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It is Time to Investigate the Curse

During the Victorian era, too few physicians knew how to treat seelische illnesses, which literally meant illness “of the soul,” but depending on its context, could also mean spiritual, psychological, emotional, or mental. As a result, patients wandered without a cure from doctor to doctor and medications did nothing from them. Those deemed “fit,” that is, who had an Aryan racial identity, experienced freedom from hereditary disease, and an ability to work vigorously and produce. However, those regarded as biologically dangerous usually suffered from disability, and a range of illnesses or conditions that were inherited (or believed to be). My butler Frau Joest had been afflicted with stomach trouble and digestive complaints. As a rule, he kept to himself in his own pantry. One night, I asked him to grab a bottle of wine from the wine cellar, and he replied, “Mrs. Winchester, you may get your own wine, if you like, this evening. Either I do it in the daytime or not at all. I don’t know what it maybe: very like it’s the rats, or the wind got into the cellars; but I’m not so young as I was, and I can’t go through it as I have done.” “Well, Mr. Joest,” I replied, “you know it is a surprising place to find rats. “I’m not denying that, Mrs. Winchester; and, to be sure, many a time I’ve heard the tale from men in the shipyards about the rat that could speak. I never laid no confidence in that before; but tonight, if I’d demeaned myself to lay my ear to the door of the further bin, I could pretty have heard what they was saying.” “Oh, there Mr. Joest, I have no patience with your fancies! Rats talking in the wine-cellar indeed!” “Well, Mrs. Winchester, I’ve no wish to argue with you: all I say is, if you choose to go to the far bin, and lay your ear to the door, you may prove my words this minute.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

“What nonsense do you talk, Mr. Joest—not fit for children to listen to! Why, you’ll be frightening Mrs. Winchester there out of her wits,” replied Daisy. “Mrs. Winchester knows well enough when I’m playing a joke with her, Daisy,” he said. In fact, I knew much too well to suppose that Mr. Joest had in the first instance intended a joke. I was interested, not altogether pleasantly, in the situation; but all my questions were unsuccessful in inducing the butler to give any more detailed account of his experiences in the wine-cellar. We have now arrived at February 24, 1891. It was a day of curious experiences for Frau Joest: a windy, noisy day, which filled the house and the gardens with a restless impression. As Frau stood the gate of the grounds, and looked out into the park, he felt as if an endless procession of unseen people were sweeping past him on the wind, borne on resistlessly and aimlessly, vainly striving to stop themselves, to catch at something that might arrest their flight and bring them once again into contact with the living World of which they had formed a part. After luncheon that day I said, “Frau, my boy, do you think you could manage to come to me tonight as late as eight o’clock in my study? I shall be busy until that time, and I wish to show you something connected with your future life which it is most important that you should know. You are not to mention this to Daisy nor to anyone else in the house; and you had better go to your room at the usual time.” Here was a new excitement added to life: Frau eagerly grasped at the opportunity. He looked in at the library door on his way upstairs that evening, and saw written sheets of paper laying on the desk. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The wind had fallen, and there was a still night and a full moon. At about seven o’clock Frau was standing at the open window of his bedroom, looking out over the country. Still as the night was, the mysterious population of the distant moonlit woods was not yet lulled to rest. From time to times strange cries as of lost and despairing wanderers sounded from across the mere. They might be the notes of owls or water-birds, yet they did not quite resemble either sound. Were not they coming nearer? Now they sounded from the nearer side among the shrubberies. Then they ceased; but just as Frau was thinking of shutting the window and resuming his reading of Voyages to the Moon and Sun by Cyrano de Bergerac, he caught sight of two figure standing on the terrace that ran along the garden ide of the Mansion—the figures of two men, as it seemed; they stood side by side, looking up at the windows. Something in them inspired him with acute fear. One man stood still, half smiling, with his hands clasped over his heart, the other man, a thin shape, with black hair and ragged clothing, raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and of unappeasable hunger and longing. The moon shone upon hi almost transparent hands, and Frau saw that the nails were fearfully long and that the light shone through them. As he stood with his arms this raised, he disclosed a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent; and there fell upon Frau’s brain, rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he had heard resounding over the woods of The Winchester Mansion all that evening. In another moment this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and noiselessly over the terrace, and he saw them no more #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

Inexpressibly frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and go down to my study, for the hour appointed for our meeting was near at hand. The library opened out of the front hall on one side, and Fraud, urged on by his terrors, did not take long in getting there. To effect an entrance was not so easy. The door was not locked, he felt sure, for the key was on the outside of it as usual. His repeated knocks produced no answer. Frau felt that the library was further than he realized—and his travel to it had taken him back in some vague realm or dimension outside our material Universe; some vague abyss out of which only the most accursed rites of human blasphemy could ever have called him for a moment. There was a brief silence, and in that pause the scattered senses of poor Frau Joest began to knit back into a sort of continuity; so that he put his hands to his head with a moan. Memory seemed to pick itself up where it had left off, and the horror of that sight on the terrace had prostrated him burst in upon him again. “Oh oh, my Gawds, that haff face—that haff face on top of it…that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no…It was a octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing, but they was haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looked like a wizard.” Crystallized into fresh terror, he paused, exhausted. It was—well, it was most likely a kind of force that does not belong in our World; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was something in my mansion—enough to make a devil and a precocious monster appear, and to make Frau’s passing out a pretty terrible sight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Nature, meaning sometimes the forces and processes that produce everything according to the laws of nature (which include what we call physical laws), sometimes simply those laws, and sometimes all that nature produces—nature, after the Fall, did not wholly lose her original power to produce and control natural, perfect, ordered phenomena, any more than Satan lost all his original brightness on man all his power to reason or to intuit natural laws and God’s will. The other servants carried Frau to bed. After sitting by the fire for a few more hours, I found that I was colder than ever any my arms were quite stiff. However, I had to drag myself to my room and take off my clothes somehow, blow out the candles, and insinuate my tiny self into that enormous, frightening bed. I wished I had slept in a more cheerful room, with better furniture, though tonight I have succeeded in bringing to bed a bottle of mineral water and even a glass from which to drink it. It is only the Italian mineral water, of course. I only wish I were not so sensitive, so that the rooms in my home and other things did not matter so much. The water from my well was actually much more pure. On nights like this, and most particularly on nights when the moon is slim or cloud-enshrouded, it is a heavy blot upon the horizon, a shadow only, without feature save for its many-turreted outline; and should the moon be temporarily released from her cloudy confinement, her fugitive rays lend scant comfort, for they but serve to throw the mansion into sudden, startling chiaroscuro, its windows fleetingly assuming the appearance of sightless though all-seeing orbs, its portcullis becoming for an instant a gaping mouth, its entire form striking the physical and the mental eyes as would the sight of a giant skull. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

I believe it is entirely possible for a man to possess not a single one of the virtues, to be a demon in human flesh. Frau’s actions seem to have become quite ghoulish. I often wondered had he not been responsible for robbing graves and then feeding upon the disgusting nourishment he found therein? Ghouls are by no means imaginary. A human being can sink into a truly monstrous man. To understand, one must transport their mind back a few years and to a rural region of New Haven. One must become acquainted with a family of country folk—hard-working, law-abiding, God-fearing, or moderate means—the head of which was a simple, good man named man named Alfred Dieck. When he died, it was his expressed wish that he would be buried with his gold and that his wife and sons were not to be told about it. Several weeks after his funeral, the family was desperate for money and Pastor Kuntz told his wife about the gold. The sons began making plans to exhume the dead man. However, the widow spoke firmly: “You father rests peacefully,” she said. “He must not be disturbed. If we disturbed him, no amount of gold would sooth our hearts.” The sons protested with vehemence, but the widow stood her ground. “No son of mine will profane his father’s grave—unless he first kills his mother!” Grumbling, those sons withdrew their plans. However, that night, Claus awoke to find his mother gone from the house. He was frightened, for this was not like her. Intuition sent him to the graveyard, where he found her, keeping a lonely vigil over the grave of her husband, protecting him from the greed of grave robbers. Claus implored her to come out of the cold, to return home; she at first refused; only when Claus offered to keep vigil all night himself did, she relent and return home, leaving her youngest son to guard the have from profanation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Claus waited a full hour. Then he produced from under his shirt a small shovel. He was a strong boy, and the greed of a youngest son who has been deprived of inheritance lent added strength to his arms. He dug relentlessly, stopping seldom for rest, until finally the coffin was uncovered. He raised the creaking lid. An overpowering fetor filled his nostrils and nearly made him faint. Gathering courage, he searched the coffin. The moon proved to be his undoing. For suddenly its rays, hitherto hidden, struck the face of his father, and at the sight of that face, the boy recoiled and went reeling around the wall of the grave, the breath forced from his body. Now, you must know that the mere sight of the father—even in advanced state of decomposition—he had steeled himself to withstand; but what he had not foreseen—what he had not foreseen was that the face of his father, in the rigor of death, would look directly and hideously upon him. And most terrible and most unforeseen of all, the dead lips were drawn back from the teeth in a constant and soul-shattering smile! The remembrance of that night, though it is now many years past, fills me with dread. Fraud Joest was is that ghoulish son, Claus. When his sense returned, he ran out of the grave and ran as swiftly as his limbs would carry him. He reached the graveyard gate, and was smitten by the fact that he had not accomplished the purpose of his mission—the gold in the coffin. His terror notwithstanding, he halted, and forced himself to retrace those hasty steps. His fear notwithstanding, he descended once more into that noisome grave. He threw his father’s body out of the coffin and robbed him of his gold. But the true horror came when he reached him. He was stricken with stomach troubles and when he looked in the mirror, he screamed so loud as to wake the entire house. His face was a replica of his dead father’s: the lips drawn back in perpetual, mocking grin. He tried to close his mouth. He could not. The muscles were immoveable, as if held in the gelid rigor of death. He could hear his family’s stirring at his scream, and since he did not wish to look upon the, he ran from the house and came here, to Llanada Villa. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

As he wandered the rural roads, his mind sought the cause of the affliction that had been visited upon him. Though but a country lad, he had read much and he had a blunt, rational mind that was not susceptible to the easy explanations of the supernatural. I would not believe that God had placed a malediction upon him to punish him for his act. He would not believe that some black force from beyond the grave had reached out to stamp his face. At length, he began to believe it was the massive shock that had forced his face to its present state, and that his great gilt had helped to shape it even as his father’s dead face was shaped. Shock and guilt: strong powers not from God above or the Fiend below, but from within his own breast, his own brain, his own soul. You need only know that, despite his blighted face, he stole the gold and thus gained an amount of money that would not seem large to me, but which was more than he had ever seen before that time. It was this gold that made him one of the richest men in New Haven. Naturally, he sought out physicians and begged them to restore his face to its previous state. None succeeded, though he offered them vast sums. His face remained fixed in that damnable unceasing smile, and his heart knew the most profound despair imaginable. He could not even pronounce his own name! God and Satan are very much alive. Though readily most people cannot fully explain all the mysteries of life. Spinning hears. Levitating bodies. Otherworldly strength. These are all curious things I have dealt with, here, at Llanada Villa. Gratuitous violence. Eerie voices spouting off vicious claims and threats. These are just some of the things that come with The Curse of the Winchester Fortune. Dozens of my servants are so horribly frightened or so confused that they begin to lose their grip on reality. We are not struggling with flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

The Winchester Mystery House

Devils and demons bring up frightening images and terrified thoughts. Mrs. Sarah L. Winchester was forced to look upon these objects of horror and live in fear. As we read tales of this haunted wine-cellar, there may be a real treasure hidden away in The Winchester Mansion. At one time, Mrs. Winchester enjoyed the finest vintage wines and liqueurs. However, one evening when she went to the wine cellar to locate a special bottle, she came across a black handprint on the wall. It was most likely a dirt smudge left by a workman, yet she took it as an omen and ordered the cellar boarded up. To this day the wine cellar had not been rediscovered, which means that there might still be spirits in The Winchester Mystery House—intoxicating and otherwise. We live in a World of duality. Darkness and light. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. Most likely evil existed before human beings were around to interpret darkness and bad behaviour as such. Demons were created in a Hell-like dimension. Demons are minions, and the most intriguing part of their nature is that we need not believe in their existence to feel the effect they have on our lives. It is believed that demons were summoned, one after another, after which they were forced to give their true names, and reveal what they governed, and offer instructions on how to banish them. Nearly all of these demons were sent to work on the construction of The Winchester Mansion. Many of them more powerfully ranked demons were also empowered with hordes of servitors to do their bidding, as they themselves were subject to their liege’s commands.

Some ranked and named demons had only a few lesser spirits to act on their behest while others had servants in the hundreds of thousands. Always a few of the most important servitors were named but seldom if ever was any real or extensive information about them given. Nearly every culture has some belief in cursed objects, things that cause unnatural harm to the person whom owns or uses them. Often, these objects have roots in a tragic past, and according to those who believe in curses, something from a tragedy sticks with the objects, becoming part of them and spelling disaster for anyone who might come across them. Almost anything can be a cursed object: a fortune put under a spell by a murdered witch, a car owned by a movie star who died in a wreck, a mansion protected by the power of misfortune. Even normally rational people may occasionally fall into a certain superstition to avoid brining a curse down on themselves. Despite this abundance of allegedly unfortunate object, few come close to one of the most legendary of all: The Winchester Mystery House. The recorded history of this jinxed mansion stretches nearly two centuries, and over that time period, dozens of people have claimed ownership of the stunningly beautiful mansion. Of the owners of The Winchester Mystery House, a few have experienced such great catastrophes that many claim it to be cursed. Fortunes have been lost, noble men executed, and entire communities thrown into chaos and war. The history of The Winchester Mystery House is certainly one of intrigue, but is it true that it, as well as other objects Mrs. Winchester owned, are sources of tragedy?

Some individuals have little choice than to recognize their own abilities to interact with the spirit World. If their gift is strong, it may be difficult to get the ghosts to pipe down. Their abilities to pick up on paranormal vibrations help them to work with ghosts and send messages to those that have departed. It is likely that a ghost has wiggled its way between the molecules of The Winchester Mansion, fortune, family, and objects Mrs. Winchester once owned, and is embedded within the fibers of these objects because it cannot bare to be without them. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed—it can only be transferred—so one theory about what we call a “haunted object” is simply that energy is being deposited onto an item instead of floating around the ether and popping up at inopportune times. The energy leaves a residue that enables the object to present itself to people sensitive enough to pick up on its energy in the way of movement, talking, feelings of doom—you get the picture. An item may also be used for the spirit to manipulate, sch as a chair being thrown across a room, but does that mean the possession is possessed, or merely in the right place at the wrong time? Other objects such as roads, buildings, houses, and waterways may also be haunted through the transference of a great emotional experience. Some owners of haunted objects want to get rid of the goods fast. An auction, either online or local, can move an item out of the basement and into your hands in no time. Local auctions many not have the label “haunted” attached to a particular item, so take the time to visit the objects beforehand to try to get a feel for what is being offered. If you are interested in bringing home a haunted object, ask the auctioneer to keep an eye out for you. You could be first on their list for something special, and if curse is real, you may be able to being home a new piece for your collection at a great price.

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/
Say Your Prayers so No One Can Hurt You

Oliver Fisher Winchester was an entrepreneur who made a fortune in the shirt manufacturing business during the 1830s and 1840s. He took over a bankrupt arms manufacturing company in New Haven, Connecticut in 1857, which eventually became the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over him—nervous reaction, perhaps, after the delight of discovery. After he passed in 1880, his son William Wirt Winchester became the second President of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. However, this accomplishment was shortly enjoyed. William Winchester died in 1881, leaving his fortune and most of the company to me, his wife, Sarah L. Winchester. It was, as far as I can ascertain, March 7, 1881 that I drew open the door of Winchester Hall, in the heart of New Haven, Connecticut. Only to find my husband had died in his sleep. Terribly distraught, I laid beside him. That evening, light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many fires. The clock in the church-tower, buried in tress of the edge of the park, only its golden weathercock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening like this. Several years later, I relocated to Santa Clara, California and started on the construction of Llanda villa. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the World, for the rumours of the curse, do not suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities put into its construction. Rather, these stories make this vast edifice of stone exude an austerity, cold and repellant, a hint of ancient mysteries, medieval darkness and hauntings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

There were plenty things about the mansion and the gardens which Daisy, my niece, who was of an adventurous and inquiring turn, was anxious to have explained to her. “Why did you build the nine story Observational Tower? Who was the old man lurking on the staircase to the ceiling, sitting at a table, with a skull under his hand?” These and many similar points were cleared up by the resources of my powerful intellect. There were others, however, of which the explanations furnished were less satisfactory. One November evening Diasy was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room reflecting on her surroundings. “Did uncle William go to Heaven?” she suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which youth possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals. “Good?—bless the child,” said the maid, Denise Kurlander. “Master was as kind a soul as ever I saw.” Didn’t I never tell you of the he took in out of the street, as you may say, this nine years back? and the little girl, three years after I first started working for your family? “No. Do tell me about them,” Mrs. Kurlander—now this minute!” “Well,” said Mrs. Kurlander, “the little girl I don’t seem to recollect so much about. I know master bought her back with him from his walk one day, give orders to Mrs. Heidelberg, as was housekeeper then, as she should be took every care with. And the pre child hadn’t no one belonging to her—she telled me her own self—and here she lived with us a matter of three weeks it might be; and then, one morning she out of her bed afore any of us had opened, a eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her have I set eyes on since. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

“Master was wonderful put about, and had all the ponds dragged; but it’s my belief she had away by them witches, for there was singing round the house for as much as an hour the night she went, and Turkheim, he declare as he heard them a-calling in the woods all that afternoon. Dear, dear ! a hodd child she was, so silent in her ways and all, but I was wonderful taken with her, so domesticated she was—surprising. “And what about the little boy?” said Diasy. “Ah, that pore boy!” sighed Mrs. Kurlander. “He were a foreigner—Eduard he called hisself—and he came a tweaking his ‘urdy-gurdy round and about the drive one winter day, and master ‘ad him in that minute, and ast all about where he came from, and how old he was, and how he made his way, and where was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish. But it went the same with him. They’re a hunruly lot, them foreign nations, I do suppose, and he was off one fine morning just the same as the girl. Why he went an what he done was our question for as much as a year after; for he never took his ‘urdy-gurdy, and there it lay on the self.” The remainder of the evening was spent by Daisy in miscellaneous cross-examination of Mrs. Kurlander and in efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy-gurdy. That night she had a curious dream. At the end of the passage of the house, in which her bedroom was situated, there was an old disused bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed, and, since the muslin curtains which used to hand there had long been gone, you could look in and see the lead-lined bath affixed to the wall on the right hand, with its head towards the window. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

On the night of which I am speaking, Diasy found herself, as he thought, looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through the window, and she was gazing at a figure which lay in the bath. She described a horrid figured, inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden colour, enveloped in a shroud-like garment, thin lips crooked into a faint and dreadful smile, the hands pressed tightly over the region of his heart. As she looked upon it, a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issues from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced Daisy backwards, and she awoke to the fact that she was indeed standing on the cold boarded floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With a courage which I do not think can be common among a young lady her age, she went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of her dream were really there. It was not, and she went back to bed. Mrs. Kurlander was much impressed next morning by her story, and went so far as to replace the muslin curtain over the glazed door of the bathroom. That evening, when I came up here to my room after dinner, I just sat in front of the long glass and stared and stared. I must have done it for half an hour or perhaps an hour. I only roe to my feet when it had become quite dark outside. I decided it was time to move to another bedroom. The Crystal Bedroom was much too big and there were only two wooden chairs, painted in greeny-blue with gold lines, or once painted like that. I hate to having to lie on my bed when I should prefer to it and everyone knows how bad it is or the back. Besides, this bed, though it’s enormous, seems to be as hard as when the Earth’s dried up in summer. Not that the Earth’s like that here. Far from it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

The rain has never stopped since I left New Haven. Never once. This bed is really huge. It would take at least eight people my size. I do not like to think about it. I have just remembered: it is the third of the month so that I have been gone exactly a year. What a lot of places I have been to in that time—or been through! Already I have quite forgotten some of them. I never properly saw them in any case. Llanada Villa is a huge palace—castle—fortress that simply frightens me some times. The housemaid provided me with no fewer than thirteen candles. I found them in one of the drawers. I suppose there is nothing else to do but read—except perhaps to say one’s prayers. Unfortunately, I finished all the book I brought with me long ago, and it is so difficult to buy any news ones. Daisy would do well to take care of herself, and shut her bedroom windows at night. Two incidents occurred recently that made an impression upon her mind. The first was after an unusually uneasy and oppressed night that she had passed—though she could not recall any particular dream that she had had. The following evening Mrs. Kurlander was occupying herself in mending her nightgown. “Gracious Me, Ms. Daisy!” she broke forth rather irritably, “how did you manage to tear your nightdress all to flinders this way? Look here, Ms. Daisy, what trouble you do give to poor servants that have to darn and mend after you!” There was indeed a most destructive and apparently wanton series of slits or scorings in the garment, which would undoubtedly require a skillful needle to make good. They were confined to the left side of the chest—long, parallel slits, about six inches in length, some of them not quite piercing the texture of the linen. Daisy could only express her entire ignorance of their origin: she was sure they were not there the night before. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

“But, she said, Mrs. Kurlander, they are just the same as the scratches on the outside of my bedroom door; and I am sure I never has anything to do with making them.” Mrs. Kurlander gazed at her open-mouthed, then snatched up a candle, departed hastily from the room, and was heard making her way upstairs. In a few minutes she came down. “Well,” she said, “Ms. Daisy, it’s a funny thing to me how them marks and scratched can ‘a’ come there—too high up for any car or dog to ‘ave made ‘em, much less a rat: for all the World like a vampire’s finger-nails, as my uncle archeology used to tell us of when we was young girls together. I wouldn’t say nothing to Mrs. Winchester, not if I was you, Ms. Daisy, my dear; and just turn the key to the door when you go to bed.” “I always do, Mrs. Kurlander, as soon as I have said my prayers.” “Ah, that’s a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can’t hurt you.” Herewith Mrs. Kurlander addressed herself to mending the injured nightgown, with intervals of meditation, until bed-time. This was on Friday night in March, 1898. In a shrill chorus there seemed to lurk a note of tense and evil expectancy. Without warning came these deep, cracked, raucous vocal sounds which would never leave the memory. Not from any human throat were they born, for the organs of man can yield no such acoustic perversions. Rather would one have said they came from the mansion itself. It is almost erroneous to call them sounds at all, since so much of their ghastly, infra-bass timbre spoke to dim seats of consciousness and terror far subtler than the ear; yet one must do so, since their form was indisputably though vaguely that of half-articulate words. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

They were loud—loud as the rumblings and thunder from the bowels of the mansion from which the echoed—yet did they come from no visible being. And because imagination might suggest a conjectural source in the World of non-visible beings, I winched as if in expectation of a blow. More hideous sounds came croaking out from the bowels of the mansion. The speaking impulse seemed to falter, as if some frightful psychic struggle were going on. There appeared three grotesquely silhouetted human figures in the Observational Tower, all moving their arms furiously in strange gestures as their incantation drew near its culmination. From the black pits of Hell, Acherontic fear or feeling, from the unplumbed gulfs of the mansion’s consciousness or obscure, long-latent heredity, were those half-articulate thunder-croakings drawn? Presently they began to gather renewed force and coherence as they grew in stark, utter, ultimate frenzy. Indisputably English syllables poured thickly and thunderously from the basement. I jumped violently at the deafening, cataclysmic peal whose source, be inner Earth. A single lightning-bolt shot from the sky. Outside, trees, grass, and underbrush were whipped into a fury and the frightened servants in the mansion, were weakened by the lethal foetor that seemed about to asphyxiate them, as they were hurled off their feet. Wolves howled from the distance hills, green grass and foliage wilted to curious, sickly yellow-gray, and over field forest were scattered the bodies of the dead. Slowly the beams of a sunlight shone more brilliant and untainted. My estate was grave and quiet, and seemed shaken by memories and reflection even more terrible than those which had reduced the groups of Indians to a state of quivering. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7


After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the items in her home were auction off in San Francisco, California. However, the queer atmosphere which clings to all in The Winchester Mansion were responsible for the wide-spread story that in opening the mansion of Sarah L. Winchester, and selling all of her possessions, people exposed themselves to the fury of some malignant influence. Recirculating rumours about fears of a curse under sent collectors in a panic. All over the country, people were sending their treasures to museums, anxious to get rid of them because of the superstition that Mrs. Winchester was killed by vengeful spirits. E.E. Evans-Pritchard argued that “cruses are capable of proving effective even after the lapse of thousands of years.” Rumours of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune were always cited. It was said that on the day Pastor Kunst laid bared the entrance to The Winchester Mansion, his pet dog had been devoured by a cobra. Julius Streicher, closely involved with the auction of items from The Winchester Mansion, recalled that “News of this spread quickly and all the natives now said, ‘Alas, that was Oliver Winchester’s cobra, revenging itself on the dog for having betrayed the place of the Winchester Repeating Arms.’” It was said that a solid gold tablet had been discovered in the mansion with the inscription “Death shall come on swift wings to whoever toucheth the home of The Winchester’s.” Mr. Streicher allegedly destroyed the tablet to prevent the superstitious fellaheen from abandoning the auction and so, one believer in the curse states, it was “wiped from the written record of the mansion’s history.”

Heinz Bongartz, however, remembers on his visit to the mansion that “Death the who enter” was an “inscription over the door.” It was said that when Gustav Jungbauer opened Mrs. Winchester’s main safe, they found a fortune in diamonds, gold, silver, and other precious stones, and he was bitten by a mosquito, and died shortly afterwards. Soon enough people, anyone who was loosely connected to the sale of the estate and auction of Mrs. Winchester’s goods died, their deaths were folded into the dreamlike elaboration of the curse rumour. The conservators of the estate then decided it would be best to keep the mansion from being further disturbed, and opened it as a tourist attraction to help with the repairs and maintenance of the estate. In May of 1923, Mr. Streicher’s half-brother Peter Geschiere warned that “seeds of destruction are hidden inside,” before he died after a long illness. Close attention was paid to any association with the sale of the estate and items from it. In November of 1929, Tore Olsson, who helped organize the auction, died suddenly in his sleep and is believed to have been troubled by the legendary curse which is said to be associated with those who looted The Winchester Mansion. Victor Petrov, who was also involved, was found dead at his London club in ambiguous circumstances.

Three months later, Mr. Petrov’s father incoherent suicide note included the line: “I really can’t stand any more horrors.” Luke Eggers, a caretaker of The Winchester Mansion, claimed that Pastor Kunst was eventually murdered by shadowy authorities for knowing too much about the truth behind The Winchester Family. This includes the claim that Pastor Kunst’s first operation—supposedly for cancer—in 1923 was a deception and the first attempt in a conspiracy to kill him. Other enthusiasts have continued to track The Curse of the Winchester Fortune into the present day. By 1980, Arthur Jores, German physician, counted one hundred and thirteen victims. Johann Kruse has suggested that the death of Ernst Haeckel, Director of Antiquities, in a car accident in 1976, followed his denunciation of curse stories. When treasures from Mrs. Winchester’s estate were displayed in a New York Museum in 1925, rumours circulated that the crew that transported the items from Santa Clara, California were also subject to misfortune. In 2001, Bedfordshire on Sunday carried a headline “Is Boy, 2, latest Winchester Victim?”, regarding a story about his home in Sacramento, California; “a luxury villa said to be jinxed by the Cruse of the Winchester Fortune.” Such stories have been partly fostered by allegedly authoritive sources. There is a weird fusion of history, myth, and occultism surrounding The Winchester fortune and bloodline. Might the dead return or punish the living for shortcomings of their ritual propitiations? Superstitions proliferate where such borders are breached. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for witches stand, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, for Liberty and Justice for all.

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Comin’ Straight Out of Brooklyn, Crush Your Spine, Corrupt Your Mind!

The era of large-scale witch hunting in Europe ended long ago. The last legal execution that we know of, of a witch in German-speaking Europe took place in Glarus, Switzerland, in 1782. However, that did not end the fear of witches. Perhaps not all witches are bad, but there are renewed concerns in America that people are cohabitating with devilry. The early modern witch hunt has powerfully shaped what we assume witchcraft to be about, and it has also limited what we think it is, and when we think it was. However, in the most basic sense, to accuse someone of being a witch is to accuse that person of conspiring to do covert evil: to inflict harm, misfortune, and sickness. Even if they are unwilling to admit it, some people are using arts of the Devil and in league with demonic forces, which are intended to perplex humanity. Witchcraft, in this regard, is a cultural idiom, a way of understanding and explaining the bad things that befall us. Illness has often been associated with dirt, pollution, and disorder. However, illness is also seen as a form of cosmic judgment, as punishment for improper or irresponsible behaviour. It reflects the order of society and the cosmos write large, and may reveal sins of various orders and magnitude. As such, during Victorian times, it structured the community’s moral economy: those who suffered from heart disease, or had circulatory problems, people believed, had lives wrong. Perhaps they had not worked hard enough, or had recklessly participated in life, creating a social burden for the community. Cancer and ulcers were perceived as punishments, perhaps for youthful sexual indiscretion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Maintaining health was a sign of one’s self-discipline and accountability within a community where people depended on one another to get the work done that allowed the community to continue and to thrive. However, inhabitants did not perceive all illnesses as moral judgments or as the result of cosmic sanction. Tuberculosis and pneumonia, they felt, could befall anyone; those were simply two of humanity’s burdens. Furthermore, it has been asked whether experiences of betrayal, interpersonal alienation, and power politics might help explain some manifestations of illness or sudden disability. One of the striking examples concerns the air-traffic-controller crisis of the early 1980s. In 1981, air traffic controllers went on strike to protest their working conditions and the intolerable stress associated with their jobs. However, researchers readily conceded that the controllers were under stress, they could find no physical evidence of it, like heightened levels of cortisol or elevated blood pressure. Ultimately, Robert Rose, a prominent psychiatrist on a Federal Aviation Administration team researching the problem, concluded that the cause of the controllers’ suffering was not so much stress as a lack of social support. They felt that no one cared about how hard their work was, or how they fared in their jobs. The stress they experienced, Mr. Rose became convinced, was not just biological or physiological, and it “wasn’t just inside the individual.” Their illness was a product of social experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Also, during World War I, some supplicants were described as suffering from war blindness (Kriegsblindheit). While many other ailments continued to be part of the parade of affliction, illness vaguely attributed to war damage and impairments to sufferers’ limbs and sensory organs were especially prominent themes. Applying these ideas to postwar Germany, we might ask how pervasive unease, a sense of collective failure, persistent questions of blame, and fears of betrayal might have influenced the ways people experienced the fragility of their bodies after the war. Did people become suddenly blind or deaf because they could not bear to see or hear what was happening around them—could not bear defeat and its consequences? Did some suddenly lose their ability to walk as a form of unconscious protest against volition, against agency, against responsibility for genocide and war or defense crimes? Did they lose the ability to speak because there were so many things that could not be discussed out loud? The loss of speech can stand for a refusal of co-existence. The human spirit is a distinct organism. Separation of soul and spirit can happen. This is because of the Fall. The spirit which had been in union with God—which once ruled and dominated the soul and body—feel from its predominated position into the vessel of the soul and could no longer rule. In the “new birth,” which the Lord told Nicodemus was necessary for every man, the regeneration of the fallen spirit takes place. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” reports John 3.6; “a new spirit will I put within you,” reports Ezekiel 36.26. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

And through cognizance of the death of the old creation with Christ, as set forth in Romans 6.6, is the new spirit liberated, divided from the soul, and joined to the Risen Lord. “Dead to the law…joined to Another”; “Having died…that we might serve in newness of the spirit,” reports Romans 7.4-6. The believer’s life is therefore to be a walk after the spirit, minding the things of the spirit. However, the believer can only thus walk after the spirit if the Spirit of God dwells in one. The Holy Spirit lifts one’s spirit to the place of rule over soul and body—“flesh,” both ethically and physically—by joining it to the Risen Lord, and making it “one spirit” with Him. That the believer retains volitional control over one’s own spirit is the important point to note, for through ignorance one can withdraw one’s spirit from cooperation with the Holy Spirit, and thus, so to speak, walk after the soul, or after the flesh—unwittingly. A surrendered will to do the will of God I therefore no guarantee that one is doing that will; one must understand what the will of the Lord is, and for doing that will must seek to be filled in spirit to the utmost of one’s capacity. The knowledge that the Spirit of God has come to indwell the shrine of the spirit is not enough to guarantee that the believer will continue to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If one wishes to truly “live” in the realm of the Spirit and know His power, one must learn how to “walk” with the Spirit. And for this, one must understand how to “combine” and “compare” spiritual things with spiritual, so as to interpret truly the things of the Spirit of God—exercising the spirit faculty by which one is able to examine all things, and so discern the mind of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Such a believer should know how to walk after the spirit, so that one does not quench its action, movements or admonitions as it is moved or exercised by the Spirit of God—cultivating its strength by use, so that one becomes strong in spirit, and a truly spiritual human of “full age” in the Church of God. The Spiritual Community is the assembly of God of the Old Testament, the body of Christ of the New Testament, and the church invisible or Spiritual of the Reformers. It is the invisible essence of the religious communities, both non-Christian and Christian alike. However, those religious groups which are consciously founded upon the reception of Jesus as the Christ are the churches. The Christian churches constitute the manifest Spiritual Community. The Spiritual Community does not exist as a separate entity. For the Spiritual Community is the invisible essence, the inner telos, the essential power in every actual church. The spiritual essence of the churches permits them to participate in unambiguous life under the Spiritual Presence. However, they are also groups of human beings under the conditions of existence. They are simultaneously both the actualization and the distortion of the Spiritual Community. Consequently, there are two aspects to the churches which make them a paradox: the theological aspect, which points to their spiritual essence, and the sociological aspect, which reveals their ambiguities. Every church is a sociological reality. As such it is subject to the laws which determine the life of social groups with all their ambiguities. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The sociologists of religion are justified in conducting these inquiries in the same way as the sociologists of law, of the arts, and of the sciences. They rightly point to the social stratification within the churches, to the rise and fall of elites, to power struggles and the destructive weapons used in them, to the conflict between freedom and organization, to aristocratic esotericism in contrast to democratic exotericism, and so forth. Seen in this light, the history of the churches is a secular history with all the disintegrating, destructive, and tragic-demonic elements which make historical life as ambiguous as all other life processes. Despite the sociological trappings which envelop the churches, at their core lies the Spiritual Community. It supplies the “in spite of” element in their paradoxical character, the dynamism which does not eliminate, but conquers the ambiguities of religion at least in principle. The phrase “in principle” means “the power of beginning, which remains the controlling power in a whole process.” In this sense, the Spiritual Presence, the New Being, and the Spiritual Community are principles (archai). Since our primary interest in the mutual relationship between religion and culture, we shall not delay to describe how the Spiritual Presence overcomes the ambiguities of religion within religion itself. Instead, we consider the influence of the churches upon individuals and upon society. As regards the ambiguities of religion, it suffices to note the operative factor, the Protestant principle: The Protestant principle is an expression of the conquest of religion by the Spiritual Presence and consequently an expression of the victory over the ambiguities of religion, its profanization, and its demonization. In this sense, we can speak of the victory of the Spirit over religion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Marxism is humanism, and its amin is the full unfolding of the human potentialities—not humans as deduced from their ideas or their consciousness, but humans with their physical and psychic properties, the real human who does not live in a vacuum but in a social context, the human who has to produce in order to live. It I precisely the fact that the whole human, as well as one’s consciousness, is the concern of Marxist thought which differentiates Mrs. Marx’s “materialism” from Mr. Hegel’s idealism, as well as from the economistic-mechanistic deformation of Marxism. It was Mr. Marx’s great achievement to liberate the economic and philosophical categories that referred to humans from their abstract and alienated expressions and to apply philosophy and economics ad hominem. Mr. Marx’s concern was humans, and his aim was humans’ liberation from the predomination of material interests, from the prison one’s own arrangements and deeds had built around them. If one does not understand this concern of Mr. Marx, one will never understand either his theory or the falsification of it by many who claim to practice it. Even though Mr. Marx’s main work is entitled Capital (Das Kapital), this work was meant to be only a step in his total research, to be followed by a history of philosophy. For Mr. Marx the study of capital was a critical tool to be used for understanding humans’ crippled state in industrial society. It is one step in the great work which, if he had been able to write it, might have been entitled On Man and Society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Mr. Marx’s work, that of the “young” Mr. Marx as well as that of the author of Capital, is fully of psychological concepts. He deals with concepts like the “essence of man,” and the “crippled man,” with “alienation,” with “consciousness,” with “passionate strivings,” and with “independence,” to name only some of the most important. Yet, in contrast to Mr. Aristotle and Mr. Spinoza, who based ethics on a systematic psychology, Mr. Marx’s work contains almost no psychological theory. Aside from fragmentary remarks on the distinction between fixed drives (like hunger and sexuality) and flexible drives which are socially produced, there is hardly any relevant psychology to be found in Mr. Marx’s writings or, for that matter, in those of his successors. The reason for this failure does not lie in a lack of interest in or talent for analyzing psychological phenomena (the volumes containing the unabridged correspondence between Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels show a capacity for penetrating analysis of unconscious motivations that would be a credit to any gifted psychoanalyst); it is to be found in the fact that during Mr. Marx’s lifetime there was no dynamic psychology that he could have applied to the problems of human beings. Mr. Marx died in 1883; Dr. Freud began to publish his work more than ten years after Mr. Marx’s death. Even though in need of many revisions, the kind of psychology necessary to supplement Mr. Marx’s analysis was created by Dr. Freud. Psychoanalysis is, first of all, a dynamic psychology. It deals with psychic forces, which motivate human behaviour, action, feelings, ides. These forces cannot always be seen as such; they have to be inferred from the observable phenomena, and to be studied in their contradictions and transformations. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

To be useful for Marxist thinking, a psychology must also be one which sees the evolution of these psychic forces as a process of constant interaction between humans’ need and the social and historical reality in which one participates. It must be a psychology which is from the very beginning social psychology. Eventually, it must be a critical psychology, particularly one critical of humans’ consciousness. Dr. Freud’s psychoanalysis fulfills these main conditions, even though their relevance for Marxist thought was grasped neither by most Freudians nor by Marxists. The reasons for this failure to make contact are apparent on both sides. Marxist continued in the tradition of ignoring psychology; Dr. Freud and his disciples developed their ideas within the framework of mechanistic materialism, which proved restrictive to the development of the great discoveries of Dr. Freud and incompatible with “historical materialism.” In the revival of Marxist humanism, those in the West became aware of the fact that socialism must satisfy humans’ need for a system of orientation and devotion; that it must deal with the questions of who humans are and what the meaning and aim of their lives are. It must be the foundation for ethical norms and spiritual development beyond the empty phrase stating that “good is that which serves the revolution” (the worker’s state, historical evolution, et cetera). On the other hand, the criticism arising in the psychoanalytic camp against the mechanistic materialism underlying Dr. Freud’s thinking has led to a critical reevaluation of psychoanalysis, essentially of the libido theory. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Because of the development in both Marxist and psychoanalytic thinking, the time seems to have come for humanist Marxist to recognize that the use of a dynamic, critical, socially oriented psychology is of crucial importance for the further development of Marxist theory and socialist practice; that a theory centered around man can no longer remain a theory without psychology if it is not to lose touch with human reality. The sado-masochistic person is always characterized by one’s attitude toward authority. One admires authority and tends to submit to it, but at the same time one wants to be an authority oneself and have others submit to one. There is an additional reason for choosing this term. The Fascist systems call themselves authoritarian because of the dominant role of authority in their social and political structure. By the term “authoritarian character,” we imply that it represents the personality structure which is the human basis of Fascism. Authority is not a quality one person “has,” in the sense that one had property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to one. However, there is a fundamental difference between a kind of superiority-inferiority relation which can be called rational authority and one which may be described as inhibiting authority. An example is the relationship between teacher and student and that between slave and owner and slave are both based on the superiority of the one over the other. The interests of teacher and pupil lie in the same direction. If one succeeds in furthering the pupil, the teacher is satisfied; if one has failed to do so, the failure is that of the teacher and the pupil. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The slaver owner, on the other hand, wants to exploit the slave as much as possible; the more one gets out of the slave, the more one is satisfied. At the same time, the slave seeks to defend as best one can one’s claims for a minimum of happiness. These interests are definitely antagonistic, as what is of advantage to the one is detrimental to the other. The superiority has a different function in both cases: in the first, it is the condition for the helping of the person subjected to the authority; in the second, it is the condition for one’s exploitation. The dynamics of authority in these two types are different too: the more the student learns, the less wide is the gap between one and the teacher. One becomes more and more like the teacher oneself. In other words, the authority relationship tends to dissolve itself. However, when the superiority serves as a basis for exploitation, the distance becomes intensified through its long duration. The psychological situation is different in each of these authority situations. In the first, elements of love, admiration, or gratitude are prevalent. The authority is at the same time an example with which one wants to identify one’s self partially or totally. In the second situation, resentment or hostility will arise against the exploiter, subordination to whom is against one’s own interest. However, often, as in the case of a slave, this hatred would only lead to conflicts which would subject the slave to suffering without a chance of winning. Therefore, the tendency will usually be to repress the feeling of hatred and sometimes even to replace it by a feeling of blind admiration. This has two functions: to remove the painful dangerous feeling of hatred, and to soften the feeling of humiliation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

If the person who rules over me is so wonderful or perfect, then I should not be ashamed of obeying one. I cannot be one’s equal because one is so much stronger, wiser, better, and so on, than I am. As a result, in the inhibiting kind of authority, the element either of hatred or of irrational overestimation and admiration of the authority, the element either of hatred or of irrational overestimation and admiration of the authority will tend to increase. In the rational kind of authority, it will tend to decrease in direct proportion to the degree in which the person subjected to the authority becomes stronger and thereby more similar to the authority. The difference between rational and inhibiting authority is only a relative one. Even in the relationship between slave and master there are elements of advantage for the slave. One gets a minimum of food and protection which at least enables one to work for one’s master. (However, with being beat and working in the broiling hot sun and freeze cold could lead to death, as well as the beatings.) On the other hand, it is only in an ideal relationship between teacher and student that we find a complete lack of antagonism of interests. There are many gradations between these two extreme cases, as in the relationship of a factory worker, with one’s boss, or a farmer’s son with his father, of a hausfrau with her husband. Nevertheless, although in reality two types of authority are blended, they are essentially different, and an analysis of a concrete authority situation must always determine the specific weight of each kind of authority. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Authority does not have to be a person or institution which says: you have to do this, or you are not allowed to do that. While this kind of authority may be called external authority, authority can appear as internal authority, under the name of duty, conscience, or superego. As a matter of fact, the development of modern thinking from Protestantism to Mr. Kant’s philosophy, can be characterized as the substitution of internalized authority for an external one. With the political victories of the rising middle class, external authority lost prestige and man’s own conscience assumed the place which external authority once had held. This change appeared to many as the victory of freedom. To submit to orders from the outside (at least in spiritual matters) appeared to be unworthy of a free man; but the conquest of one’s natural inclinations, and the establishment of the domination of one part of the individual, one’s nature, by another, one’s reason, will or conscience, seemed to be the very essence of freedom. Analysis shows that conscience rules with a harshness as great as external authorities, and furthermore that frequently the contents of the orders issues by humans’ conscience are ultimately not governed by demands which have assumed the dignity of ethical norms. The rulership of conscience can be even harsher than that of external authorities, since the individual feels its orders to be one’s own; how can one rebel against oneself? Mr. Stalin, a shrewd, cynical opportunist with an insatiable lust for personal power, drew the consequences of the failure. Given his personality, socialism could never have meant for him the human vision of Mr. Marx or Mr. Engles, and hence he had no scruples in introducing the enforced industrialization of Russian under the name of “socialism in one country.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

This formula was only the transparent cover for the goal to be achieved—the building of a totalitarian state managerialism in Russia, and the rapid capital accumulation (and mobilization of human energy) necessary for this goal. Mr. Stalin liquidated the socialist revolution in the name of “socialism.” He used terror to enforce acceptance of the material deprivations which resulted from the rapid build-up of basic industries at the expense of the production of consumer goods; furthermore, the terror served to create a new work morale by mobilizing the energies of an essentially agrarian population and forcing them to work at the pace necessary for this rapid industrial expansion. He used terror probably far beyond what was necessary for the achievement of his economic program because he was possessed by an extraordinary thirst for power, a paranoid suspicion of rivals, and a pathological pleasure in revenge. If a highly industrialized, centralized Russian state managerialism was Mr. Stalin’s aim, he certainly could not have said so. Terror alone, even the most extreme terror, would not have sufficed to force the masses into co-operation had not Mr. Stalin been able also to influence humans’ minds and thoughts He could, of course, have made a complete about-face, staging an ideological counterrevolution employing a fascist-nationalist ideology. Thus he might have had the ideological means which would have led to similar results. Mr. Stalin did not choose this course, and hence there was nothing left for him to do but to use the only ideology which had any influence on the masses at that time—that of communism and World revolution. Religion had been depreciated by the Communist Party; nationalism had been depreciated; “Marxism-Leninism” was the only prestigious ideology left. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

And no one this, but the figures of Mr. Marx, Mr. Engel, and Mr. Lenin had a charismatic appeal for the Russian people and Mr. Stalin used this appeal by presenting himself as their legitimate successor. In order to perpetrate the great historical fraud, Mr. Stalin had to get rid of Mr. Trotsky and eventually to exterminate almost all the old Bolsheviks to have the way completely free for his transformation of the socialist goal into one of a reactionary state managerialism. He had to rewrite history in order to wipe out even the memory of the old revolutionaries and their ideas. Maybe, unconsciously, he feared and suspected the old revolutionaries in his paranoid fashion, because he felt guilty of having betrayed the ideals of which they were symbols. If not in the whole World, Mr. Stalin succeeded in his goal, which was not World revolution but an industrialized Russia that should become the strongest industrial power in Europe. The economic success of his method of totalitarian state planning later continued with some changes by Mr. Malenkov and Mr. Khrushchev, is no long a matter of dispute. “The Soviet system of centralized direction has proved itself to be more or less the peer of the market economy, as exemplified by the United States of America.” This judgment is borne out by the Russian industrial growth. While the estimates of various American economists vary somewhat, the differences are relatively small. Mr. Bornstein estimates the annual rate of growth of gross national product from 1950 to 1958 in the Soviet Union at 6.5-7.5 percent and for the United States of America in the name period at 2.9 percent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Kaplan-Moorsteen estimate the Russian industrial rate of growth for the same period as being 9.2 percent. The current GDP in Russia for 2023 is 1.3 percent. If one considers the Russian annual rate of growth since 1913, that is to say for the period including the destruction of the First World War and the Civil War, the figures are, of course, quite different. They are according to Mr. Nutter, for civilian industrial output from 1913 to 1955 only 4.2 percent, while the rate of growth for the last forty years of the Czarist period was 5.3 percent. However, between 1928 and 1940 (that is to say, in a period of peace) the Soviet rate was 8.3 percent and between 1950 and 1955 9.0 percent, more or less twice the United States of America during the same time, and somewhat less than twice that of the Czarist rate. Mr. Nutter estimates that if one looks to the immediate future—“it seems reasonably certain that industrial growth will proceed more rapidly in the Soviet Union than in the United States of America, in the absence of radical institutional changes in either country,” while, “it is more doubtful that industrial growth in the Soviet Union will be faster than in rapidly expanding Western economies, such as Western Germany, France, and Japan.” Mr. Nutter doubts, however, that in the long run the Soviet system will generate a more rapid growth than the private enterprise system. In contrast to industrial production, Russian agricultural production has been lagging far behind the planned figures and still constitutes one of the difficult problems of the Russian system. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

As far as consumption is concerned, the annual growth, taking in account the growth in population, is estimated at about 5 percent, with a recent rise in consumption among peasants. “In terms of food and clothing,” Mr. Turgeon concludes, “the Soviet stands the best chance of overtaking our level of living,” while the United States of America is far ahead in automobiles and other durable consumer goods, and in expenditures for services and travel. Mr. Stalin laid the foundations for a new, industrialized Russia. He transformed, within less than thirty years, the economically most backward of the great European nations into an industrial system that soon would become the economically most advanced and prosperous, second only to the United States of America. He achieved this goal through the ruthless destruction of human lives and happiness, through the cynical falsification of socialist ideas, and through an inhumanity which together with that of Mr. Hitler, corroded the sense of humanity in the rest of the World. Yet apart from the question whether this goal could have been achieved in less inhuman way by using other methods, the fact that he left to his heirs a viable and strong economic and political system. Many of the Stalinist features have remained the same—others have been changed. It is probably not extreme to declare any quote of work externally imposed upon a person is bound to seem coercive to some degree. While the ways in which coercion is exercised are often subtle and difficult to discern, even where no effort is made deliberately to conceal them, the effects of coercion are registered in the attitude of the person to one’s work. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Instead of motivation to approach an ideal of performance, which removes all barriers to the release of energy, there is resistance to the coercion, a setting of limits to effort, and even discontent and sabotage. Instead of guilt over doing less than one’s best, there is often the feeling that integrity and self-respect are best maintained by a refusal to surrender to the coercion. To be sure, it is obvious that employment utterly free of coercion is almost nonexistent; even play can become rapidly adulterated with compulsion as it gets organized by teams and clubs. Nevertheless, there are enormous differences in quality of performance as coercion fluctuates. Conversely, if none of the personnel doe more than their specified and required minimum, no organization can survive long; even in prison, the prisoners must contribute more than is absolutely forced from them. In practice the participation of personnel in setting the goals of their own effort can help to release the energy for attaining them. In determining their respective quotas and schedules, personnel are in effect spelling out of the interim or subgoals within the over-all goals of the agency. Yet, since initiative in evoking responsibility lies almost entirely with the administrator, the burden of achieving the personnel’s genuine participation lies upon one’s shoulders, and failure to achieve it can only spuriously be blamed on the personnel. In other words, as generally recognized, the test of the administrator, although it may be expressed in term of objective results in completing one’s program, is basically a test of one’s ability to minimize coercion and maximize participation. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Where one has the least opportunity for coercion, one’s skill as an organizer and leader of group effort becomes most clearly manifest (such as in campaigns using unpaid volunteers). All other conditions being equal, it seems demonstrable that shared purpose will always release more energy and ingenuity, and produce better results, than coercion. Too often the planning aspect of administration is discussed loosely in terms of controls. Not only has the term a popular connotation of some form or degree of coercion, but this is all too often so in practice. In other words, the various quotas and schedules are set up unilaterally and hierarchically by the administrator and one’s lieutenants, as tasks imposed externally upon subordinates. The best forms of planning break down the broad goals of a program to apply to the various functional units of the executive agency, but much is lost, and the success of the program is jeopardized, if this is done solely for the sake of co-ordination. If quotas and schedules are instead construed not as controls in this limited sense but as interim goals, their other functions in facilitating motivation of personnel and morale of the agency then become feasible Beyond starting these general characteristics of the program phase of our model of the planning process, it is doubtful that much more could be said without getting down to particular cases. There are vast numbers of books about the familiar problems of administration, most of the conceived in terms of human relations. 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. If a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not wrong him or her. And you shall love one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of America. Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart, as they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19


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The Whip of Wall Street Bosses

At one time, witchcraft was “ubiquitous,” and played a part in every activity of one’s life. If blight seized the groundnut crop, it was witchcraft; if the bush was vainly scoured for game, it was witchcraft; if women laboriously bale water out of a pool and were rewarded by but a few small fish, it was witchcraft;…if a prince was cold and distant with his subject, it was witchcraft;…if, in fact, any failure or misfortune fell upon anyone at any time and in relation to any of the manifold activities of one’s life, it might have be due to witchcraft. Witchcraft was foremost a way of making what happened in people’s lives intelligible in the fullest sense, of explaining what lay behind such misfortunes as poor harvest and sickness. Narratives proliferate in the spaces between what is known and what is not, especially in the spaces where life and knowledge are the most fragile. Illness is mysterious. It comes without warning, and its sources are often hidden. By explaining death or illness or bad luck, witchcraft acts as a form of theodicy, a way of understanding why bad things—like granaries collapsing—happen when they do, and to whom. Sadism, as it is often used, can be relatively free from destructiveness and blended with a friendly attitude towards it object. This kind of “loving” sadism has found classical expression in Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a description which also conveys the particular quality of what we mean by the need for symbiosis. In this passage Balzac describes the relationship between young Lucien and the Bango prisoner who poses as an Abbe. Shortly after he makes the acquaintance of the young man who has just tried to commit suicide the Abbe says: “…This young man has nothing in common with the poet who died just now. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

“I have picked you up, I have given life to you, and you belong to me as the creature belongs to the creator, as-in the Orient’s fairy tales—the Ifrit belongs to the spirit, as the body belongs to the soul. With powerful hands I will keep you straight on the road to power; I promise you, nevertheless, a life of pleasures, of honours, of everlasting feasts. You will never lack money, you will sparkle, you will be brilliant; whereas I, stopped down in the filth of promoting, shall secure the brilliant edifice of your success. I love your power for the sake of power! I shall always enjoy your pleasures although I shall have to renounce them. Shortly: I shall be one and the same person with you…I will love my creature, I will mold him, will shape him to my services, in order to love him as a father loves his child. I shall drive at your side in your Tilbury, my dear boy, I shall delight in your successes with women. I have created this Marquis de Rubempre and have placed him among the aristocracy; his success is my product. He is silent and he talks with my voice, he follows my advice in everything.” Frequently, and not only in the popular usage, sado-masochism is confounded with love. Masochistic phenomena, especially, are looked upon as expressions of love. An attitude of complete self-denial for the sake of another person and the surrender of one’s own rights and claims to another person have been praised as examples of “great love.” It seems that there is no better proof for “love” than sacrifice and the readiness to give oneself up for the sake of the beloved person. Actually, in these cases, “love” is essentially a masochistic yearning and rooted in the symbiotic need of the person involved. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

If we mean by love the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the essence of a particular person, if we mean by it the union with another person on the basis of the independence and integrity of the two persons involved, then masochism and love are opposites. Love is based on subordination and loss of integrity of one partner, it is masochistic dependence, regardless of how the relationship is rationalized. Sadism also appears frequently under the disguise of love. To rule over another person, if one can claim that to rule him is for that person’s own sake, frequently appears as an expression of love, but the essential factor is the enjoyment of domination. Many are probably wondering: Is not sadism, as we have described it here, identical with the craving for power? Although the more destructive forms of sadism, in which the aim is to hurt and torture another person, are not identical with the wish for power, the latter is the most significant expression of sadism. The problem has gained added significance in the present day. Since Mr. Hobbes, one has seen in power the basic motive of human behaviour; the following centuries, however, gave increased weight to legal and moral factors which tended to curb power. With the rise of Fascism, the lust for power and the conviction of its right has reached new height. Millions are impressed by the victories of power and take it for the sigh of strength. To be sure, power over people is an expression of superior strength in a purely material sense. If I have the power over another person to kill him, I am “stronger” than he is. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

However, in a psychological sense, the lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness. It is the expression of the inability of the individual self to stand alone and live. It is the desperate attempt to gain secondary strength where genuine strength is lacking. The word “power” has a twofold meaning One is the possession of power over somebody, the ability to dominate one; the other meaning is the possession of power to do something, to be able, to be potent. The latter meaning has nothing to do with domination; it expresses mastery in the sense of ability. If we speak of powerlessness, we have this meaning in mind; we do not think of a person who is not able to dominate others, but of a person who is not able to do what one wants. Thus power can on one of two things, domination or potency. Far from being identical, these two qualities are mutually exclusive. Impotence, using the term not only with regard to the sphere of pleasures of the flesh, but to all spheres of human potentialities, results in the sadistic striving for domination; to the extent to which an individual is potent, that is, able to realize one’s potentialities on the basis of freedom and integrity of one self, one does not need to dominate and is lacking the lust for power. Power, in the sense of domination, is the perversion of potency just as sexual sadism is the perversion of sexual love. Sadistic and masochistic traits are probably to be found in everybody. At one extreme there are individuals whose whole personality is dominated by these traits, and at the other there are those for whom these sado-masochistic traits are not characteristic. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Only in discussing the former can we speak of a sado-masochistic character. The term “character” is used here in the dynamic sense in which Dr. Freud speaks of character. In this sense it refers not to the sum total of behavior patterns characteristic for one person, but to the dominant drives that motivate behaviour. Since Dr. Freud assumed that the basic motivating forces are sexual ones, he arrived at concepts like “oral,” “anal,” or “genital” characters. If one does not share this assumption, one is forced to devise different character types. However, the dynamic concept remains the same. The driving forces are not necessarily conscious as such to a person whose character is dominated by them. A person can be entirely dominated by one’s sadistic strivings and consciously believe that one is motivated only by one’s sense of duty. One may not even commit any overt sadistic acts but suppress one’s sadistic drives sufficiently to make one appear on the surface as a person who is not sadistic. Nevertheless, any close analysis of one’s behaviour, one’s phantasies, dreams, and gestures, would show the sadistic impulses operating in deeper layers of one’s personality. Although the character of persons in whom sadomasochistic drives are dominant can be characterized as sado-masochistic, such persons are not necessarily neurotic. It depends to a large extent on the particular tasks people have to fulfill in their social situation and what patterns of feelings and behaviour are present in their culture whether or not a particular kind of character structure is “neurotic” or “normal.” As a matter of fact, for great parts of the lower middle class in Germany and other European countries, the sado-masochistic character is typical, and, it is this kind of character structure to which Nazi ideology had its strongest appeal. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

A reason why it is so difficult to dare to disobey, to say “no” to power is because during most of human history obedience has been identified with virtue and disobedience with sin. The reason is simple: thus far throughout most of history a minority has ruled over the majority. This rule was made necessary by the fact that there was only enough of the good things of life for the few, and only the crumbs remained for the many. If the few wanted to enjoy the good things and, beyond that, to have the many serve them and work for them, one condition was necessary: the many had to learn obedience. To be sure, obedience can be established by sheer force. However, this method has many disadvantages. It constitutes a constant threat that one day the many might have the means to overthrow the few by force; furthermore there are many kinds of work which cannot be done properly if nothing but fear is behind the obedience. Hence the obedience which is only rooted in the fear of force must be transformed into one rooted in humans’ hearts. Humans want and even need to obey, instead of only fearing to disobey. If this is to be achieved, power must assume the qualities of the All Good, the All Wise; it must become All Knowing. If this happens, power can proclaim that disobedience is sin and obedience virtue; and once this has been proclaimed, the many can accept obedience because it is good and detest disobedience because it is bd, rather than to detest themselves for being cowards. From Mr. Luther to the nineteenth century one was concerned with overt and explicit authorities. Mr. Luther, the pope, the princes, wanted to uphold it; the middle class, the workers, the philosopher, tried to uproot it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The fight against authority in the State as well as in the family was often the very basis for the development of an independent and daring person. The fight against authority was inseparable from the intellectual mood which characterized the philosophers of the enlightenment and the scientists. This “critical mood” was one of the faith in reason, and at the same time of doubt in everything which is said or thought, inasmuch as it is based on tradition, superstition, custom, power. The principles sapere aude and de omnibus est dubitandum—“dare to be wise” and “of all one must doubt”—were characteristic of the attitude which permitted and furthered the capacity to say “no.” The case of Adolf Eichmann is symbolic of our situation and has a significance far beyond the one which his accusers in the courtroom in Jerusalem were concerned with. Mr. Eichmann is a symbol of the organization man, of the alienated bureaucrat for whom men, women, and children have become numbers. He is a symbol of all of us. We can see ourselves in Mr. Eichmann. However, the most frightening thing about hi is that after the entire story was told in terms of his own admission, he was able in perfect good faith to plead his innocence. It is clear that if he were once more in the same situation, he would do it again. And so would we—and so do we. The organization man has lost the capacity to disobey, he is not even aware of the fact that he obeys. At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for humankind and the end of civilization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The Soviet system is a mythical entity to most Americans; probably not any less mythical than the capitalist system is to most Russians. While the Russians see capitalism as a system of exploited wage salves obeying the whip of Wall Street bosses, Americans see Russia as led by men who are a blend of Mr. Lenin and Mr. Hitler, bent on subjugating the rest of the World by force or trickery. Since our whole foreign policy is based on the idea that the Soviet Union wants to conquer the World by force, it is of the utmost importance to examine the facts and to have a clear and realistic picture of the nature of the Soviet system. This task is all the more difficult because the nature of the Soviet system changed completely between 1917 and the present time. It changed from a revolutionary system, considering itself the center and the promotor of Communist revolutions in Europe and eventually throughout the whole World, to a conservative, industrial class society run along lines in many respects similar to the development of the “capitalistic” states of the West. This change, however, was never marked by any official break in the continuity, because many basic features such as the nationalization of means of production and the idea of a planned economy have remained the same. However, much more confusing than the continuity of certain economic patterns is the continuity of the ideology. Mr. Stalin and then Mr. Khrushchev had religiously stuck to the “Marxist-Leninist” formulations, and continued to speak the language of 1848 or 1917, although representing a system which is the very opposite of what revolutionaries like Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin envisaged. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Actually we should be better able to recognize the difference between ritualized ideological formulae and realities. Are we not ourselves caught in a similar discrepancy when we talk of “individual initiative” in a society of the “organization man,” or of a “God-fearing society” when in reality we care mainly about money, comfort, health and education, and very little about God? However—and this makes the recognition of reality all the more confusing—neither the Russians nor are we liars. Both sides are convinced that they are telling the truth, and they approach each other with the common conviction that their own and, even to some extent, their opponent’s ideologies represent realities. Since Mr. Stalin’s ascendancy the Soviet rulers have never aimed at Communist revolution in the West but have used the Communist parties only as instruments for the support of the Soviet foreign policy. The middle of the nineteenth century was a time of socialist hope; this was based on the miraculous progress of science and its effect on industrial production, on the success of the middle-class revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848, on the mounting protests of the workers, and on the spread of socialist ideas. Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels, like many other socialists, were convinced that the time was near in which the great revolution would occur and that shortly a new epoch in human history would begin, that there was every prospect, as Mr. Engles put it, “of turning the revolution of the minority” [as were all previous revolutions] “into a revolution of the majority” [as he visualized the socialist revolution]. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

However, at the end of the century Mr. Engels had to admit: “History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development of the continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production.” The First World War marked a decisive change in the history of socialism. It marked the collapse of two of its most significant aims, internationalism and peace. With the beginning of the war, each socialist party took the side of its own government and fought the other socialists in the name of “freedom.” This moral debacle of socialism was not so much due to the personal betrayal of some leaders as to the change in general economic and political conditions. The naked and ruthless exploitation of the workers which had existed in the nineteenth century had slowly given way to the participation of the working class in the economic gains of their respective countries. Capitalism, instead of being unable to function because of its own inner contradictions, as Mr. Marx had predicted, proved to be a going concern, much more capable of coping with crises and difficulties than the radical revolutionaries had expected. The very success of capitalism led to a new interpretation of socialism. While Mr. Marx’s and Mr. Engles vision was that of a new form of society transcending that of capitalism, a society which would be the full realization of humanism and individualism, socialism began now to be interpreted by most of its adherents as a movement for the economic and political rise of the working class within the capitalist system. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

While Mr. Marxist socialism in the nineteenth century was the most significant spiritual and moral movement of the century, antipositivistic and antimaterialistic in essence, it was slowly transformed into a purely political movement with essentially economic aims even though the older moral goals never entirely disappeared. The interpretation of socialism in terms of the categories of capitalism led to a new policy for the socialist parties, the aim of which was the welfare state rather than the fulfillment of the messianic hopes held by the founders of socialism. The war of 1914, that senseless slaughter of millions of people f all nations for the sake of certain economic advantages, led to the resurgence, in a new and vital form, of the older socialist attitude against war and nationalism. Radical socialists in all countries felt a profound indignation at the war, and they became the leaders of revolutionary movements in Russian, Germany, and France. In fact, the radicalization of the socialist movement was closely connected with the Zimmerwald movement, the attempt of internationalist socialists to end the war. The February revolution in Russia gave impetus to these revolutionary leaders. Originally Mr. Lenin, in accordance with Mr. Marx’s theory, had believed that a socialist revolution could be successful only within a highly developed, capitalist economy like Germany. He had thought it necessary that a less-developed country like Russia had to complete its bourgeois revolution before moving forward to a socialist revolution. For the same reason the majority of the Communist Central Committee was at first opposed to the seizure of power in 1917, but increasing protest of the peasant-soldier against the war coupled with the incapacity of the Czarist government and its revolutionary successor to end the war and reorganize the Russian economy pushed Mr. Lenin into the October revolution. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Mr. Lenin’s and Mr. Trotsky’s hopes were fastened on a German revolution, which both were sure would happen in a short while. They signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Imperial Germany in the expectation that the German revolution would soon break out and invalidate the peace treaty. If a highly industrial Germany became a Soviet state and fused with mainly agricultural Russian, then, so they reasoned following Marxist theory, a socialist, German-Russian Soviet system would have a good chance to survive and to flourish. Like Mr. Marx and Mr. Engels in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky seventy years later believed for a short while that the socialist “kingdom is near,” and that they would lay the foundations for a truly socialist society. Mr. Lenin’s hope had its peaks and its valleys; 1917 and 1918 represented the first peak. Ten days after the October revolution he declared: “We shall march firmly and unswervingly to the victory of socialism which will be sealed by the leading workers of the most civilized countries and give to the people solid peace and deliverance from all oppression and all exploitation. When after the outbreak of the German revolution in November 1918, the new German government showed great reluctance to enter into diplomatic relations with Russian and when the German workers did not seem to follow the Russian example, doubts began to enter Mr. Lenin’s and Mr. Trotsky’s minds. In 1919 the Soviet revolution in Bavaria and Hungary gave rise to new hopes, only to be dashed shortly by the defeat of these revolutions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The summer and fall of 1920, when the Russian civil war was moving toward its end and the Red Army stood at the gates of Warsaw, witnessed the peak of the prestige of the Comintern and of the Communists hopes for World revolution. The second Congress of the Comintern, 1920, was held in a mood of high revolutionary enthusiasm. Yet, only a short time after, with the defeat of the Red Army before Warsaw and the failure of the Polish workers to rise, everything changed dramatically. The revolutionary hopes received a shock from which they never recovered. Mr. Lenin, in ordering the march on Warsaw, after the successful defense against the Polish attack, had yielded to his frantic hope for the World revolution, this time being less realistic than Mr. Trotsky, who (with Mr. Tukhachevski) had advised against the Warsaw offensive. Once more history proved that the revolutionaries had been wrong in their estimates of the revolutionary possibilities. Mr. Lenin recognized the defeat; he admitted that Western capitalism still had a much greater vitality than he had expected and he initiated and organized the retreat in order to save what could be saved from the debacle. He started the NEP, the reintroduction of capitalism in large sectors of the Russian economy, he tried to persuade foreign capitalists to invest capital in “concessions” with the Soviet Union, he tried to arrive at a peaceful understanding with the great Western powers, and at the same time, he suppressed by force the movement of the Kronstadt sailors, directed against what they felt to be the betrayal of the revolution. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Mr. Lenin’s concept that the true interest of the working class resided in an elite of leaders, and not in the majority of workers, was not Mr. Marx’s; in fact, it was opposed by Mr. Trotsky during the many years of difference between him and Mr. Lenin before the outbreak of the First World War as it was opposed by Rosa Luxemburg, the most unwavering and clearsighted of Marxist revolutionary leaders until her assassination by German soldiers in 1919. Mr. Lenin did not see what Rosa Luxemburg and many others saw, that the centralized bureaucratic system in which an elite ruled for the workers had to end up in a system in which it would rule over the workers and extinguish whatever was left of socialism in Russia. However, whatever the differences between Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin were, the fact is that for the second time the great hope had failed. This time however, the failure found Mr. Lenin and Mr. Trotsky in power, confronted with the historical dilemma of how to guide a socialist revolution in a country that did not have the objective conditions for a socialist society. They were spared the problem of having to solve this dilemma. Mr. Lenin, after a first stroke in 1922, which incapacitated him increasingly, died in January 1924; Mr. Trotsky was driven from power a few years later; Mr. Stalin, with whom Mr. Lenin had broken off all personal relations in the last months before his death, took over. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Mr. Lenin’s death and Mr. Trotsky’s defeat only underscored the end of the period of revolutionary movements all over Europe and of hopes for a new socialist order. After 1919 the revolution was on the retreat, and by 1923, there was no longer any doubt about its failure. After all the expedient modifications and political concessions, the plan of action which has been adopted as a policy may be much like the original proposal or it may resemble it only very slightly. In either case, what has been adopted is a broad and general set of goals plus an indication of ways and means such as budget, personnel, schedule, which are to be made available for achieving them. There has been a steady evolution from embryonic intention to definite commitment, but even by the end of the third phase of planning, only the broader outlies of the program can be discerned. There is a considerable remaining margin for policy-formulation by the executives or administrators of the agency itself. Even their own status and powers are in part subject to their own definition. Utilizing this margin for initiative which has been left to them, many executives of agencies have distinguished themselves as leaders in conducting their programs. In order to lead successfully, they have to be responsive to their publics and to the policy -making bodies to which they are responsible, yet they prefer those programs which quite decisively state their responsibilities without spelling out in too great detail how they should be performed. Experienced policy-making bodies have realized that just how a policy will work out in practice can be predicted only to a limited extent, due to changing conditions and adjustment of estimates, so that it is best not to weigh an administrator down with too many rigid rules, rather letting these develop from experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

It is better to outline the task and hold the administrator accountable for its performance than to bind one’s hands and hamper the initiative and morale of one’s agency through imposing rules, which may in the end seem more important than the success of the program. In most economic transactions, the player on the two sides are different in many respects. Buyers on one side and sellers on the other is the most usual distinction. The magnitude of the temptation to cheat, and the future consequences of such cheating, differ greatly for the two. For example, firms that produce durable consumer goods are usually in the market for a long time, and their reputation for good or poor quality can be spread by the media, but their consumers may be in the market only infrequently, and may be tempted to backout on payment unless the firms have a good network for exchanging information. Public information –the model of the test ignored any avenues of information dissemination other than the services provided by the intermediary. In practice some public information about traders’ behavior is available, and it is of interest to examine the interaction between such information and the intermediary’s service. Behaviour types—in the model of the text, all traders were identical and rational maximizers. Then in the equilibrium there was no cheating. Many applied models of repeated games have the same structure, but it is neither a good representation of reality, nor is it theoretically satisfactory. In reality there are some innately honest people, and some who are either innately dishonest or so short-lived that future consequence of cheating are not relevant for them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Theoretically, we saw how the interpretation of deviation from equilibrium strategies becomes problematic when the deviant strategies are never played by anyone on the equilibrium path. Drawing the line between how far the policy-making body should go in spelling out details of the program and how much prerogative should be left to executive discretion is a matter of judgment and circumstance. Apart from the need to maintain the supremacy of the policy-making body, and the loyalty and morale of the personnel of the action agency, it is best to rely on ensuing experience rather than any general principles. Perhaps the one general statement that can be made about the proper organizational structure for executing a program of planned action is this corollary of our consistent emphasis on the sharing of purpose as the compass for procedure: Administrative structure is best which, given the problem, resources, and policy determinations binding an agency, maximizes the participation of its personnel and its clientele in the execution of the program. Participation here is viewed in least two senses, first, participation in further development of policy, and second, personal involvement in the goals of the program, leading to maximum effort and ingenuity in contributing to its success. The best test of participation in the program by the personnel of the agency is the degree to which each rank is consulted on the setting of quotas and schedules for its functional unit of the operation. It is precisely here that the two senses of participation, the matter of “voice” and the matter of motivation, will ideally merge. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Life in the Spiritual Community is unambiguous life. Religion, culture, and morality, essentially untied but existentially disrupted, are reunited by the Spiritual Presence. Consequently, religion in the narrow sense has no place in the Spiritual Community. Religion in the broad sense of faith animates every cultural creation at its depths: There are no religious symbols in the Spiritual Community because the encountered reality is in its totality symbolic of the Spiritual Presence, and there are no religious acts because every act is an act of self-transcendence. Thus, the essential relation between religion and culture—that culture is the form of religion, and religion the substance of culture—is realized in the Spiritual Community. Although the Spiritual Community unambiguously fulfills the biblical vision of the holy city without a temple, nevertheless, the fulfillment is not ultimate. It is fragmentary and anticipatory because of the temporal-spatial process of its realization. The Spiritual Community is as manifest and s hidden as the New Being in Jesus as the Christ. It is manifest to the Spirit and hidden to all but the Spirit. It is open only to faith as the state of being grasped by the Spiritual Presence. As we have said before: Only Spirit discerns Spirit. But the believer thus cooperating with God in the use of one’s volition must understand that the choice of the will is not sufficient alone. To will is present, but to do is not. Through the spirit, and by the strengthening of the Holy Spirit the soul is liberated will—desiring and determined to do God’s will—empowered to carry out its choice. It is God which works within you…to will, id est, to enable the believer to decide or choose. Then it is God which works in you…to do His good pleasure. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

God energizes the believer with power to carry out the choice. In short, God gives the power to do—acting from the spirit where He dwells. However, the believer needs to understand the use of one’s spirit as clearly as one understands the use of one’s will, of one’s mind, or of one’s body. One must know how to discern the sense of one’s spirit so as to understand the will of God, before one can do it. 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. God has given humans understanding and insight, and has shown them what is good and what is evil. God has revealed unto one what is good; He has given one to choose between right and wrong. God has given one a mind, that one might use one’s blessings wisely; a heart has God given one, and free will, that one might consider one’s ways, and live accordingly to God’s will. We are mindful of all the great gifts which God, O Lord, has given us; may we use them wisely that they may not be in vain. We have been told, O man and woman, what is good, and what the Lord requires of us: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously, a man against his brother? Justice, justice, shall you pursue, that you may live in your land. And be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

Death, darkness and horrible things lurked in the night. Some spirits here are created for vengeance, and in their fury lay on sore stroke. I hated the sight of blood. It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1890 that the evening twilight fell when a gnawing fear and tremendous sense of terror strangely domed Llanada Villa and the, deep, shadowy fruit orchards. The quite dread and portent produced strange noises that troubled the large mansion and fell on my ear. Curious noises they were sometimes. I could have sworn I heard a thin metallic voice laughing high in the Observational Tower. I darted an inquiring glance at my carpenter. He was white to the lips. “It is he—that is—it is no one; the door is locked,” was all he said, and we looked at each other for a full minute. The mansion began to fill with shadows, while the curious noises—the muffled footfalls and distant talking voices that had been perceptible seemed, no doubt to becoming more frequent and insistent. A rain of tears appeared on my cheeks. The carpenter began for the first time to show signs of hurry and impatience. He heaved a sigh of relief when his tools and notebooks were finally packed up and stowed away, and hurriedly beckoned a carriage. He turned to his companion. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” The other man nodded and climbed into the carriage as the horses quickly galloped away. The moon had vanished behind a cloud. I was able to go over to the library, and for the rest of the evening tortured my brain with strange and terrible books drawn voluminously from the stack shelves and from secure places of storage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

There were things in these books which simply could not be believed by those who had not seen the evidence. The more I reflected on these hellish diaries, the more I was inclined to believe in the Earth-threatening entity which, unknow to me, was the source of the curse. Rumors about “The Winchester Fortune,” were clearly sustained enough to reach the pages of The Oakland Tribune and be referred to as if they were common knowledge. The stories that surrounded The Winchester Fortune and my mansion were so persistent that inquirers were directed to an information sheet that was put together in 1889 to describe my family, legacy, and unique architecture of my home and fill in some of the “vast web of mythology [that] has formed around it.” After the information on provenance, the sheet told a loose variety of myths that around the purchase and construction of Llanada Villa, gesturing vaguely at the accidents, misfortunes and deaths said to have been suffered by carpenters, servants, and members of the Winchester family. It also spoke about the suit of armor—priceless relics, vast halls, tapestries evidenced throughout; strong, heavy, richly carved furniture everywhere. The time-defying walls, comfortable chairs, tea tables, and unusual architectural features were also of great curiosity. And of course, the curse that was principally attached to the fortune and mansion, or rather from whom the curse began its impressive path of contagion through. When disaster struck killing our infant daughter, and fifteen years later my husband, they were claimed to be subjects to the law of the recursive curse and were assumed to be victims. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The popular account of Williams’s death is that, not believing in the malignant powers of the celebrated curse of The Winchester Fortune, he determined to make a slashing attack on the belied in the columns of the Connecticut Gazette of New Haven, and went to the Winchester Factory Castle, and sent his photographer there, to collect materials for that purpose; that he was then, although in perfect health, struck down mysteriously by some malady of which he died. The Gazette published his piece and also reported ghost stories about Llanada Villa with a studiously neutral air. Yet William’s death, widely mourned by his colleagues, was probably the impetus for an outline of the alleged curse that appeared in the Connecticut Magazine, which spoke of a “terrible story” that “will never be written in full; but some of its chapters may be told in a few words.” The essay was curiously signed pseudonymously and again the historical actors were replaced by initials. This report likely prompted an anonymous person to syndicate an article on the story, which flashed the rumour of The Curse of the Winchester Fortune around the World. The Correspondence files in the New Haven press, for instance, carried a cutting sent by someone from The Oakland Tribune, which screamed “Ghost of those Killed by the Winchester Rifle Haunt the Sizable Fortune.” A journalist who died investigating the hauntings, along with William and Annie were merely the frames of The Winchester Curse, but their deaths seemed to confirm that even testing the strength of the chain of rumour associated with the Winchester Fortune came with risks. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Those who have often been so gay and vivacious, the delight of soirees, would become distant, and aloof, of serious mien, unsmiling after visiting my estate and succumbing to magical thinking, spooked by “the feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn around us with infinite skill and delicacy.” The atmospheric writing strained to evoke a liminal territory on the edge of American civilization where superstition merges into everyday experience. The allegedly rational solution to the deaths of my infant daughter and husband feeds into the formula for family curses, as Holmes solves the case through a proper understanding of heredity and threat of degeneracy within aristocratic bloodlines. “The deaths of Mr. William Winchester and infant daughter Annie Winchester was caused by demonic “elementals” guarding the land, because Mr. Winchester had expanded the family business and begun an investigation of the stories of “The Gun that Won the West’s” malevolence….I warned Mr. Winchester against concerning himself with the curse. He persisted, and his death proceeded the death of his infant daughter. He became engrossed in the subject, and wrote with feverish haste and in bewildering abundance. Of skepticism there was none. I told him he was tempting fate by pursuing his inquiries, but he was fascinated and would not desist. Then his daughter was overtaken by illness six weeks after her birth by the mysterious childhood disease marasmus. And Mr. Winchester premature death was fifteen years later from tuberculosis, which added to Mrs. Winchester’s distress. However, this is the way in which the demonic “elementals” guiding the Winchester bloodline might act.” A statement by Weston St. Joyce of the Hellfire Club. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

One of Daisy’s reminiscences is striking for embroiling all the central figures of The Winchester story in occult: “I had attended at least two seances which my aunt had held at Llanada Villa…I had watched aunt Sarah put into a trance on an occasion when Bertha Haas had been present. It had been an eerie, not to say unpleasant, experience which had shaken me considerably…Suddenly she had started talking in an unknown tongue which, to everyone’s astonishment, Bertha Haas had pronounced as being Coptic…I remembered particularly one séance when Bertha has been placed in a trance.” Friday morning, the day was pleasant, but even in the brightest sunlight, a cold shudder ran through me and visitors like, and every ear seemed strained in a kind of instinctive, unconscious listening. I knew that I had come upon the horror and its monstrous work, and trembled with the responsibility I felt to be mind. Night would soon fall, and it was then that the spirits really became restless. No material weapon would be of help. Having read William’s diaries, I knew painfully well what kind of manifestations to expect, but I did not add to the fright of the servants by giving any hints or clues. As the shadows gathered, the servants commenced to disperse homeward, anxious to bar themselves indoors despite the present evidence that all human locks and bolts were useless before a force that could bend trees and crush houses when it chose. Whatever was in Llanada Villa was biding its time. A downpour waxed in heaviness, and distant peals of thunder sounded from far horizons. Sheet lighting shimmered, and then a forky bolt flashed near at hand, as if descending into my accursed mansion itself. They sky grew very dark, and watcher hoped that the storm would prove a short, sharp one followed by clear weather. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

It was still gruesomely dark when, not much over an hour later, a confused babel of voices sounded down the hall. Another moment brought to view a frightened group of more than a dozen men, running, shouting, and even whimpering hysterically. But in another minute, we were in a sitting-room of the house, a large, high chamber with a mahogany floor, full of moving shadows cast by a wood-fire that flickered in on the great hearth. Before lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauleon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a lead from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection I had hardly dreamed of in my wildest moments. Here were ten leaves from a copy of Genesis, illustrated with pictures, which could not be later than A.D 700. Further on was a complete set of pictures from a Psalter, of English execution, of the very finest kind that the thirteenth century could produce; and, perhaps best of all, there were twenty leaves of uncial writing in Latin, which, as a few words seen here and there told me at once, must belong to some very early unknown patristic treatise. Could it possibly be a fragment of the copy of Papias “On the Words of Our Lord,” which was known to have existed as late as the twelfth century at Nimes? In any case, my mind was soon brought back to the chaos. The swishing, lapping sound of the bending trees and bushes caught my attention. And there was an awful stomping and splashing in the mud. However, I did not see anything at all, only just the bending of the trees and the underbrush. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The I heard an awful creaking and straining. The servants were yelling and shrieking when something heavy struck the house—not lightning, nor anything, but something heavy and again, and again. It kept launching itself again and again, though I could not see anything. Lines of fright deepened on every face, we could hear a terrible crashing and a hall full of screaming. In the hall before us were grouped four carpenters, surrounding a crouching figure. A fifth carpenter lay dead on the floor, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs staring from his head. The four surrounding carpenters were looking at him. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified; they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in me. All this terror was plainly excited by any words I could say. I absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of the evening, and for many nights I had not dared to put out my lights before going to sleep. All this time a growing feeling of discomfort had been creeping over me. Before my eyes appeared a mass of coarse, matted black hair, and this body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires out of my mind. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the ceiling with a look of beast-like hate. This appalling effigy inspired terror. With such intense physical fear and the most profound mental loathing, I grasped blindly at my silver crucifix, that I was conscious of a movement toward me on the part of the demon, and then it screamed with the voice of an animal in hideous pain. Hans and Robert, two sturdy little serving-men, who rushed in, saw nothing, but felt themselves thrust aside by something that passed out between then, and found me in a swoon. They sat up with me that night. The phases of Nature can be utterly forbidden, and wholly outside the sane experience of mankind. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

The Winchester Mystery House

When The Winchester Mansion was opened after the passing of Mrs. Winchester in 1922, a carpenter made a small breach in the upper left-hand corner of the front doors, and put a candle through the hole: “At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when the movers, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ It was all I could do to get out the words. ‘Yes, wonderful things.’” It took seven weeks to clear the mansion of its objects, each item laboriously documented, photographed and carried out to moving vans. This took place under the intense gaze of tourist crowds and the restless journalists from the World’s press. Beyond the door, the foyer was almost entirely filled with a shrine covered in gold leaf, and shrines within shrines that protected sacred objects. They found an open store, stuffed with golden statuary and guarded by an impressive Anubis figure.

Daisy recalled the “dazed, bewildered look” of the esteemed visitors invited inside. However, she also stated, “I cannot but think that some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of my beloved aunt Sarah whose mansion is specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing her of her possessions.” A statue of gold was removed from The Winchester Mansion. Tourists had allegedly become supplicants to the statue, holding séances. There was a photograph in which “a shadowy human face has come between the camera and the object which was being photographed.” In other anecdotes, paintings gasped at the movers and the mansion exuded “an unaccountable sense of apprehension.” The first movers not only got lost, but came down with various illnesses (ophthalmia and delirium). A news story of the suicide that claimed one of the movers was frequently heard to mutter “the curse of the Winchester Fortune,” as though this had prayed on his mind. An auctioneer was also incorporated into the unfolding curse (in fact he had been ill with cancer, a fate of several movers). These people knew that they were meddling with terrible powers, yet saw that there was no other way to annul the deeper and more malign meddling which others had done before them.

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/
Had I Not Pledged My Soul?

Oh, these were terrible thoughts. Did I not love Llanada Villa? Had I not pledged my soul? I was consumed with self-hatred and dread that the curse was controlling my life. These thoughts were too horrendous. They divided me from all that desired. I had to banish them from my mind. However, there was a great clamor, and people were beating on my windows and doors. Rocks were being thrown at my house. The wooden shutters were about to be broken in. Across the field, my estate lay strewn with the carcasses of cows and horses and, in one of the fields, sheep. No flies buzzed near the dead animals; there were no maggots burrowing. No vultures; the sky was clean of birds. And in all the untended rolling hills of grass and trees which had once sung and pulsed with a million voices, in all the land there was this immense stillness now, still as years, still as the unheard motion of the stars. I looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to wave in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Other followed him. The wind came limping back from the mountains. #RandolphHarris 1 of 2

It blew the heavy iron bell high in the belfry, as if lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the trees. I watched the air turn black. I listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. This chaos had caused much worry and bafflement. As I paused for a moment, looking out at the silent place of high dark grass, there were scrolls of stone-frozen children stained silver in the night’s wet darkness. The people were gone; my estate was empty. Morning found me in a cold sweat of terror and a frenzy of wakeful concentration. I sat at the table under the electric light with shaking hands all night. All day long I rested, while guns thundered outside. Then, in the slanting shadows of the later afternoon, the rumbling echoes faded into the distance and I knew it was over. As I climbed the stairs and entered the roofless foyer of Llanada Villa, where only a configuration of cobwebs veiled the radiance of the rising moon, I realized that success had brought me to a state of such fatigue that I had begun seriously to contemplate a long rest. I had not enjoyed a proper holiday in nearly three years. I am quite well, and live in great comfort here, although I receive but rarely and am content with my own company most of the time. I have found deep enjoyment and spiritual profit in foreign cities, having arrived, the tedium of travel itself has often made me think twice before starting out on a long voyage. #RandolphHarris 2 of 2


A Blue Lady is said to haunt the mansion. According to legend, a princess wanted to marry one of Mrs. Winchester’s famers, but her father disapproved of him and his standing in life. To ensure the romance did not grow any stronger, the father sent the suitor overseas hoping that it would all blow over in time. After some time, the father told his daughter that her suitor had married someone else, and that she should forget all about him. To improve the spirits of the distraught girl, Mrs. Winchester asked her seamstress to make a dress in favourite colour, blue.

However, when it was completed, the princess put on the beautiful garment, then climbed to the top of the nine story Observational Tower, and threw herself to death. It is now said that the forlorn princess returns to the mansion every thirteen years, in her blue dress, wandering around, then making her way down to the veranda, where she stands at the front doors forever waiting the return of her lost love.

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/
Wild Savage Beasts, with Whom Men and Woman Can Have No Society or Security

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, he with his horrid crew lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf confounded though immortal: but his doom reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought both of lost happiness and lasting pain torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes that witnessed huge affliction and dismay mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: at once as far as angels ken he views the dismal situation waste and wild, a dungeon horrible, on all side round as one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames no light, but rather darkness visible served only to discover sights of woe, regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes that comes to all; but torture without end still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed with ever-burning sulphur unconsumed: such place Eternal Justice had prepare for thse rebellious, there their prison ordained in utter darkness, and their portion set as far removed from God and light of Heaven as from the center thrice to the utmost pole. O how unlike the place from whence they fell! There the companions of his fall, overwhelmed with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, he soon discerns, and weltering by his side one next himself in power, and next in crime. This is a description of Satan’s fall from Heaven and what Hell is like. Many people, especially those who wickedly, maliciously, and feloniously sin like to deluge themselves into thinking there is no Hell. However, those who sin fell to see the Hell they are creating on Earth, in their lives and in the lives of people around them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

If you look at their victims and their own lives, it sounds a lot like they are living in Hell, right? So, can you imagine how much worse it will be to spend Eternal Life burning in Hell? To every action, there is an equal, but separate reaction. That is Sir Isacc Newton’s Third Law of Physics. Therefore, a person who thinks that they can go on sinning and not pay the wages of sin is delusional. The wages of sin are death. This means you will not be resurrected to live eternal life with God. This is why it is important to be a good Christian and obey the laws of the land. The Rule of Law is one star in the constellation of ideals that dominate our political morality: the others are democracy, human rights, and economic freedom. We want societies to be democratic; we want them to respect human rights; we want them to organize their economies around free markets and private property to the extent that this can be done without seriously compromising social justice; and we want them to be governed in accordance with the Rule of Law. We want the Rule of Law for new societies—for newly emerging democracies, for example—and old societies alike, for national political communities and regional and international governance, and we want it to extend into all aspects of governments’ dealings with those subject to them—not just in day-to-day criminal law, or commercial law, or administrative law but also in law administered at the margins, in antiterrorism law and in the exercise of power over those who are marginalized, those who can safely be dismissed as outsiders, and those we are tempted to just destroy as (in John Locke’s words) “wild Savage Beasts, with whom men can have no Society or Security.” Some people like to produce a series of lifetime crises, instead of transcending their issues or seeking help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Getting to the Rule of Law does not just mean paying lip service to the ideal in the ordinary security of a prosperous modern democracy; it means extending the Law and Order into societies that are not necessarily familiar with it; and in those societies that are accustomed to it, it means extending the Rule of Law into these unseen corners of governance, as well. The formal aspects of the Rule of Law concern the form of the norms that are applied to our conduct: generality, prospectivity, stability, publicity, clarity, and so on. However, we do not value them for formalistic reason. We value these features for the contribution they make to predictability, which is indispensable for liberty. We value them for the way they respect human dignity. To judge people’s actions by unpublished or retrospective laws is to convey to them your indifference to their power of self-determination. If we respect dignity in these formal ways, we will find ourselves more inhibited against more substantive assault on self-respect and justice. The Rule of Law is treated as an ideal that calls directly for an end to human rights abuses or as an ideal that calls directly for free markets and respect for private property rights. When people clamor for the Rule of Law in America, they are demanding impartial tribunals that can adjudicate their claims. And when people are detained, they are clamoring for hearings on the comprehensive loss of liberty in which they would have an opportunity to put their case, confront and examine the evidence against them, such as it is, and make arguments for their freedom, in accordance with what we would say were normal legal procedures. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The masochistic bonds in society are fundamentally different from the primary bonds. The latter are those that exist before the process of individuation has reached its completion. The individual is still part of “one’s” natural and social World, one has not yet completely emerged from one’s surroundings. The primary bonds give one genuine security and the knowledge of where one belongs. The masochistic bonds are escape. The individual self has emerged, but it is unable to realize its freedom; it is overwhelmed by anxiety, doubt, and a feeling of powerlessness. The self attempts to find security in “security bonds,” as we might call the masochistic bonds, but this attempt can never be successful. The emergence of the individual self cannot be reserved; consciously the individual can feel secure and as if one “belonged,” but basically one remains a powerless atom who suffers under the submergence of one’s self. One and the power to which one clings never become one, a basic antagonism remains and with it an impulse, even if it is not conscious at all, to overcome the masochistic dependence and to become free. What is the essence of the sadistic drives? Again, the wish to inflict pain on others is not the essence. All the different forms of sadism which we can observe go back to one essential impulse, namely, to have complete mastery over another person, to make one a helpless object of our will, to become the absolute ruler over one, to become one’s God, to do with one as one pleases. To humiliate one, to enslave one, are means to this end and the most radical aim is to make one suffer, since there is no greater power over another person than that of inflicting pain on one, to force one to undergo suffering without one’s being able to defend oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The pleasure in the complete domination over another person (or other animate objects) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. People say that a God who punishes is sadistic. However, what you put out in the World is what you attract. Sadism is not pleasure you want to make another person feel but impression you want to produce; that of pain is far stronger than that of pleasure…one realized that; one uses it and is satisfied. Sadism is the pleasure felt from the observed modifications on the external World produced by the observer. The sadistic mastery is characterized by the fact that it wants to make the object a will-less instrument in the sadist’s hands, while the nonsadistic joy in influencing others respects the integrity of the other person and is based on a feeling of equality. It seems that this tendency to make oneself the absolute master over another person is the opposite of the masochistic tendency, and it is puzzling that these two tendencies should be so closely knitted together. No doubt with regard to it practical consequences the wish to be dependent or to suffer is the opposite of the wish to dominate and to make others suffer. Psychologically, however, both tendencies are the outcomes of one basic need, springing from the inability to bear the isolation and weakness of one’s own self. The aim of both sadism and masochism is called symbiosis. Symbiosis, in this psychological sense, means the union of one individual self with another self (or any other power outside of the own self) in such a way as to make each lose the integrity of its own self and to make them completely dependent on each other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The sadistic person needs one’s own object just as much as the masochistic needs one’s. Only instead of seeking security by being swallowed, one gains it by swallowing somebody else. In both cases the integrity of the individual self is lost. In one case, one dissolves oneself in an outside power; one loses oneself. In the other case, one enlarges oneself by making another being part of oneself and thereby one gains the strength one lacks as an independent self. It is always the inability to stand the aloneness of one’s individual self that leads to the drive to enter into a symbiotic relationship with someone else. It is evident from this why masochistic and sadistic trends are always blended with each other. Although on the surface they seem contradictions, they are essentially rooted in the same basic need. People are not sadistic or masochistic, but there is a constant oscillation between the active and the passive side of the symbiotic complex, so that it is often difficult to determine which side of it is operating at a given moment. In both cases individuality and freedom are lost. If we think of sadism, we usually think of the destructiveness and hostility which is so blatantly connected with it. To be sure, a greater or lesser amount of destructiveness is always to be found linked up with sadistic tendencies. However, this is also true of masochism. Every analysis of masochistic traits shows this hostility. The main difference seems to be that in sadism the hostility is usually more conscious and directly expressed in action, while in masochism the hostility is mostly unconscious and finds an indirect expression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Destructiveness is the result of the thwarting of the individual’s sensuous, emotional, and intellectual expansiveness; it is therefore to be expected as an outcome of the same conditions that makes for the symbiotic need. Sadism is not identical with destructiveness, although it is to a great extent blended with it. The destructive person wants to destroy the object, that is, to do away with it and to get ride of it. The sadist wants to dominate one’s object and therefore suffers a loss if his or her object disappears. Paranoid, projective and fanatical political thinking are all truly pathological forms of thought processes, different from pathology in the conventional sense only by the fact that political thoughts are shared by a larger group of people and not restricted to one or two individuals. These pathological forms of thinking, however, are not the only ones that block the way to the proper grasp of political reality. There are other forms of thinking, which should perhaps not be called pathological, yet which are equally dangerous, maybe only because they are more common. I refer especially to unauthentic, automaton-thinking. The process is simple: I believe something to be true, not because I have arrived at the thought by my own thinking, based on my own observation and experience, but because it has been “suggested” to me. When actually I have adopted them, in automaton-thinking I may be under the illusion that my thoughts are my own, because they have not been presented by sources that carry authority in one form or another. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

All of modern thought manipulation, whether it is in commercial advertising or in political propaganda, makes use of the suggestive-hypnoid techniques which produce thoughts and feelings in people without making them aware that “their” thoughts are not their own. The art of brain-washing that communists seem to have brought to a certain perfection is actually only a more extreme form of this hypnoid suggestion. With increasing skill in suggestive techniques, authentic thinking becomes more and more replaced by automaton-thinking, yet the great illusion of the voluntary and spontaneous character of our thoughts is kept alive. It is quite remarkable how readily groups recognize the unauthentic character of thought in opponents but not in themselves. American travelers, for instance, returning from Russia, report their impressions about the uniformity of political thinking in Russia. Everybody seems to ask the same questions, from “What about lynchings in the Sacramento, California?” to “If the Americans have peaceful intentions, why does the United State of America need so many military bases surrounding Russia?” What the travelers to Russian who report on the uniformity of opinion there are not aware of is that public opinion in the United State of America is hardly less uniform. Most Americans take for granted a number of cliches such as that the Russians want to conquer the World for revolutionary communism, that because they do not believe in God they have no concept of morality similar to our own, and so on. And that is exactly what many Americans fear about superstitious African American communists and the democratic party. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

This kind of unauthentic, automaton thinking results in “doublethink,” which George Orwell has so brilliantly described as the logic of totalitarian thought. “Doublethink,” he says in his book 1984, “means the power of holding two contradictor beliefs in one’s mind, and accepting both of them.” We are familiar with the Russian doublethink. Countries like Hungary and Germany, whose governments clearly rule against the will of the vast majority of the population, are called “people’s democracies.” A hierarchical class society built along rigid lines of economic, social and political inequality is called a “classless society.” A system in which the power of the states has been increasing for the last one hundred and twenty years is said to lead to the “withering away of the State.” However, doublethink is by no means only a Russian phenomenon. If they are anti-Russian, we in the West call dictatorships “part of the free World.” Thus dictators like Syngman Rhee, Chiang Kaishek, Mr. Franco, Mr. Salazar, Mr. Batista, to mention only a few, were acclaimed as fighters for freedom and democracy, and the truth about their regimes was suppressed or distorted. Besides that we permitted humans like Mr. Chiang, Mr. Rhee, and Mr. Adenauer to influence and, sometimes modify, American foreign policy. The American public is misinformed about Korea, Formosa, Laos, the Congo, and Germany to a degree that is in flagrant contrast to our picture of ourselves as having a free press and informed public. We call it subversion when the Russians make anti-American propaganda, but we do not call it subversive when ABC, NBC, and CBS do it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

We proclaim our respect for the independence of small countries, but we support the overthrow of freedom and communist governments taking over in America. We are horrified at the Russian terror in Ukraine, but not at the American terror in Sacramento, California. Pathological thinking and doublethink are not only sick and inhuman, but they endanger our very survival. In a situation where errors in judgment can bring about catastrophic consequences we can not afford to indulge in pathological or cliché-ridden forms of thinking. The clearest and most realistic thought about the World situation, especially with regard to the conflict between Russian and the West becomes a matter of vital necessity. Today certain opinions are held with pride as being “realistic,” when they actually are some of the Pollyanish illusions that the attack. It is a peculiar frailty of human reactions that many are prone to believe that a cynical, “tough” perspective is more likely to be “realistic” than a more objective, complex, and constructive one. Apparently many people think that it takes a strong and courageous man to see things simply and without too many complexities, or to risk catastrophe without blinking. It seems, for instance, that the admiration with which Herman Kahn’s book On Thermonuclear War, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1960, has been received in many quarters is due precisely to this mechanism. Anyone who can present a “budget” from 5 to 160 million fatalities in a nuclear war without shrinking, who can reassure us that 60 million killed will not seriously diminish the survivors’ pleasures in living, must be strong and “realistic.” Now many then observe how flimsy and unrealistic many of his thoughts and “proofs” are. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Many forget that it often takes fanatical, self-righteous, and confused people to confuse what C.W. Mills has so rightly called “crackpot realism” with a rational appreciation of reality. Paranoid, projective, fanatical, and automaton thinking are various forms of thought processes, which are all rooted in the same basic phenomenon—in the fact that the human race has not arrived yet at the level of development expressed in the great humanist religions and philosophies that came to life in India, China, Palestine, Persia, and Greece from 1500 B.C. to the time of Christ. While most people think in terms of these religious systems and of their nontheological philosophical successors, they are still emotionally on an archaic, irrational level, not different from the one that existed before the ideas of Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity had been proclaimed. We still worship idols. We do not call these idols Baal or Astarte but we worship and submit to our idols under different names. In fact, the TV has become the number one false idol in the World, which children are taught to worship from day one. Technically and intellectually we are living in an atomic age; emotionally we are still living in the Stone Age. We feel superior to the Aztecs who on a feast day sacrificed 20,000 men and women to their gods, in the belief this would keep the universe in its proper course. We sacrifice millions of men and women for various goals that we think are noble and we justify the slaughter. However, the facts are the same, only the rationalizations are different. Humans, in spite of all their intellectual and technical progress, are still caught in the idol worship of blood ties, property, and institutions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The reason of humans is still governed by irrational passions. They have still not experienced what it is to be fully human. We till have a double standard of values for judging our own and outside groups. The history of civilized man until now is really very short, comparable to less than an hour in human life. It is not amazing or discouraging that we have still not reached maturity. Those who believe in humans’ capacity to become what they potentially are would have no need to be alarmed were it not that the discrepancy between emotional and intellectual-technical development has reached such proportions now that we are threated with extinction or a new barbarism. This time only a fundamental and authentic change will save us. Yet we so little know how to accomplish this change—and the times are so pressing. One approach is to speak the truth. We mut penetrate the net of rationalizations, self-delusions, and doublethink. We must be objective and see the World and ourselves realistically and undistorted by narcissism and xenophobia. Freedom exists only where there is reason and truth. Archaic tribalism and idolatry flourish where the voice of reason is silent. Does it not follow that to know the truth about facts of foreign policy is of vital importance for the preservation of freedom and peace? Up to this point, our model outline of the policy-making phase of the planning process may have seemed to imply some identity between the affected public and its policy-making body. In the smallest planning operations, such an identity is possible and a sort of direct democracy may exist. In most instance, however, even at the local level of operation, policy-making must be carried on by representative bodies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Moreover, the fact that typical documents of the policy phase are minutes of meetings, hearings, and debates may serve to obscure that such formal encounters only condense a larger process of public involvement. The vicarious participation by the affected public through its representative policy-making body needs to be stressed, because therein sees to be an important difference in content, if not in procedure, between the making of law and the setting of goals for action programs—between government in the classical sense and planning in the modern sense. Once launched, a proposal can rarely be withdrawn to a more propitious time; it must meet its fate, whether it be rejection or acceptance. As the discussion by the public proceeds to a climax, it becomes fitting for the representative policy-making body to express a decision either by vote or by some other method. And such a decision, is ideally the formal culmination of a process by which in fact the public has already made up its mind as to what it wants. One further important, but frequently neglected, item is necessary to complete the policy phase. This is the brief ceremony which, though performed in a multitude of formal and informal ways, is generally known as burying the hatchet. Discriminating and sincere dramatization of the values held in common among the erstwhile antagonists is a priceless asset in assuring the maximum degree of co-operation-or at least noninterference-by all parties in the execution of the program which has been finally adopted as policy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The finding that traders may be trapped into undesirable equilibrium under an enforcer, for example, as the result of the mafisos intermediary’s commission is higher when one provides enforcement services than when one provides information only. This model finds that violence is more likely when the mafisos provides enforcement services and in the competition among rival mafiosi. That statement that obedience to another person is ipso facto submission needs also to be qualified by distinguishing “irrational” from “rational” authority. An example of rational authority is to be found in the relationship between student and teacher; one of irrational authority in the relationship between slave and master. Both relationships are based on the fact that authority of the person in command is accepted. Dynamically, however, they are of a different nature. The interests of the teacher and the student, in the ideal case, lie in the same direction. The teacher is satisfied if one succeeds in furthering the student; if one has failed to do so, the failure is one’s and the student’s. The slave owner, on the other hand, wants to exploit the slave as much as possible. The more one gets out of one, the more satisfied one is. At the same time the slave tries to defend as best one can one’s claims for a minimum of happiness. The interests of slave and master are antagonistic, because what is advantageous to the one is detrimental to the other. The superiority of the one over the other has different function in each case; in the first it is the condition for the furtherance of the person subjected to the authority, and in the second it is the condition for one’s exploitation. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Another distinction runs parallel to this: rational authority is rational because the authority, whether it is held by a teacher or a captain of a ship giving orders in an emergency, acts in the name of reason which, being universal, I can accept without submitting. Irrational authority has to use force or suggestion, because no one would let oneself be exploited if one were free to prevent it. Why are humans so prone to obey and why is it so difficult for them to disobey? As long as I am obedient to the power of the State, the Church, the media, or public opinion, I feel safe and protected. In fact it makes little difference what power it is that I am obedient to. It is always an institution, or men and women, who use force in one form or another and who fraudulently claim omniscience and omnipotence. My obedience makes me part of the power I worship, and hence I feel strong. I can make no error since it decides for me; I cannot be alone, because it watches over me; I cannot commit a sin, because it does not let me do so, and even if I do sin, the punishment is only the way of retuning to the almighty power. In order to disobey, one must have the courage to be alone, to err and to sin. However, courage is not enough. The capacity for courage depends on a person’s state of development. Only if a person has emerged from mother’s lap and father’s commands, only if one has emerged as a fully developed individual and thus has acquired the capacity to think and feel for oneself, only then can one have the courage to say “no” to power, to disobey. A person can become free through acts of disobedience by learning to say no to power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

However, not only is the capacity for disobedience the condition for freedom; freedom is also the condition for disobedience. If I am afraid of freedom, I cannot day to say “no,” I cannot have the courage to be disobedient. Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political, and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth. The liberation of the will from its passive condition and control by the prince of this World takes place when the believer recognizes one’s right of choice and begins deliberately to place one’s will on God’s side, thus choosing the will of God. Until the will is fully liberated for action, it is helpful for the believer to assert one’s decision frequently by saying, “I choose the will of God, and I refuse the will of the ultimate negative.” The soul may not even be able to distinguish which is which, but the declaration is having effect in the unseen World. God definitely works by His Spirit in the human as one chooses His will, energizing one through one’s volition continually to refuse the claims of sin and the ultimate negative; and the ultimate negative is thereby rendered more and more powerless, while the human is stepping out into the salvation obtained potentially for one at Calvary…and God is gaining once more a loyal subject in a rebellious World. On the part of the believer the action of the will is governed by the understanding of the mind: id est, the mind sees what to do, the will chooses to do it, and then from the spirit comes the power to fulfill the choice of the will and the percept of the mind. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

For example, the human sees that one should speak, one chooses or wills to speak, one draws upon the power in one’s spirit to carry out one’s decision. This presumes a knowledge of how to use the spirit and involves the necessity of knowing the laws of the spirit, so as to cooperate fully with the Holy Ghost. The nature of the Spiritual Community is further clarified by distinction between it manifest and latent stages. To put it simply, the difference between the latent and manifest community is the difference of “before” and “after” the encounter with the New Being in Jesus as the Christ Before an individual or a group—be they ancient Mandarin Chinese or modern humanists—receives the gospel message, they are in a period of preparatory revelation. They are not destitute of the Spiritual Presence, for there are elements of faith in the sense of being grasped by an ultimate concern, and there are elements of love in the sense of a transcendent reunion of the separated. Therefore, they belong to the Spiritual Community, but in a latent manner. The latent Spiritual Community lacks the ultimate criterion of the Cross of the Christ which is the principle of resistance against profanization and demonization. The manifest Spiritual Community is the community of those who have encountered and accepted Jesus as the Christ and, consequently, in the Cross possess the means of constant self-negation, reformation, and transformation. The Spiritual Community in its totality is thus seen to extend far beyond the Christian churches, though it embraces them. The “before” and “after” the encounter with Jesus the Christ is not demarcated by the year 33 A.D. For the Spiritual Community in its latency is created by the Spiritual Presence which is operative in all of history, including the present moment. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

The distinction between the latent and manifest Spiritual Community is not the same as the time-honored distinction between the visible and indivisible church, for “visible” and “invisible” apply to both the latent and manifest community. If its faith is expressed in an organized system of symbols and rituals, by this it is clear that the latent Spiritual Community is visible. The invisible latent community would seem to be those individuals who, although grasped by the Spiritual Presence, do not articulate their faith by adopting the symbols and cult of a recognizable, organized religion. “Visible” and “invisible” would apply to the manifest Spiritual Community in much the same way, the invisible manifest community being those who consciously and explicitly accept Jesus as the Christ, but shun the Christian churches. The existence of a Christian Humanism outside the Christian Church seems to me to make such a distinction necessary. It will not do to designate as non-churchly all those who have become alienated from the organized Churches and traditional creeds. My life in these groups for half a generation showed me how much latent Church there is in them: the experience of the finite character of human existence; the quest for the eternal and the unconditioned, and absolute devotion to justice and love; a hope which is more than any Utopia; an appreciation of Christian values; and a most delicate apprehension of the ideological misuse of Christianity in the Church and State. It often seemed to me as if the latent Church which I found in these groups, were a truer church than the organized Churches, because its members did not assume to be in possession of the truth. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Powerful as the latent church is—not even communism could life if it were devoid of all elements of the Spiritual Community. It lacks the criterion of the Cross to guard against demonization from within, and the organizational strength to fend off the attacks of the modern paganism. Plant guards and eat the fruit of them. I, the Lord, will turn the captivity of My people America, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them. America shall no more be termed forsaken, neither shall the land be termed desolate any more. I will open rivers on the high hills, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land, springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, the myrtle and the olive tree. Be glad then, ye children of America, and rejoice in the Lord your God. For the pastures of the wilderness are green with grass, the tree bears its fruit; the fig-tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad, O land, and rejoice, for the Lord hath done great things. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of American, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all. O Lord, our God, how glorious is Thy name in all the Earth! When I behold the Heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast established; what is human that Thou art mindful of them, and the son of man that Thou thinkest of him? Yet hast Thou made one but little less than divine, and hast crowned one with glory and honor. Thou hast made one to have dominion over the words of Thy hands; all things hast Thou put under one’s feet. Beloved of Thee are humans, Thine own creation, fashioned in Thine image. And pleasure be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Humans Had to Leave the Garden of Eden in order to Become Fully Human

Although Dr. Freud has for many years paid little attention to the phenomenon of nonsexual aggression, Dr. Alfred Adler has put the tendencies in the center of his system. However, he deals with them not as sado-masochism, but as “inferiority feelings” and the “wish for power.” Dr. Adler sees only the rational side of these phenomena. While we are speaking of an irrational tendency to belittle oneself and make oneself small, he thinks of inferiority feelings as adequate reaction to actual inferiorities, such as organic inferiorities or the general helplessness of a child. And while we think of the wish for power as an expression of an irrational impulse to rule over others, Dr. Adler looks at it entirely from the rational side and speaks of the wish for power as an adequate reaction which has the function of protecting a person against the dangers springing from his or her insecurity and inferiority. Dr. Adler, here, as always, cannot see beyond purposeful and rational determinations of human behaviour; and though he has contributed valuable insights into the intricacies of motivation, he remains always on the surface and never descends into the abyss of irrational impulses as Dr. Freud has done. In psychoanalytic literature a viewpoint different from Dr. Freud’s has been presented by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, Dr. Karen Horney, and myself. Although Dr. Reich’s views are based on the original concept of Dr. Freud’s libido theory, he points out that the masochistic person ultimately seeks pleasure and that the pain incurred is a by-product, not an aim in itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Dr. Horney was the first one to recognize the fundamental role of masochistic strivings in the neurotic personality, to give a full and detailed description of the masochistic character traits, and to account for them theoretically as the outcome of the whole character structure. In her writings, as well as in my own, instead of the masochistic character traits being thought of as rooted in the sexual perversion, the latter is understood to be the sexual expression of psychic tendencies that are anchored in a particular kind of character structure. What is the root of both the masochistic perversion and masochistic character traits respectively? Furthermore, what is the common root of both the masochistic and the sadistic strivings? Both the masochistic and sadistic strivings tend to help the individual to escape one’s unbearable feeling of aloneness and powerlessness. Psychoanalytic and other empirical observations of masochistic persons give ample evidence that they are filled with a terror of aloneness and insignificance. Frequently this feeling is not conscious; often it is covered by compensatory feelings of eminence and perfection. However, if one only penetrates deeply enough into the unconscious dynamics of such a person, one finds these feelings without fail. The individual finds oneself “free” in the negative sense, that is, alone with one’s self and confronting an alienated, hostile World. In this situation, to quote a telling description of Mr. Dostoevski, in The Brothers Karamazov, he has “no more pressing need than the one to find somebody to whom he can surrender, as quickly as possible, that gift of freedom which he, the unfortunate creature, was born with.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie one’s self to; one cannot bear to be one’s own individual self any longer, and one tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self. Masochism is one way toward this goal. The different forms which the masochistic strivings assume have one aim: to get rid of the individual self, to lose oneself; in other words, to get rid of the burden of freedom. This aim is obvious in those masochistic strivings in which the individual seeks to submit to a person or power which one feels as being overwhelmingly strong. (Incidentally, the conviction of superior strength of another person is always to be understood in relative terms. It can be based either upon the actual strength of the other person, or upon a conviction of one’s own utter insignificance and powerlessness. In the latter event a mouse or a leaf can assume threatening features.) In other forms of masochistic strivings the essential aim is the same. In the masochistic feeling of smallness we find a tendency which serves to increase the original feeling of insignificance. How is this to be understood? Can we assume that by making a fear worse one is trying to remedy it? Indeed, this is what the masochistic person does. As long as I struggle between my desire to be independent and strong and my feeling of insignificance or powerlessness I am caught in a tormenting conflict. If I succeed in reducing my individual self to nothing, if I can overcome the awareness of my separateness as an individual, I may save myself from this conflict. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

To feel utterly small and helpless is one way to this aim; to be overcome by the effects of intoxication still another. If all other means have not succeeded in bringing relief from the burden of aloneness, the phantasy of suicide is the last hope (but not an option). Under certain conditions these masochistic strivings are relatively successful. If the individual finds cultural patterns that satisfy these masochistic strivings (like the submission under the “leader” in Fascist ideology), one gains some security by finding oneself united with millions of others who share these feelings. Yet even in these cases, the masochistic “solution” is no more of a solution than neurotic manifestations ever are: the individual succeeds in eliminating the conspicuous suffering but not in removing the underlying conflict and the silent unhappiness. When the masochistic striving does not find a cultural pattern or when it quantitatively exceeds the average amount of masochism in the individual’s social group, the masochistic solution does not even solve anything in relative terms. It springs from an unbearable situation, tends to overcome it, and leaves the individual caught in new suffering. If human behaviour were always rational and purposeful, masochism would be as inexplicable as neurotic manifestations in general are. This, however, is what the study of emotional and mental disturbances has taught us: that human behaviour can be motivated by strivings which are caused by anxiety or some other unbearable state of mind, that these strivings tend to overcome this emotional state and yet merely cover up its most visible manifestations, or not even these. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Neurotic manifestations resemble the irrational behaviour in a panic. Thus an individual, trapped in a fire, stands at the window of his or her room and shouts for help, forgetting entirely that no one can hear one and that one could still escape by the staircase which will also be aflame in a few minutes. One shouts because one wants to be saved, and for the moment this behaviour appears to be a step on the way to being saved—and yet it will end in complete catastrophe. In the same way the masochistic strivings are caused by the desire to get rid of the individual self with all its shortcomings, conflicts, risks, doubts, and unbearable aloneness, but they only succeed in removing the most noticeable pain or they even lead to greater suffering. The irrationality of masochism, as of all other neurotic manifestations, consists in the ultimate futility of the means adopted to solve an untenable emotional suffering. These considerations refer to an important difference between neurotic and rational activity. In the latter the result corresponds to the motivation of an activity-one acts in order to attain a certain result. In neurotic strivings one acts from a compulsion which has essentially a negative character: to escape an unbearable situation. The strivings tend in a direction which only fictitiously is a solution. Actually the result is contradictory to what the person wants to attain; the compulsion to get rid of an unbearable feeling was so strong that the person was unable to choose a line of action that could be a solution in any other but a fictitious sense. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The implication of this for masochism is that the individual is driven by an unbearable feeling of aloneness and insignificance. One then attempts to overcome it by getting ride of one’s self (as a psychological, not as a physiological entity); one’s way to achieve this is to belittle oneself, to suffer, to make oneself utterly insignificant. However, pain and suffering are not what one wants; pain and suffering are the price one pays for an aim which one compulsively tries to attain. The price is dear. One has to pay more and more, like a peon, one only gets into greater debt without ever getting what one has paid for: inner peace and tranquility. The masochistic perversion proves beyond doubt that suffering can be something sought for. However, in the masochistic perversion as little as in moral masochism suffering is not the real aim; in both cases it is the means to an aim: forgetting one’s self. The difference between the perversion and masochistic character traits lies essentially in the following: In the perversion the trend to get rid of one’s self is expressed through the medium of the body and linked up with the sexual feelings. While in moral masochism, the masochistic trends get hold of the whole person and tend to destroy all the aims which the ego consciously tries to achieve, in the perversion the masochistic strivings are more or less restricted to the physical realm; moreover by their amalgamation with pleasures of the flesh they participate in the release of tension occurring in the sphere of pleasures of the flesh and thus find some direct release. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The annihilation of the individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is the attempt to become a part of the bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders one’s own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it one loses one’s integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges. One gains also security against the torture of doubt. The masochistic person, whether one’s master is an authority outside of oneself or whether one has internalized the master as conscience or a psychic compulsion, is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of one self, and thereby saved from the doubt of what decision to make. One is also saved from the doubt of what the meaning of one’s life is or who “one” is. These questions are answered by the relationship to the power to which one has attached oneself. The meaning of one’s life and the identity of one’s self are determined by the greater whole into which the self has submerged. For centuries kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice. However, human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.#RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Human history was ushered in by an act of disobedience according to the Hebrew and Greek myths. Adam and Eve, living in the Garden of Eden, were part of nature; they were in harmony with it, yet did not transcend it. They were in nature as the fetus is in the womb of the mother. They were human, and at the same time not yet human. All this changes when they disobeyed an order. By breaking the ties with Earth and mother, by cutting the umbilical cord, human emerged from a pre-human harmony and were able to take the first step into independence and freedom. The act of disobedience set Adam and Eve free and opened their eyes. They recognized each other as strangers and the World outside them as strange and even hostile. Their act of disobedience broke the primary bond with nature and made them individuals. “Original sin,” far from corrupting humans, set them free; it was the beginning of history. Humans had to leave the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on their own powers and become fully human. The prophets, in their messianic concept, confirmed the idea that humans had been right in disobeying; that they had not been corrupted by their “sin,” but freed from the fetters of pre-human harmony. For the prophets, history is the place where man and woman become human; during its unfolding they develop their powers of reason and of love until they create a new harmony between themselves, other humans and nature. This new harmony is described as “the end of days,” that period of history in which there is peace between man and man, and between man and nature. It is a “new” paradise created by humans, and one which they alone could create because they were forced to leave the “old” paradise as a result of their disobedience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Just as the Hebrew myth of Adam and Eve, so the Greek myth of Prometheus sees all of human civilization based on an act of disobedience. Prometheus, in stealing the fire form the gods, lays the foundation for the evolution of humans. There would be no human history were it not for Prometheus’ “crime.” He, like Adam and Eve, is punished for his disobedience. However, he does not repent and ask for forgiveness. On the contrary, he proudly says: “I would rather be chained to this rock than be the obedient servant of the gods.” Humans have continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was their spiritual development possible only because there were humans who dared to say no to the power that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also their intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient—disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared a change to be nonsense. If the capacity for disobedience constituted the beginning of human history, obedience might very well cause the end of human history. This is not symbolically nor poetically. There is the possibility, or even the probability, that the human race will destroy civilization and even all life upon Earth within the next five to tend years. There is no rationality or sense in it. However, the fact is that, while we are living technically in the Atomic Age, the majority of humans—including most of those who are in power—still live emotionally in the Stone Age; that while our mathematic, astronomy, and the natural sciences are of the twenty-first century, most of our ideas about politics, the state, and society lag far behind the age of science. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

If humankind commits suicide, it will be because people will obey those who command them to push the deadly buttons; because they will obey the archaic passions of fear, hate, and greed; because they will obey obsolete cliches of State sovereignty and national honor. The Soviet leaders talk much about revolutions, and we in the “free World” talk much about freedom. Yet they and we discourage disobedience—in the Soviet Union explicitly and by force, in the free World implicitly and by the more subtle methods of persuasion. However, this is not to say that all disobedience is a virtue and all obedience a vice. Such a view would ignore the dialectical relationship between obedience and disobedience. Whenever the principles which are obeyed and those which are disobeyed are irreconcilable, an act of disobedience to its counterpart, and vice versa. Antigone is the classic example of this dichotomy. By obeying the inhuman laws of the State, Antigone necessarily would disobey the laws of humanity. By obeying the latter, she must disobey the former. All martyrs of religious faiths, of freedom and of science have had to disobey those who wanted to muzzle them in order to obey their own consciences, the laws of humanity and of reason. If a human can only obey and not disobey, one is a slave; if one can only disobey and not only, one is a revel (not a revolutionary); one acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

However, in order to prevent a confusion of terms an important qualification must be made. Obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) is submission; it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place of my own. Obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation. If authentically mine, my conviction and my judgment are part of me. If I follow them rather than the judgment of others, I am being myself; hence the word obey can be applied only in a metaphorical sense and with a meaning which is fundamentally different from the one in the case of “heteronomous obedience.” However, this distinction still needs two further qualifications, one with regard to the concept of conscience and the other with regard to the concept of authority. The word conscience is used to express two phenomena which are quite distinct from each other. One is the “authoritarian conscience” which is the internalized voice of an authority whom we are eager to please and afraid of displeasing. This authoritarian conscience is what most people experience when they obey their conscience. It is also the conscience which Dr. Freud speaks of, and which he called “Super-Ego.” This Super-Ego represents the internalized commands and prohibitions of father, accepted by the son out of fear. Different from the authoritarian conscience is “humanistic conscience”; this is the voice present in every human being and independent from external sanctions and rewards. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Humanistic conscience is based on the fact that as human beings we have an intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman, what is conducive of life and what is destructive of life. This conscience serves our functioning as human beings. It is the voice which calls us back to ourselves, to our humanity. Authoritarian conscience (Super-Ego) is still obedience to a power outside of myself, even though this power has been internalized. Consciously I believe that I am following my conscience; in effect, however, I have swallowed the principles of power; just because of the illusion that humanistic conscience and Super-Ego are identical, internalized authority is so much more effective than the authority which is clearly experienced as not being part of me. Obedience to the “authoritarian conscience,” like all obedience to outside thoughts and power, tends to debilitate “humanistic conscience,” the ability to be and to judge oneself. Now, what is a fanatic? How can we recognize one? There is a tendency today, when genuine conviction has become so rare, to call “fanatic” anyone who has a deep faith in a spiritual or scientific conviction that differs radically from the opinions of others, and has not yet been proven. If this were so, then indeed, the greatest and most courageous men—Buddha, Isaiah, Socrates, William Wirt Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, Jesus, Galileo, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein—would all have been “fanatics.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The question of who is a fanatic can often not be answered by judging the contents of an assertion. For instance, faith in man or woman and in his or her potentialities can not be proven intellectually, although it can be deeply rooted in the authentic experience of the believer. Again, in scientific thought, there is often quite a distance from the stage of hypothesis formation to valid proof, and the scientists needs to have faith in one’s thinking, until one can arrive at the stage of proof. True enough, there are many assertions that are clearly in contrast to the laws of rational thought, and anyone who holds an unshakable belief in them may be correctly called a fanatic. However, often it is not easy to decide what is irrational and what is not, and neither “proof” nor general agreement are sufficient criteria. In fact, it is easier to recognize the fanatic by some qualities in one’s personality rather than by the contents of one’s convictions. The most important—and usually an observable—personal quality in the fanatic is a kind of “cold fire,” a passion which at the same time has no warmth. The fanatic is unrelated to the World outside oneself; one is not concerned with anybody or anything—even though one may proclaim one’s concern as an important part of one’s “faith.” The cold glitter in one’s eyes often tells us more about the fanatical quality of one’s ideas than the apparent “unreasonableness” of the ideas themselves. Speaking in a more theoretical vein, the fanatic can be described as a highly narcissistic person who is disengaged from the World outside. One does not really feel anything since authentic feeling is always the result of the interrelation between oneself and the World. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The fanatic’s pathology is similar to that of a depressed person who suffers not from sadness (which would be a relief) but from the incapacity to feel anything. The fanatic is different from the depressed person (and in some ways similar to the manic) inasmuch as one has found a way out of acute depression. One has built for oneself an idol, an absolute, to which one surrenders completely but of which one also makes oneself a part. One then acts, thinks, and feels in the name of one’s idol, or rather, one has the illusion of “feeling,” of inner excitement, while one has no authentic feeling. One lives in a state of narcissistic excitement since one has drowned the feeling of one’s isolation and emptiness in a total submission to the idol and in the simultaneous deification of one’s own ego, which one has made part of the idol. One is passionate in one’s idolatric submission and in one’s grandiosity; yet cold in one’s inability for genuine relatedness and feeling. One’s attitude may be described symbolically as “burning ice.” If the content of one’s idol is love, brotherliness, God, salvation, the country, the race, honour, et cetera, rather than frank destructiveness, hostility, or overt desire for conquest, one will be particularly deceptive to others. However, as far as human reality is concerned, it makes little difference what the nature of the idol is. Fanaticism is always the result of the incapacity for authentic relatedness. The fanatic is so seductive, and hence so dangerous politically, because one seems to feel so intensely and to be so convinced. Since we all long for certainty and passionate experience, is it surprising that the fanatic succeeds in attracting so many with one’s counterfeit faith and feelings? #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

One of the fascinating features of actual negotiation is the fact that a great deal of it is nonverbal, proceeding by gesture, posture, facial expression, grunts, sighs, smiles, cheers, snorts, and sneers. Many arguments advanced by literate and rational means are met not in kind but by ridicule, indifference, browbeating, threat, or suppression. Yet the outcome may be agreed to by all concerned. Some of the ideological justifications offered in defense of group interests are often discounted at far below face value without either party dropping its mask of seriousness in speaking or hearing them. On the other hand, profoundly sincere statements of devotion to community interest may be brutally condemned as window-dressing, without preventing later acceptance of highly formal and moral prembles to final agreements. These necessary qualifications to practice, however, do not obviate the frequently pressing practical problem of when to terminate discussion. Where, between utter unanimity at one pole and outright conflict t the other, is the best point for decision? Th principle of majority rule should not mean that as soon as 51 percent of the participants in a decision-making body make up their mind, no more discussion is required. If attention is kept on the fact that, for planning operations, the essential function of the policy phase is to produce a binding commitment for a specified period of time, the attainment of a majority for a proposal may be quite an insufficient guide as to when to terminate discussion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Indeed, when affairs of this sort are well-handled in practice, they proceed quite the other way around; the termination of discussion is the moment to take the vote which officially and ceremonially signifies the reaching of the decision. When all relevant facts have been presented, when all possibilities have been explored, when all compromises and concessions have been bargained out, then it will be noticed that participants, if they have anything more to say at all, will begin to repeat themselves. Or, they cease to engage in discussion, and commence to talk only to delay actions. Experienced discussants are quite able to discern this moment. To ask for a vote on the question prior to this point is to court later nonco-operation from dissident minorities; to postpone discussion after this point is to build up unnecessary impatience and hostile feelings. When the vote is taken, if the proposal wins, the bigger the majority for it, the better the chances of later getting the co-opertion of the losing minorities. Also, the less chance of having to reopen the policy before its term of commitment runs out. When minorities have had their day in court, as it were, and have lost their case fairly after full debate, they become obligated to abide by the decision of the majority. Until there has been a full debate there is not likely to be mutual understanding, and a consensus on the nature of the specific differences between majority and minority (“agreement to disagree”), which, while not constituting unanimous agreement, yet preserves the integrity of the community. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

As long as the conditions of discussion are maintained, minorities can become majorities in the future, especially when periodic opportunities for evaluation and reconsideration are given, along with the customary opportunities for re-election for officers. There is likely to be a series of issues, each of which divides the public in diverse ways. Opponents on one issue become allies on others, so that permanent alienation of any group is rare. The activities and the resulting relationships and outcomes with an enforcement intermediary are important. If for instance, an investigation is done, and election fraud has been uncovered, it is important to do more than keep a record of this. Immediate punishment needs to be inflicted on the cheater. If the punishment is drastic enough, authority’s threat of inflicting it is credible, then it deters cheating. However, if authorities make threats to punish others and allow people who have no authority threaten to punish law abiding citizens and does nothing to punish them, and at the same time protects criminals, the state then is a sponsor and coconspirator of terrorism. However, a state that is about law and order, threatens to inflict an immediate punishment and does not rely on any repeated gams with cheaters and does not share any responsibility for their actions. Among the legal privileges of corporations…are the right to sue and the “right” to be sued. Who wants to be sued! However, the right to be sued is the power to make a promise…a prerequisite to doing business. One has to be a part of a mutually reinforcing system—this right is valuable to you in deals with others, and others will credibly reciprocate your honesty. It is also important to purchase protection against oneself. The phenomenon is also similar to the idea of “giving hostages” to guarantee one’s own good behaviour. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

In saving the man and woman, God calls him into co-action with Himself, to work out one’s own salvation, for it is the Holy Spirit who work with and in one, to enable one to will and to do God’s pleasure. God give to the man or woman in the hour of one’s regeneration the decisive liberty of will to rule over oneself, as one walks in fellowship with God. And by this restoration of a will free to act in choosing for God. The ultimate negative loses one’s power. The ultimate negative is the god of this World, and one rules the World through the will of humans enslaved by one—enslaved not only directly but indirectly, by one’s inciting humans to enslave one another and to covet the power of “influence,” whereas they should work with God to restore to every human the freedom of one’s own personal volition, and the power of choice to do right because it is right—the power obtained for them at Calvary. In this direction we can see the working of the World-rulers of darkness in the realm which they govern, directly in atmospheric influence and indirectly through humans, in hypnotic suggestions, mind reading, manipulation of the will, and other forms of invisible force, sometimes employed for the supposed good of others. The danger of all forms of healing by “suggestion,” and all kindred methods of seeking to benefit humans in physical or mental ways, lies in their bringing about passivity of the will and mental powers which lays them open to influences of psychopathological offenders. We, for the moment, avoid the word “church” since it is too closely associated with the ambiguities of religion. Instead, we speak of the Spiritual Community which is the community of the New Being. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The Community of the New Being is neither organized religion, nor hierarchical authority, nor social organization; it is primarily a group of people who express a new reality by which they have been grasped. The clue to understanding the connection between the New Being and the Spiritual Community is the nature of revelation, which includes a divine manifestation plus its reception as such by an individual or a group. Christology emphasizes final revelation in the Christ; ecclesiology, its reception in faith. As the Christ is not the Christ without those who receive Him as the Christ, so the Spiritual Community is the creation of the Spirit which opens the eyes of faith to a recognition of the New Being. However, it is the New Being in Jesus as the Christ that is the criterion of the Spiritual Presence and the measure of the marks of the Spiritual Community. The story of the ecstatic event of Pentecost a graphic illustration of the marks of the Spiritual Community. The first mark of faith, for the individuals who constitute the community are grasped by the Spiritual Presence. Within the Spiritual Community there is room for an unlimited variety of “faiths,” even conflicting ones, as long as they are all animated by the Spirit. The second mark is love, for the New Being manifest in the Spiritual Community reunited those who are separated. The third and fourth marks, unity and universality, follow naturally upon the faith and love generated by the Spirit. The Spiritual Community, holy though it is, is not the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. In the Spiritual Community one participates in unambiguous life, but only fragmentarily. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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No Wonder the Nightmares

No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Llanada Villa; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. The evening air outside was fresh as it was warm, and full of the breath of the rain. A few ghosts of sunlight drifted down. I felt a rush of gratitude, and stood silently letting the air kiss my face and hands. All around the railings of this porch vines grow, tendrils dancing in the breeze, fine tiny leaves moving like so many little fairy wings beating against the screen. Flowers glimmering in the dark, white and delicate and beautiful. Looking out into the night, my ghoul-haunted mansion reawakened a sense of foreboding evil. It retained its mystic aura of the early colonials, and showed evidence of having been used for sinister purposes by colonial sorcerers and alchemists. In reality, I was more horrified than astonished; my home was developed with occult symbols to be used in certain conjurations. And there is an arrangement—a three-dimensional pattern. A maze of utterly baffling intricacy used in the construction to connect the hallways with the rooms. The unimagined space was alive with motion and music, and having no semblance to anything on Earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in a savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of Llanada Villa which chilled me to the very core. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Rushing airy presence could be heard faintly at certain hours from stated rooms. Then too, the servants are mortally afraid of the numerous apparitions which grow vocal on warm nights, lying in wait for fresh souls to consume. They time their eerie cries in unison with the sufferer’s fear. If these demons can catch the soul, they instantly flutter away chittering in evil laughter. Deposits of skulls and bones found on my estate sustain the popular belief that it was once an ancient burial-place. Many ethnologists persist in believing the remains Caucasian. Prior to purchasing and building my estate, the eighteen-room farmhouse had always been feared because the owner’s reputation for black magic, and the unexplained death by violence of his wife. After midnight, one can still hear the rhythmical screaming of shrill note bursting into a kind of pandaemoniac cachinnation which fills all the countryside, and it is not until dawn that they finally quiet down. The spirits walk unseen and foul in lonely places in the mansion, where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. Their seal is engraven in the basement. One night, I awoke during a wild thunderstorm, and the boards in the corridor outside my chamber were creaking loudly. Lightning leapt in through the large window, and loud cracking peals of thunder burst overheard. However, it was the creaking that bothered me—it sounded like people walking up and down. When I finally got up my courage, I opened the door and peered out. Nobody was there. The door to Daisy’s bedroom was shut, and she was probably asleep. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

Timidly, I crept down the front staircase and peered into the shadowy drawing room. As my eyes got used to the dark, I saw something that froze my blood: Someone was sitting in one of the arm chairs. I clenched my teeth and closed my eye. I could hear my heart hammering. Then I opened my eyes again, and a blue flash of lightning lit the room. The dark shape was gone. For a long time I stood in the doorway, staring into darkness. Then I made my way to a table and found a box of matches to light a lamp. The smoky yellowish glow showed that the room was empty. Anyone who tried to leave the room would have had to brush past me. Also, there would have been the sound of footsteps. You can imagine how all this crazy stuff strained my temper—and my imagination. I opened the window—I waited a few minutes first—and standing there getting some fresh air and trying to figure out what could be behind it. After my fear died down, I made my way up the stairs and climbed into bed falling into an exhausted slumber. It was getting late in the morning. Light touched the dark skies with gray. A loose, crystal-smelling wind swept down from the mountains, an autumn chill of wetness. Down from the mountains and into Llanada Villa, where it set the trees hissing. And it even came into the mansion, because the bell in the belfry was ringing and there was no one to ring the bell. The farms in the yard stopped their talk and listened to the enchanting music. It came another wind then, mountain-scattered and fast: it billowed dresses, set damp hair moving; it pushed over pewter vases, and smashed roses and hydrangeas to swirling dust against the emerald green lawns. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

I felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draught of a tomb’s cold clamminess. An entity stretched like titan phantasms beyond all sphere of force and matter, space and time. From every corner of my home, I could hear sepulchral voices of intruding horror. The hellish ancient nightmare fastened itself to my soul. The vague evil was threatening this estate, which gave me a growing amazement which passed slowly through caried degrees of alarm to a state of really acute spiritual fear. Deep and terrible growls continued. What had come had indeed completed its entrance; for the growling and the screaming was now fast fading into a mixed low growling and moaning, proceeding unmistakably from within the walls. The mansion was full of frightful spirits which I knew too well, and three servants rushed across the hall to from whence a low whining came. For a second, nobody dared to turn on the light, then Hans summoned up his courage and pushed the button. One of the three—it is not certain which—shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among the disordered tables and overturned chairs. I wholly lost consciousness for an instant, though I did not stumble or fall. Kunst lay half-bent on his side in a pool of blood and tarry sickness. He was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while his chest heaved. “Quickly, get him out of my sight.” I shouted. “This man needs medical attention immediately!” “Yes, Mrs. Winchester,” my servants replied. Blood tricked along the parquet floors, and left a curious discolouration behing. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room. Whatever attacked this man seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to Earth or the solar system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

It was now sunset, with a great wrinkled sheet of purple and rose stretching half across the sky and the first stars appearing above in the dark horizon. Outside the window there was a gathering crowd and the sound of a panic-struck whirring and fluttering. A cry rose from the crowd. “No one is to be admitted until the medical examiner arrives!” I shouted. Meanwhile frightful changes were taking place on the floor. Desiccated flesh was tight over his skull. Filthy strands of hair were matted over his scalp, tattered lips were drawn away from broken yellow teeth, and, sunken in their sockets, eyes that should be dead were bright with hideous life. I screamed again, desperate with fear. His cadaverous face fell away, and the sight of his caved-in forehead and unblinking eyes from between which thick blood had been oozing would awaken me from my nightmares on countless nights. I was almost convulsed with fright as I stumbled into the kitchen. Shivering afresh with fight, I was aware that there had been unseen things around Llanada Villa—living things—things that were not human. The next day all the countryside was in a panic; and cowed, uncommunicative groups came and went where the fiendish thing had occurred. Darkness fell upon a stricken countryside. Servants banded together and watched the mansion, but it was futile, an ineffective gesture against the vengeful spirits. Still, these bold souls held steadfast. At 3am, the ghouls screamed with such unusual persistence that many could not sleep. It was horrible, yet hardly a surprise. This was nothing more than the spiritually poignant phase of the unravelling horror of my family and fortune being haunted, and I might be the next victim. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5

Happy Sarah L. Winchester Day!

“I have not received authorization to visit The Winchester Mansion. However, I have investigated secretly (and quite illegally) for a short time one night and was nearly caught. Came across reference to the place in collection of seventeenth century letters and papers in one of Mrs. Winchester’s libraries where she keeps the rare and forbidden books of old days. Writer denouncing the family as a brood of sorcerers and witches, references to alchemical activities and other less savory rumors—and describes underground stone chambers, pre-Columbian artifacts, et cetera, which are put to ‘foul usage and diabolic praktise.'”

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Make America Safe Again

Many people in the United States of America recognize communism as an overwhelming threat to values, which have been central to their own lives and families. Values shape what men and women see as important in life, how priorities are to be established, and how they create their own places within a given historical context. It is the intensity of commit to a set of values that provides sources of meaning in what otherwise would be a drab and mundane World. This intensity ranges along a continuum from the vigor and fervor of true believer to only qualified confidence in their own beliefs and commitments. To some, values are at the center of self-identities. There are several criteria that form the core values of American families. Americans have drawn upon the values of individualism, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, and equality, which are noteworthy in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in shaping their historical destiny. The rights and privilege prominently emphasized in the Constitution were designed to place limits on what our government could or could not do. The equality of opportunity is formally inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and also a prominent part of the value system of America. The core values of American life are deeply embedded in historical experiences and traditions. All modern nations are required to create and maintain their society as a moral community. It is through deployment of many aspects of their core values that they are able to achieve this purpose. The values that are drawn upon in this process do not endure very long without modifications. Each generation finds it necessary to take the data from the past and rework it to fit the need of their time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Other core values were selected as a result of the extensiveness with which they are held in the general population and for the direction in which society is moving. For example, the importance of intimate relationships is primarily emphasized in individual hopes and aspirations for having a “good marriage.” Other prominent values include consumerism, materialism, and technology. These beliefs and values are clearly evident in lifestyles that continue to be accentuated with the passing of time. No claims are made for the exclusiveness of the values selected. Americans hold the view that the ultimate social reality resides with the individual personally, rather than with the community, the family, or the broader society. Accordingly, the essential feature of social life is that social groups are made up of interacting individuals. We belong to social groups because it is practical and expedient to do so. If it is no longer in our best interests to belong to a particular group, we have a right to disaffiliate. The prominent place of the individual is evident in the right of and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The norm calling for recognizing the dignity and worth of each individual is advocated to offset stereotypes based on race, gender, and national origin. Ideas about individualism hold that individuals are unique, have special talents and abilities, and if they work hard enough, they can be successful in life. However, freedom is conditional and dependent upon the options that have been made available to us. How we make choices among options is shaped by our social condition of desires and preferences. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

In the subsequent creation of a civil society, certain basic rights or entitlements grew out of what it means to be human or to be a citizen of the state. The personal freedom accorded to the individual included freedom of speech, freedom of press, and the rights of assembly. The major advantages of political democracy were seen as deriving from permitting citizens to become engaged in civic participation on a widespread basis. The developments during childhood consist of an enormous amount of social learning in order for the child to find his or her place within the complexity of the modern World. Learning to belong requires an awareness of the rules that regulate social conduct. The child must learn that there is a time and place, both for talking and remaining silent; that certain rights of others must be respected; that activities are structured in some prearranged sequence and that performances are evaluated and rewarded or punished accordingly. Belonging and membership reflect the qualities of family bonds, friendship ties, love, career commitments, and other cohesive relationships that offer support for one’s identity. If these relationships are rewarding, then one may proceed with a relatively high degree of confidence in developing personal goals, and plans for the future. However, if one views significant others as being indifferent and unsupportive, experiences of loneliness are likely to follow and the feeling develops that one must rely exclusively on personal resources in times of trouble. “Communism,” its original manifesto stated, “does not propose to ‘capture’ the bourgeois state, but to conquer and destroy it.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The major problem confronting the people of the United States of America and free peoples everywhere in the first quarter of the 21st century is the threat to peace and freedom presented by the militant aggressiveness of international communism. As society moves away from traditional ideas such as family units, private property, basic human rights, and freedom, the road to a communist regime is already being paved like the crack of doom. Communism pours the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. American has never witnessed anything like this before. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. Communists are lawless, they are teaching kids to question their gender, and they have a strong hatred for America and traditional America values. It is America that have saved the World. Underneath their skin, communism and liberalism are blood brothers. Sadism to many observers seemed less of a puzzle than masochism. That one wished to hurt others or to dominate them seemed, though not necessarily “good,” quite natural. Mr. Hobbes assumed as a “general inclination of all mankind” the existence of “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in Death.” For him the wish for power has no diabolical quality but is a perfectly rational result of man’s desire for pleasure and security. From Mr. Hobbes to Mr. Hitler, who explains the wish for domination as the logical result of the biologically conditioned struggle for survival of the fittest, the lust for power has been explained as a part of human nature which does not warrant any explanation beyond the obvious. Masochistic strivings, however, tendencies directed against one’s own self, seem to be a riddle. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

How should one understand the fact that people not only want to belittle and weaken and hurt themselves, but even enjoy doing so? Does not the phenomenon of masochism contradict our whole picture of the human psyche as directed toward pleasure and self-preservation? How can one explain that some people are attracted by and tend to incur what we all seem to go to such length to avoid: pain and suffering? There is a phenomenon, however, which proves that suffering and weakness can be the aim of human striving: the masochistic perversion. Here we find that people quite consciously want to suffer in one way or another and enjoy it. In the masochistic perversion, a person feels sexual excitement when experiencing pain inflicted upon one by another person. However, this is not the only form of masochistic perversion. Frequently it is not the actual suffering of pain that is sought for, but the excitement and satisfaction aroused by being physically bound, made helpless and weak. Often all that is wanted in the masochistic perversion is to be made weak “morally,” by being treated or spoken to like a little child, or by being scolded or humiliated in different ways. In the sadistic perversion, we find the satisfaction derived from corresponding devices, that is, from hurting other persons physically, from tying them with ropes or chains, or from humiliating them by action or words. The masochistic perversion with it conscious and intentional enjoyment of pain or humiliation caught the eye of psychologist and writers earlier than the masochistic character (or moral masochism). #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

More and more, however, one recognized how closely the masochistic tendencies of the kind we described first are akin to the sexual perversion, and that both types of masochism are essentially one and the same phenomenon. Certain psychologists assumed that since there are people who want to submit and to suffer, there must be an “instinct: which has this very aim. Sociologists, like Dr. Vierkand, came to the same conclusion. The first one to attempt a more thorough theoretical explanation was Dr. Freud. He originally thought that sado-masochism was essentially a sexual phenomenon. Observing sado-masochistic practices in little children, he assumed that sado-masochism was a “partial drive” which regularly appears in the development of the sexual instinct. He believed that sado-masochism tendencies in adults are due to a fixation of a person’s psychosexual development on an early level or to a later regression to it. Later on, Dr. Freud became increasingly aware of the importance of those phenomena which he called moral masochism, a tendency to suffer not physically, but mentally. He stressed also the fact that masochistic and sadistic tendencies were always to be found together in spite of their seeming contradiction. However, he changed his theoretical explanation of masochistic phenomena. Assuming that there is a biologically given tendency to destroy which can be directed either against others or against oneself, Dr. Freud suggested that masochism is essentially the product of this so-called death-instinct. If directed against one’s own person, he further suggested that this death-instinct, which we cannot observe directly, amalgamates itself with the sexual instinct and in the amalgamation appears as masochism, and as sadism if directed against others. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Dr. Freud assumed that this very mixture with the sexual instinct protect humans from the dangerous effect the unmixed death-instinct would have. According to Dr. Freud, if one fails to amalgamate destructiveness with pleasures of the flesh, then humans have only the choice of either destroying themselves or destroying others. This theory is basically different from Dr. Freud’s original assumption about sado-masochism. There, sadomasochism was essentially a sexual phenomenon, but in the newer theory it is essentially a nonsexual phenomenon, the sexual factor in it being only due to the amalgamation of the death-instinct with the sexual instinct. One of the more extreme forms of pathological thinking, is paranoid thinking. The case of an individual suffering from paranoic delusions is clear to the psychiatrist and to most laymen as well. The man or woman who tells us that everybody is “after him,” or “after her,” this is one’s colleagues, one’s friends, and even one’s spouse are conspiring to murder one is typically recognized by most as being insane, but this is not always the case. On what basis is this considered insanity? Quite obviously not because the accusations one makes are logically impossible. It could be that one’s enemies, one’s acquaintances, even one’s family have united to destroy one; in fact such things have happened. We can not truthfully answer the unfortunate patient and say that what one assumes is not possible. We can only argue that it is very unlikely; that it is unlikely due to the infrequency of such events in general and the character of one’s spouse and friends in particular. (However, character is very important, as there are people who are around a lot of seedy people, whom they cannot trust, and this is not always by choice.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Yet we shall not convince the patient. For one, reality is based on logical possibility not on probability. This attitude is exactly the basis of one’s illness. One’s contact with reality rests on the small basis of its compatibility with the laws of logical thinking, and does not require the examination of realistic probability. It does not require it because the paranoic is not capable of making this examination. As with every psychotic patient, one’s contact with reality is exceedingly thin and brittle. Reality, for one, is mainly what exists within oneself, one’s own emotions, fears, and desires. The World outside is the mirror or the symbolic representation of one’s inner World. However, in contract to the schizophrenic person, many paranoid persons have preserved one aspect of the sane thinking: the requirement of logical possibility. They have merely relinquished the other, the other, the aspect of realistic probability. If only possibility is required as a condition for truth, it is easy to achieve certainty. If, on the other hand, probability is required, there are relatively few thins to be certain of. This is indeed what makes paranoid thinking so “attractive” in spite of the suffering it causes. It saves man from doubt. It guarantees a sense of certainty, which transcends most insights to which sane thinking can lead. It is easy for people to recognize paranoid thinking in the individual case of a paranoid psychotic. However, to recognize paranoid thinking when it is shred by millions of other people and approved by the authorities who lead them, is more difficult. A case in point is the conventional thinking about Russia. Most Americans today think about Russia in a paranoid fashion; namely, they ask what is possible rather than what is probable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Indeed, it is possible that President Putin wants to conquer us by force. It is possible that he makes peace proposals in order to make us unaware of the danger. It is also possible that his whole argument with the Chinese Communists about coexistence is nothing but a trick to make us believe that he wants peace in order to al the better surprise us. If we think only of possibilities, then indeed there is no chance for realistic and sensile political action. Sane thinking means not only to think of possibilities, which in fact are always relatively easy to recognize, but to think also of probabilities. That means to examine the realistic situations, and to predict to some extent an opponent’s probable action by means of an analysis of all the factors and motivations that influence one’s behaviour. To make this point perfectly clear, I want to state that my emphasis on sane versus paranoid thinking does not imply judgment that the Russians might not have all the sinister and deceptive plans just mentioned. Instead, it insists that we must conduct a thorough and dispassionate examination of the facts and that logical possibilities as such proves nothing and means little. Another pathological mechanism which threatens realistic and effective political thinking is that of projection. Everyone is familiar with this mechanism in its cruder forms when it appears in individual cases. Everybody knows the hostile and destructive person who accused everybody else of being hostile and pictures oneself and being innocent and victimized. There are thousands of marriages that continue to exist on the basis of this projective mechanism. Each of the partners accuses the other of what in reality is one’s own problem, and hence succeeds in being entirely occupied with the problem of one’s partner instead of facing one’s own. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Again what is easily seen in individual cases is not seen when the same projective mechanism is shared by millions and supported by their leaders. For example, during the First World War, the peoples in the allied countries believed that the Germans were vile Huns, killing innocent babies and that they were the true personification of all evil to the extent that even the music of Mr. Bach and Mr. Beethoven became part of the Devil’s territory. On the other hand the accusers of the Huns were fighting only for the noblest purposes, for freedom, for peace, for democracy, and so on. The Germans, strangely enough, believed exactly the same things about the allies. What is the result? The enemy appears as the embodiment of all evil because all evil that I feel in my self is projected on to him or her. Logically, after this has happened, I consider myself as the embodiment of all good since the evil has been transferred to the other side. The result is indignation and hatred against the enemy and uncritical, narcissistic self-glorification. This can create a mood of common mania and shared passion of hate. Nevertheless, it is pathological thinking, dangerous when it leads to war and deadly when war means destruction. Our attitudes toward communism, the Soviet Union, and Communist China are, to a considerable extent demonstrations of projective thinking. Indeed, the Stalinist terror system was inhuman, cruel, and revolting, although no more so than the terror in a number of countries that we call free—no more so, for instance than was the terror of Mr. Trujillo or Mr. Batista. #RandlphHarris 10 of 18

I do not mention non-communist cruelty or callousness as being extenuating factors in judging the Stalin regime, because obviously cruelties and inhumanities do not cancel out each other. I mention them to show that the indignation of many people against Mr. Stalin is not as genuine as they believe it to be. If it were, they would feel just as indignant about other cases of cruelty and callousness, whether the perpetrators happen to be their political enemies or not. However, more than that the Stalin regime has gone. Russia is not a conservative police regime, which is by no means a desirable thing if one cherishes freedom and individuality, but which also should not arose the kind of deep human indignation that the Stalinist system merited. It is fortunate that the Russian regime has changed from cruel terrorism to the methods of a conservative police state, but the conflict in Ukraine is causing friction and even dividing families of mixed ethnicities. It also shows lack of sincerity in those lovers of freedom who are most vocal in their hatred of the Soviet Union that they seem hardly to be aware of the considerable change that has occurred. Many still continue to believe that communism is the epitome of evil, and that we, the free World, including our allies, are the personification of all that is good. The result is the narcissistic and unrealistic picture of the West as the fighter for good, for freedom, and for humanity, and of communism as the enemy of all that is human and decent. The Communist Chinese, especially in their way of looking at the West, follow the same mechanism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

If projection is mixed with paranoid thinking, as is the cause during a war and also in the “cold war,” we have, indeed, a dangerously explosive psychological mixture, which prevents sane and anticipatory thinking. The difference between the various answers is the difference between mental health and mental sickness, between suffering and joy, between stagnation and growth, between life and death, between good and evil. All answer that can be qualified as good have in common that they are consistent with the very nature of life, which is continuous birth and growth. All answers that can be qualified as bad have in common that they conflict with the nature of life, that they are conducive to stagnation, and eventually to death. Indeed, at the moment man or woman is born, life ask one’s a question, the question of human existence. One must answer this question at every moment of one’s life. One must answer it, not one’s mind, or one’s body, but he or she, the real person, one’s feet, one’s hands, one’s eyes, one’s stomach, one’s mind, one’s feeling, one’s real—not an imagined or abstracted—person. There are only a limited number of answers to the question of existence. We find these answers in the history of religion, from the most primitive to the highest. We find them also in the variety of characters, from the fullest sanity to the deepest psychosis. Each individual represents in oneself the whole of humanity and its evolution. We find individuals who represent human beings on the most primitive level of history, and others who represent humankind as it will be thousands of years from now. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

The answer to life that correspond to the reality of human existence is conducive to mental health. What is generally understood by mental health, however, is negative, rather than positive; the absence of sickness, rather than the presence of well-being. Actually there is even very little discussion in the psychiatric and psychological literature of what constitutes well-being. Well-being is the ability to be creative, to be aware, and to respond; to be independent and fully active, and by this very fact to be one with the World. To be concerned with being, not with having; to experience joy in the very act of living, and to consider living creatively as the only meaning of life. Well-being is not an assumption in the mind of a person. It is expressed in one’s whole body, in the way one walks, talks, in the tonus of one’s muscle. Certainly, anyone who wants to achieve this aim must struggle against many basic trends of modern culture. One, the idea of a split between intellect and affect, an idea which has been prevalent from Mr. Descartes to Dr. Freud. In this whole development (to which there are, of course, exceptions) the assumption is made that only the intellect is rational and that affect, by its very nature, is irrational. Dr. Freud has made this assumption very explicitly by saying that love by its very nature is neurotic, infantile, irrational. His aim was actually to help humans succeed in dominating irrational affect by intellect; or, to put it into his own words, “Where there was Id, there shall be Ego.” Yet this dogma of the split between affect and thought does not correspond to the reality of human existence, and is destructive of human growth. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

We cannot understand human beings fully nor achieve the aim of well-being unless we overcome the idea of this split, restore to man and woman his and her original unity, and recognize that the split between affect and thought, body and mind, is nothing but a product of our own thought and does not correspond to the reality of man or woman. The other obstacle to the achievement of well-being, deeply rooted in the spirit of modern society, is the fact of man’s dethronement from his supreme place. The nineteenth century said “God is dead”; the twentieth century could say “Man is dead”; and the twenty first century could say, “Man is a parasite peculiar to Earth, which tolerates his presence for a little while. He exists nowhere else in the cosmos, and he does not exist here for long. A while, a few chessboard wars, which he fights himself—You begin to understand.” Means have been transformed into ends, the production and consumption of things has become the aim of life, to which living is subordinated. We produce things that act like men and men that act like things. Man has transformed himself into a thing and worships the products of his own hands; he is alienated from himself and has regressed to idolatry, even though he uses God’s name. Mr. Emerson already saw that “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” Today many of us see it. The achievement of well-being is possible only under one condition: if we put man back into the saddle. Good faith: This means willingness to be bound by an agreement into which one has voluntarily entered. However, this in turn is necessarily conditional on the good faith of the other parties to the agreement. It seems to be not only an explicit principle of law but a feature of the way in which conscience develops that a person does not feel morally bound—does not disapprove one’s own actions—if one violates an agreement extracted by another party through force or fraud. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

This does not apply to inherited loyalties, until they move into the area of deliberate and self-conscious choice. In the agreements made in actual life, threats are often used which come close to the use of force, bargaining occurs parties of unequal power, and biased misrepresentations are made which approach willful deception. The perfectly free and equal agreement is therefore an ideal, but one very useful as a standard for judging the quality of agreements, particularly for predicting their durability as a basis for planning. Good faith must be manifest in the process of discussion itself, in the consistent maintenance of the conditions of genuine discussion. Filibustering, willful postponement of decision by calling for more facts and study, frustration of parliamentary procedure, and persistent arguments ad hominem which impugn the good faith of others—these tactics soon dissipate the mutual trust without a minimum of which discussion cannot long continue. In industrial relations, where bargaining in good faith is required by law, the government defines good faith as the willingness to continue to talk. This seems to imply very little, but over time it has come to accomplish a lot. As trust in the good faith of others increases, discussion is facilitated by the greater ease with which clashes of interests can be confronted and dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner. Although these five preconditions for genuine discussion may occur, they offer no guarantee that the discussion which follows will produce agreement and a binding commitment. Discussion may break down through the clash of vital interest which appear to be irreconcilable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Or a decision may be necessary due to the force of events, before there can be thorough discussion, so that some are forced into compliance by others. In some instances, through timidity or lack of interest, one party will submit to the proposal of another without discussion. Contrary to the naïve notion that deciding means only to take a vote, the many whose interests are only slightly affected may willingly defer to the few to whom the outcome is vital. In those cases where discussion is not completed before decision and action must be taken, or where passive compliance takes the place of vigorous participation and agreement, it would be wrong to speak of a breakdown of the discussion. No doubt many discussions fall short in one way or another of the model described above, and this is only one of the imperfections to be expected. Rarely, for example, does a discussion end in unanimity, except in the proximate sense the marginalized groups consent to majority rule as long as their vital interests are not too severely transgressed. It is not defensible to insist that genuine discussion can only occur within the confines of some fixed rules of etiquette, any more than within fixed rules of grammar—although some etiquette and some grammar are indispensable. Attempts to mange discussion through the imposition of rules from without usually have the opposite effect from the improvement intended; any deliberative body almost by definition must be the custodian of its own rules of discussion. That discussion can and does improve is evident in many examples. It has done so, however, only where it has been pursued as a value by participants who have retained their sovereign equality and the other minimum conditioned noted above. To set up an independent power to compel arbitration as a means of guaranteeing agreement in discussion is to destroy discussion and the whole principle of moral commitments to voluntary agreements. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The history of World religions manifests the Spiritual Presence in as an anticipation of the New Being. Spirit Christology elucidates the unique presence of the Spirit in Jesus who is the Christ. However, our concern here is with the Spiritual Community, with those who receive the New Being At first the regenerated human is but a “babe in Christ,” manifesting many of the characteristics of the natural human in jealousy, strife, et cetera, until one apprehends the need of a fuller reception of the Holy Spirit to dwell in one’s regenerated spirit—making it God’s sanctuary. The unregenerate human is wholly dominated by soul and body. The regenerate human has one’s spirit quickened, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, yet may be governed by soul and body because one’s spirit is compressed and bound. The spiritual human has one’s spirit liberated from bondage to the soul to be the organ of the Holy Spirit in mind and body. It is then that, by the Holy Spirit’s power, one’s volition is brought into harmony with God in all His laws and purposes, and the whole outer human into self-control. This it is written, “The fruit of the Spirit…is self-control” reports Galatians 5.23. It is not only love, joy, peace, longsuffering, and gentleness, manifested through the channel of the soul—the personality—but in a true dominion over the “World” of oneself the fruit is: every thought brought into captivity, in the same obedience to the will of the Father as was manifested in Christ; His spirit “ruled” also from the chamber of the will, so that one is of a “cool spirit” and well as what is in one’s mind; and one’s body so obedient to the helm of the will that it is a disciplined and alert instrument for God to energize and empower—an instrument to be handled intelligently as a vehicle for service, and not any longer master of the man, or the mere tool of the ultimate negative and unruly desires. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

If we recall that all ambiguities of life are rooted in the separation and interplay of essential and existential elements of being, it would seem that, once a transcendent reunion of these elements is achieved by the Spiritual Presence, there is always New Being in History. Ambiguity seems banished; in fact, rendered impossible. However, such is not the case, for existence cannot be denied, and the conditions of existence postulate ambiguity. We reconcile unambiguous life with de facto existential ambiguity by point out the fragmentary character of the unambiguous life produced by the Spirit. It is fragmentary because subject to time and space. It is incomplete in the sense that it is anticipatory. Thus, the No of the existential condition is maintained, not by injecting ambiguity into unambiguous life, but by show the anticipatory and hence fragmentary nature of our reception of and participation in the New Being. The possession of unambiguous life integrally, id est, beyond time and space, is the problem of eschatology. And God said: Let the Earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after its kind. And it was so…and God saw it was good. When a tree is wantonly cut down, its voice rings from one end of the Earth to the other. When you besiege a city, do not destroy the trees thereof; you may eat them but you must not cut them down. A humans’ life is sustained by trees. Just as others planted for you, plant for the sake of your children. If you had a sapling in your hand and were told that the Messiah had come, first plant the sapling, then go out to greet him. And pleasure be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, as they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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