short, some men are meticulously defiant. However, since he has to control his programing to know precisely how and where to be defiant, he is just as surely programed by disobeying each instruction as if he obeyed them all. Thus, where “freedom” is really defiance, it is only an illusion. Inverting his programing still leaves him programed. Such an inversion, turning the card around rather than tearing it up, is called an antiscript, and antiscripts offer a fertile field for further study. The war is against the machine. To the American middle-class, destruction of property is violence. Every American is protected by arms. There is no piece of land in the World not under the protective surveillance of someone’s guns. The writer, of course, has no need to refuse himself anything. For him, at least, boundaries disappear and desire can be allowed free rein. In this respect Sade is the perfect man of letters. He created a fable in order to give himself the illusion of existing. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Sade put “the moral crime that one commits by writing” above everything else. His merit, which is incontestable, lies in having immediately demonstrated, with the unhappy perspicacity of accumulated rage, the extreme consequences of rebellious logic—at least when it forgets the truth to be found in its origins. These consequences are a complete totalitarianism, universal crime, an aristocracy of cynicism, and the desire for an apocalypse. They will be found again many years after his death. However, having tasted them, he was caught, it seems, on the horns of his own dilemma and could only escape the dilemma in literature. Strangely enough, it is Sade who sets rebellion on the path of literature down which it will be led still farther by the romantics. He himself is one of those writers of whom he says: “their corruption is so dangerous, so active, that they have no other aim in printing their monstrous works than to extend beyond their own lives the sum total of their crimes; they can commit no more, but their accursed writings will lead others to do so, and this comforting thought which they carry with them to the tomb consoles them for the obligation that death imposes on them of renouncing this life.” Thus his rebellion writings bear witness to his desire for survival. Even if the immortality he longs for is the immortality of Cain, at least he longs for it, and despite himself bears witness to what is most true in metaphysical rebellion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Forgetting of Intensions, Names. I once forgot to write a letter of recommendation for a graduate student whom I disliked for personal reasons that had nothing to do with his ability. Fortunately, the student received the position without the benefit of my letter. Accidents. Accidents may result in disadvantage either to the person having the accident or to others, depending upon the unconscious motivation—guilt in the former case, hostility in the latter. A colleague’s wife spilled ink on a manuscript her husband was working on (neglecting her as he did the work) as she cleaned his study. A student broke his hand shortly before he had to taken an examination for which he felt unqualified. Examples from Projective Test (those in which the person projects hidden aspects of self into pictured situations). A twenty-two-year-old undergraduate student once consulted me for help with vague guilt feelings, inability to study, and fierce headaches that occurred whenever he went home or was obliged to spend any time with the dean, one of his professors, or his boss at a part-time job. He appeared to be extremely polite. (He used the word sir in almost every sentence when talking to me.) In the test, many of his stories included some expression of violence and hatred toward authority figures. The student told this story about a pictured situation that show an old man stretching his hand toward the reclining figure of a younger man: #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“This boy is having a nap. The old man, his father, is coming in to get him out of bed so he’ll get back to his studies. His father has been nagging him for ages about how lazy he is. The boy has been putting up with this for a long time. This is the last straw. When he wakes up, he’ll be so mad he’ll start beating up on his father. He’ll grab a chair and start mashing in his head. When he finishes, his old man will be a bloody pulp. The body will get the electric chair, but he won’t care, it was worth it.” It is not too farfetched to infer at least some unconscious hostility toward authority figures in this young man. There is no discovered way, as yet, to prove that an inference of unconscious motivation is warranted. Nevertheless, it can be shown that the motives a person will consider as possible influences upon his action will change under special circumstances. A patient entering psychotherapy may act in ways that humiliate his wife; yet at the outset he may vigorously deny having hostile feelings toward her. Finally he can admit having hostile feelings, without guilt or anxiety. In addition, his hostility, if rational and warranted, may come to be expressed much more openly than it was before. It often happens that recognition and understanding of irrational hostility will reduce or eliminate it. Repression, obviously, is not an effective way to deal with problems of existence. People sometimes repress experience because they have a strict conscience; it is often healthier to attempt to change the conscience or to accept the fact that one is not as “good” as one would like to believe. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Repression is a way to ward off anxiety, but there are more effective healthier ways. Repression may ward off painful frustration, but there are healthier ways to avoid frustration, such as learning skills. Only where repression is temporary and permits important action to be completed, or where it forestalls psychosis, can it be regarded as good for healthy personality. The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department and Emergency Medical Service Department is to preserve life and property and promote health and safety through excellent pre-hospital treatment and transportation, fire prevention, fire suppression rescue activities, and homeland security awareness. The department is responsible for providing fire suppression, ambulance service, and hazardous materials containment for Sacramento City. “So I became an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). I was worried about it. Blood and stuffy really bothered me if it was somebody else’s, but not when it was mine. At the hospital, as long as I has a full stomach, I could watch everything except the initial cutting open of a person, even at an autopsy. I would have had to look away. Once they’re open, it doesn’t bother me. After I found out I could handle blood, I went ahead and became a paramedic. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“We had two nurses teaching the EMT class. The first night they gave us a whole list of medical terms. One was “blood pressure.” Until that day, I never knew what blood pressure was. So I asked, and a lot of the guys in the class laughed at me, but I found out what I wanted to know. The fire department gave me a direction that I was really enjoying. I was headstrong, real hyper. I tried to do everything. Every time I had a chore to do, or a fire to do, I tried to do everything as fast as I could. The worst one before I really got into paramedic was a two-year-old baby. The mother was fixing to take an older child in a station wagon to some kind of meeting. She was also close to nine months pregnant. The father, who was a preacher, was in the house, and the two-year-old was supposed to stay there. The mother got in the car and didn’t notice that the baby had gotten out of the house and was standing behind the car. She backed down the drive, hit the baby, and a wheel went right over the little girl’s head. The father ran out and did CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and mouth-to-mouth on the baby, and got her going again. We got there just before the ambulance crew, and we helped them. You couldn’t really tell if the baby’s head was deformed, but she was bleeding from her nose, mouth, and ears. It was just real sad. One paramedic was pretty freaked. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“During transport to neurosurgery the baby died. That affected me for a long time. That was before I had any children. It really gave me doubts as to whether I wanted to be a paramedic or not. They took the mother with them in the front of the ambulance. They were worried about her as well as the baby, because she was freaking. She totally lost everything, which I would, too. Any normal parent would have, after running over her own child. The father kept his composure. At first, the accident was called in as a 1050, a car wreck. And the father had blood around his mouth and on his nose when we arrived, and I thought there had been some type of care wreck. I didn’t know until later that he had done CPR on the child. He also did his best with his wife. At the hospital, of course, she had to be sedated and all that. I really care a lot about people—whether it’s putting out their fires, trying to save their lives, or getting a baby out of a well.” The Sacramento Fire Department is led by an extraordinary team of individuals who are dedicated to providing Sacramento City with World-Class safety services. Remember parents, please raise your children to love America, to be patriotic, to love God and Jesus Christ, to honour law and order, and treat all people, property and living beings with dignity. It is also important to buy American made goods and services, such as American made cars, clothes, meat, produce, dairy, and more. Our goal is to leave things better than we received them. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible with Liberty, and Justic for all. Father of Peace, please grant us Thy peace, please Grant us Thy blessing, Thy blessing of peace. Wherever they be, please great America peace; Merciful One, Thou art He who grantest Thy people peace. O may we see our children, our children, and their children Devoted to the Lord, to the scripture—yea, please grant America peace. Thou wondrous Counsellor, mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 