Home » Africa (Page 13)
Category Archives: Africa
I Wish I Could Help You. The Problem is that You are too Sick for Managed Care.
You cannot have a constitutional right to do something that is illegal. Although the community mental healthy approach has often failed to address the needs of the people with severe disorders, it has given rise to an important principle of mental health care—prevention. Rather than wait for psychological disorders to occur, many of today’s community programs try to correct the social conditions that give rise to psychological problems (poverty or violence in the community, for example) and to identity and help individuals who are at risk for developing emotional problems (for example, teenage mothers or the children of people with severe psychological disorders). However, community prevention programs are not always successful and they often suffer from limited funding, but they have grown in number throughout the United States of America and Europe, offering great promise as the ultimate form of intervention. In fact, during the 1990s, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services labeled prevention as the nation’s number one health and social priority. Prevention programs have been further energized in the past few years by the field of psychology’s growing interest in positive psychology. Positive psychology is the study and enhancement of positive feelings such as optimism and happiness; positive traits like perseverance and wisdom; positive abilities such as interpersonal skill and other talents; and group-directed virtues, including altruism and tolerance. In the clinical arena, positive psychology suggests that practitioners can helps people best by promoting positive development and psychological wellness. While researchers study and learn more about positive psychology in the laboratory, a growing number of clinicians are already beginning to apply its principles in their work. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
These specialists are teaching people coping skills that may help protect them from stress and adversity and encouraging them to become more involved in personally meaningful activities and relationships. In this way, the clinicians are trying to promote mental health and prevent mental disorders. Promotion and prevention programs are now being applied in many clinical areas. Such programs have been offered during pregnancy, unemployment, divorce, and other periods of significant stress and have targeted such problem areas as substance abuse, violence, disaster trauma, and depression. Although programs of this kind are promising and important, we must keep in mind that the clinical field “has yet to effectively prevent any major form of psychopathology.” The growing influence of insurance coverage—so many people now seek therapy that private insurance companies have changed their coverage for mental health patients. Today the dominant form of coverage is the managed care program—a program in which the insurance company determines such key issues as which therapist its clients may choose, the cost of sessions, and the number of sessions for which a client may be reimbursed. At least 75 percent of all privately insured persons in the United States of America are currently enrolled in managed care programs. The coverage for mental health treatment under such programs follows the same basic principles as coverage for medical treatment, including a limited pool of practitioners for patients to choose from, preapproval of treatment by the insurance company, strict standards for judging whether problems and treatments qualify for reimbursement, and ongoing reviews and assessments. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
In the mental health realm, both therapists and clients typically dislike the managed care programs. They fear that the programs inevitably shorten the programs inevitably will shorten therapy (often for the worse), unfairly favour treatments whose results are not always lasting (for example, drug therapy), pose a special kind of hardship for those with severe mental disorders, and results in treatment determined by insurance companies rather than by therapist. A special program with insurance coverage—both managed care and other kinds of insurance programs—is that reimbursements for mental disorders tend to be lower than those for mental disorders. This disparity places persons with psychological difficulties at a distinct disadvantage in their efforts to overcome their problems and inevitably affect that quality and quantity of the treatment they seek. Recently the federal government and 35 states have passed so-called parity laws that direct insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental and medical problems. It is not yet clear, however, whether these laws will indeed lead to better coverage and whether they will improve the treatment picture for people dealing with psychological problems. However, many people are choosing Kaiser Permanente for a health care provider because they like the fact that most every service a patient could need is provided under one roof, from laboratory work, medical doctor office visits, emergency and urgent care services, optometry, pediatrics, mental health care, X-ray, and many more services. In fact, with Kaiser, you do not need a referral for mental health and addiction care services. However, your personal care doctor can connect you with a therapist. Kaiser also has mental health care and addiction services are available for emergency care, meaning you do not need an appointment. If you are having a crisis, you can go to the hospital and receive treatment right away. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Mental health and money problems are often intricately linked. Our research shows that over 1.5 million people are experiencing both problem debt and mental health care problems. However, during this pandemic, President Biden will not give any government relief to the people. And California Governor Newsome excluded veterans, retired, and certain disabled people from his relief programs. People with problem debt are significantly more likely to experience mental health problems. Half the people in problem debt also have a mental health problem. Also, 86 percent of people with experience of mental health problems said that their financial situation had made their mental health problems worse. Almost one in five people with mental health problems are in problem debt. People experiencing mental health problems are three and a half times more likely to be in problem debt than people without mental health problems, and 72 percent of people said that their mental health problems had made their financial situation worse. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by change alone. However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent had experienced physical abuse, 28 percent had been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Interpersonal communication (social skills) deficits as a mediating factor? Many investigators now view childhood sexual abuse as a risk or vulnerability factor in the development of eating disorders. Childhood sexual abuse, particularly incest, is expected to contribute to (and result from) dysfunctional family environments and parent-child attachments. The combination of these poor family environment variables with the sexual abuse is thought to inhibit the development of social competencies in a child. Social competencies are defined as a sense of self-efficacy, an ability to communicate emotional needs, an ability to experience intimacy, and the capacity to use relationships with other people to regulate negative affect. The failure to develop these basic social competencies is thought to be the casual link between sexual abuse and eating disorders. An eating disorder becomes the means by which a child develops a sense of self-efficacy and affective regulation, albeit through dysfunctional, noninterpersonal means. The results of the investigation provide compelling evidence for the validity of this model of eating disorders. For example, it was observed that eating disorders were are a rate of 39 percent among incest survivors, but only 17 percent among those with no childhood abuse. As an aside, the rate of eating disorders was 47 percent in the clinical sample of incest survivors, and 24 percent in the student sample with a history of incest, again suggesting higher rates of abuse in the background of clinical samples. Those incest survivors in this study who reported little emotional warmth and expressiveness from their mothers were most likely to have developed an eating disorder. Furthermore, people with a history of incest scored lower on a number of social competency indicators than did those with no history of childhood sexual abuse. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Incestuous family environments do not provide an adequate context for the development of social competencies and skills. The two lines of reasoning for this hypothesis are as follows. First, incest interferes with developmental processes by destroying the emotional comfort and “felt security” that allows for healthy attachment bonds. Thus children with a history of incestuous abuse have a difficult time forming attachment relationships with others. Sexual abuse may also interfere with interoceptive awareness, which is the ability to perceive and label internal emotional states and hunger. Those who are unaware of their own emotional reactions may have difficulty appropriately regulating their own social behaviour, and thus may have problems with developing social skills. Similar hypotheses involving social skills deficits are prevalent in the psychopathology literature more generally. However, an origin of those social skills deficits—namely, a dysfunctional family environment that includes sexual abuse. Although the literature on problematic social skills is not as extensive for eating disorders as it is for other mental health problems, there is some suggestive evidence of social skills problems in this population. For example, one theme that has been identified on multiple occasions is difficulty with assertion. This research group noted a strong negative correlation between eating disorder symptomatology and assertiveness. Similar findings show that women with anorexia nervosa tend to inhibit the expression of their thoughts and feelings when they are in conflict with those of other people. Clinical observations indicate that “eating-disordered clients typically have poor communication skills.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The typical client has porous ego boundaries. She admits too much from others (in the form of opinions and requests), resulting in harsh introjects and a tendency to care take because she cannot tell where others’ needs leave off and hers begin. In a dissertation study, observed were deficits in social competence among women with eating disorders across such domains as relationships, family concerns, and academic concerns. This study is especially unusual in that the social competence assessments were based on behavioural observation. Another study had found evidence for social skills deficits of a different sort: Adolescent girls with eating disturbances and/or dietary restrictions are three to four times more likely to be involved in aggressive behaviours such as robbery with a weapon or aggravated robbery. Thus type of aggression against others is to be expected among those with a history of abuse. Though there would be great value in additional research on the social skills of people with eating disorders, there is at least tentative evidence at this time that they experience deficits in some social skills, and that these problems may be the developmental consequences of childhood sexual abuse. Precisely how childhood sexual abuse factors into the development of eating disorders may never be fully understood. This is because such abuse is hopelessly confounded with dysfunctional family environments. There is almost tautological relationship between the two phenomena. A family that either perpetrates or tolerates the sexual abuse of its children surely has other drastic problems. These other problems may be sufficient on their own to contribute to the development of eating disorders in such a family’s affected children. A vital study on this issue showed that even after family psychosocial factors (exempli gratia, family communication, parental monitoring, parental caring) were controlled for, youths who reported sexual abuse were still at increased risk for disordered eating. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Abuse is the mistreatment or neglect of others (such as a child or spouse, the elderly, or the disabled) in a way that causes physical, emotional, or sexual harm. At this time, childhood sexual abuse appears to be a risk factor for the later development of eating disorders. This relationship may be mediated by the poor social skills that result from a history of such abuse. Scientific research findings on family environments, mother-daughter relationships, and childhood sexual abuse point very clearly to the family of origin in the etiology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The architecture of these families’ relationships and interactions patterns suggest considerable dysfunction. Extreme abnormal levels of adaptability, cohesion, and EE (emotional expression) are common in families of children with eating disorders. Excessive and inappropriate pressures for achievement are also evident in many of these families. There is reason to believe that the parents of children with eating disorders may actively and aggressively project their ambitions onto their children. A history of psychiatric problems is evident in as many as 48 percent of the families of patients diagnosed with either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Findings on mother-daughter relations show that girls with eating disorders often have mothers with elevated body image concerns, excessive dieting, and eating disorders of their own. Finally, childhood sexual abuse is evident in the backgrounds of some people with eating disorders. Although not necessary or sufficient for the development of eating disorders, this abuse is believed to impair the development of social competencies, leading to inappropriate eating as a mechanism for regaining control and regulating affect. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The Church’s position is that abuse cannot be tolerated in any form and that those who abuse will be accountable before God. The Lord expects us to do everything we can to prevent abuse and to protect and help victims. No one is expected to endure abusive behaviour. Reports of abuse should never be dismissed. Everyone should respond with compassion and sensitivity toward victims and their families. Those affected by abuse need to be heard and supported. Abuse may also violate the laws of society. The Church encourages the reporting of abuse to civil authorities, and Church leaders and members must fulfill all legal obligations to report abuse. In some places, leaders and teachers who serve with children are legally required to report abuse of children to civil authorities. In other places, any person who learns of the abuse of children, the elderly, or the disabled is legally required to tell civil authorities about the abuse. Leaders, family members, and friends should make every effort to stop abuse, find safety for the victim, and help the victim seek healing. Some victims may need help reporting abuse to law enforcement or to protective services. Victims may also need help through the healing process from professionals, including doctors and counselors. Most victims are abused by people they know. Such people can be spouses, family members, dating partners, friends, or other acquaintances. Victims should be assured that they are never to blame for the harmful behaviour of others—no matter who abuses them. A victim is not guilty. While some types of abuse may cause physical harm, all forms of abuse affect the mind and spirit. Victims of abuse often struggle with feelings of confusion, doubt, guilt, shame, mistrust, and fears. They may feel helpless, powerless, lonely, and isolated. They may even question the love of the Heavenly Fathers and their own divine worth. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, victims and those who support them can be assured that, through His infinite Atonement, the Saviour extends succor, healing, and power. “And one shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith one will take upon one the pains and the sickness of His people. And one will take upon Him death, that one may loose the bands of death which bind His people; and one will take upon Him their infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that one may know according to the flesh how to succor His people,” reports Alma 7.11-12. When you forgive someone who has hurt or offended you, it is not simply about the other person; you are doing it for your own good, as well. “If you forgive others for their transgression, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. However, if you do not forgive other, than your Father will not forgive your transgressions,” reports Matthew 6.14-15. When you hold on to unforgiveness and live with grudges in your heart, you are building walls of separation. You are simply shutting other people out of your life. You become isolated, alone, warped, and imprisoned by your own bitterness. Those walls are not merely keeping people out; those walks are keeping you penned in. So you realise that those walls will also prevent God’s blessings from pouring into your life? Those walls can stop up the flow of God’s favour. The walks of unforgiveness will keep your prayers from being answered. They will keep your dreams from coming to pass. You must tear down the walls. You must forgive the people who hurt you so you can get out of prisons. You will never be free until you do that. Get that bitterness out of your life. That is the only way you are going to truly be free. You will be amazed at what can happen in your life when you release all that poison. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Unforgiveness keeps God’s power from operating in our lives and prevents our prayers from being answered. Ask God to help you get rid of anger and resentment in your heart toward those people who have hurt you over the years. As you forgive them, the most amazing things will begin to happen. My Lord God, please do take an interest in Your servant, and do bless me with Your sweetness, as the Psalmist would say (20.4). With that I may feel worthy and devout enough to approach Your magnificent Sacrament. Arouse my loitering heart, excite my listless mind. “Visit me with Your medicines,” reports Psalm 106.4. I need a tonic, a purgative, something, anything, to cleanse my palate before I savour Your spirit in the Sacrament; that is to say, encounter the sudden sweetness that flares up as if from a secret fountain. Pop my eyes—the Psalmist yet again (13.3)—that I may see the Great Mystery, and prop me up to believe it with undoubted faith. One may experience genuine physical and emotional healing as one searches one’s heart and are willing to forgive. One may see God’s favour in a fresh, new way. One may see one’s prayers answered more quickly as one lets go of the past and gets rid of all that poison one is now barbouring. Today, you are meeting with a crossroad’s demon in your life and about to seal that curse and sell your soul to the Devil with a kiss. One may have issues to deal with or people one needs to forgive. One can go one of two ways. One can ignore what one knows to be true and keep burying that bitterness in one’s life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate one’s soul and those around one. Or, one can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go. Father, I do not want to habour any unforgiveness in my heart. Please shine the searchlight of Your Holy Spirit on every nook and cranny of my being, and let me see the areas where anything evil may be trying to gain a foothold through my own hesitancy to forgive. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Prayer is not based on friendship—there is another aspect of this that we need to notice. Jesus said, “Though he will not rise and give one, because he is his friend.” He had a reason for saying that. He is not just throwing unnecessary details. He is portraying a spiritual truth. Once Jesus said to His disciples, “I call you no more servants but friends.” A friend could go to the palace of the kind or some high authority, knock at the gate, and be let in immediately. If one was not a friend, they would send a servant to tell one whether or not one would come in. Jesus is no longer calling us servants, but friends. However, the Word of God does not say anything about God answering prayer on the basis of friendship. Prayer is not answered on the basis of friendship. It is answered on the basis of the legal contract made with God the Father. Because you have been born again, you are the seed of Abraham. Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life; you are a child of God; the Spirit of God bears witness with your spirit; you can come boldly to the throne of grace. You can say, “Father, I stand before You without fear, without condemnation, without a sense of guilt.” This right or boldness is not because of friendship, but because of the new covenant. So far, we have considered the prince as a moral and collective person, united by the force of laws, and as the trustee of the executive power in the state. We have now to consider this power when it is joined together in the hands of a natural person, of a real man, who alone has the right to dispose of it in accordance with the laws. Such a person is called a monarch or a king. In utter contrast with the other forms of administration where a collective entity represents an individual, in this form of administration and individual represents a collective entity; so that the moral unity constituting the prince is at the same time a physical unity, in which all the faculties which are combined by the law in the other forms of administration with such difficulty are found naturally combined. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus the will of the people, the will of the prince, the public force of the state, and the particular force of the state, and the particular force of the government, all respond to the same moving agent; all the springs of the machine are in the same hand; everything moves toward the same end; there are no opposing movements which are at cross purposes with one another; and no constitution is imaginable in which a lesser effort produces a more considerable action. Archimedes sitting serenely on the shore and effortlessly launching a huge vessel is what comes to mind when I think of a capable monarch governing his vast states from his private study, and making everything move while appearing himself to be immovable. However, if there is no government that has more vigour, there is none where the private will has greater sway and more easily dominates the others. Everything moves toward the same end, it is true; but this end is not that of public felicity, and they very force of the administration unceasingly operates to the detriment of the state. Kings want to be absolute, and from a distance one cries out to them that the best way to be so is to make themselves loved by their peoples. This maxim is very noble and even very true in certain respects. Unfortunately it will always be an object of derision in courts. The power that comes from the peoples’ love is undoubtedly the greatest, but it is precarious and conditional. Princes will never be satisfied with it. The best kings want to be able to be wicked if it pleases them, without ceasing to be the masters. A political sermonizer might well say to them that since the people’s force is their force, their greatest interest is that the people should be flourishing, numerous and formidable. They know perfectly well that this is not true. Their personal interest is first of all that the people should be weak and miserable and incapable of ever resisting them. I admit that, assuming the subjects were always in perfect submission, the interest of the prince would then be for the people to be powerful, so that this power, being his own, would render him formidable in the eyes of one’s neighbour’s. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, since this interest is merely secondary and subordinate, and since the two suppositions are incompatible, it is natural that the princes should always give preference to the maxim that is the most immediately useful to them. This is to the point that Samuel made so forcefully to the Hebrews, and that Machiavelli has made apparent. Under the pretext of teaching kinds, he has taught important lessons to the peoples. Machiavelli’s The Prince is the book of republicans. Machiavelli was a decent man and a good citizen. However, since he was attached to the house of Medici, he was forced during the oppression of his homeland to disguise his love of liberty. The very choice of his execrable hero makes clear enough his hidden intention. And the contrast between the maxims of his book The Prince and those of his Discourses on Titus Livy and of his History of Florence shows that this profound political theorist has until now had only superficial or corrupt readers. The court of Rome has sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; it is the court he most clearly depicts.] We have found, through general relationships, that the monarchy is suited only to large states, and we find this again in examining the monarchy itself. The more numerous the public administration, the more the ratio of the prince to subject diminishes and approaches equality, so that this ratio increases in proportion as the government is restricted, and is at its maximum when the government is in the hands of a single man. Then there is too great a distance between the prince and the people, and the state lacks cohesiveness. In order to bring about this cohesiveness, there must therefore be intermediate orders; there must be princes, grandees, and a nobility to full them. Now none of this is suited to a small state, which is ruined by all these social levels. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, if it is difficult for a large state to be well governed, it is much harder still for it to be well governed by just one human, and everyone knows what happens when the king appoints substitutes. An essential and inevitable defect, which will always place the monarchical form of government below the republican form, is that in the latter form the public voice hardly ever raises to the highest positions men who are not enlightened and capable and who would not fill their positions with honour. On the other hand, those who attain these positions in monarchies are most often petty bungler, petty swindlers, petty intriguers, whose petty talents, which cause them to attain high positions at court, serve only to display their incompetence to the public as soon as they reach these positions. The populace is much less often in error in its choice than the prince, and a man of real merit in the ministry is almost as rare as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when by some happy chance one of these men who are born to govern takes the helm of public business in a monarchy that has nearly been sunk by this crowd of fine managers, there is utter amazement at the resources one finds, and one’s arrival marks an era in the history of the country. Abundant living is supposed to belong to the twenty-first century. However, years must pass before the World can restore the shattered economies. For a number of years there will be immense and tragic shortages of food, clothing, and other necessities. The era of abundance is, therefore, not an immediate possibility. The post-pandemic years are necessarily filled with privation for many billions of people. Now this may be done and these problems may be solved by peaceful discussion and mutual agreement, which is the philosophic way, or by bitter strife and physical violence, which has been the common way. The first seeks the general welfare whereas the second seeks a partisan victory. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The advantages of the philosophic way of speeded up evolutionary change are manifold in the economic sphere. The afflicted World’s need is not more hatred but less, not more warfare but more co-operation. Philosophy is opposed to all doctrines of class hatred. It believes that the situation today requires an integral multi-class outlook. Its opposition to the old-fashioned materialistic propaganda for abrupt social change is not to its egalitarian aims but to the preaching of hatred as a personal ethic and the advocacy of violence as an instrument of attainment. For both hatred and violence are the voices of the beast in humans. AN age sickened by the horrors of scientific warfare ought not need to witness the further horrors of scientific revolution. However, it is hard to persuade them that reconstruction is saner and safer path to take than revolution, the ballot-box wise than bloodshed, and that our duty is not to imitate the terrorists but to build peacefully a better order suited to sensible kindly and decent human beings. It cannot accept hatred as an inspiration to social betterment. For it knows that we cannot gather grapes off thistles nor human happiness off the tree of hatred. The history of humankind has shown what psychology always knew, that the hater will start looking for new human objects of one’s hatred, new enemies, as soon as the existing one have been, in one’s horrible modern terminology, “liquidated.” The ugly passion of hatred, having been developed and nurtured, will still exist and still seek an outlet as soon as it can persuade the mind to interpret conditions in its favour. Each emerging civilization brings with it not merely changes in how people handle time in daily life but also changes into their mental maps of time. The Third Wave is redrawing these temporal maps. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Second Wave civilization, for Dr. Newton on, assumed that time ran along a single line from the mists of the past into the most distant future. It pictured time as absolute, uniform throughout all parts of the Universe, and independent of matter and space. It assumed that each moment, or chuck of time, was the same as the next. Sober scientists with impeccable academic credentials and years of research experience calmly inform us that time is not something that flows inexorably forward at the steady pace indicated by our clocks and calendars, but that it can be warped and distorted in nature, with the end product being different depending on just where you are measuring it from. At the ultimate extreme, supercollapsed objects—black holes—can negate time altogether, making it stand still in their vicinity. By the turn of the century Dr. Einstein had already proved that time could be compressed and stretched, and had dynamited the notion that time is absolute. He put forth the now classic case of the two observers and the railroad track, which went more or less like this: A man standing alongside a railroad track sees two bolts of lightning strike at the same time—one at the far north end of the track, the other at the south. The observer is mid-way between the two. A second fellow is sitting in a high-speed train rocketing northward along the track. As he passes the observer outside he, too, sees the bolts of lightning. However, to him the two flashes do not appear as simultaneous. Because the train is speeding him away from one and toward the other, the light from one reaches him sooner than the light from the other. To the man on the moving train, it appears that the northern flash occurs first. While in daily life the distances are so small and the speed of light so fast that difference would be unnoticeable, the example dramatized by Dr. Einstein’s point: that the chronological order of events—what comes first, second, or later in time—depends upon the velocity of the observer. Time is not absolute, but relative. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
This is a long way from the kind of time on which classical physics and indust-reality were based. Both took for granted that “before” or “after” had a fixed meaning independent of any observer. Today physics is both exploding and imploding. Every day its practitioners hypothesize—or find—new elementary particles or astrophysical phenomena, from quarks to quasars, with amazing implications, some of which are forcing additional changes in our conceptions of time. At one end of the scale, for example, black holes appear to punctuate the skies, sucking into themselves everything, including light itself, straining—if not smashing—the laws of physics. These dark maelstorms, we are told, terminate in “singularities” into which energy and matter simply vanish. In existence are “wormholes” and “white holes” through which the lost energy and matter are spewed into another Universe—whatever that might mean. A single moment in the vicinity of a black hole, it is believed, might be the equivalent of eons on Earth. Thus if some Interstellar Mission Control were to send a spaceship to explore a black hole, we might have to wait a million years for the ship to arrive. Yet, because of gravitational distortion in the vicinity of the black hole, not to mention the effects of velocity, the ship’s clock would show the passage of only a few minutes or a seconds. When we leave the vast Heavens and enter the World of microscopic particles or waves, we find similarly puzzling phenomena. At Columbia University Dr. Gerald Feinberg has even hypothesized particles called tachyons that move faster than light and for which—according to some of his colleagues—times moves backward. The British physicist J.G. Taylor tells us: “The microscopic notion of time is very different from the macroscopic.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Another physicist, Fritjof Capra, puts it more simply. Time, he says, is “flowing at different rates in different parts of the Universe.” Increasingly, therefore, we cannot even speak of “time” in the singular; there appears to be alternative and plural “times” operating under different rules in different parts of the Universe or Universes we inhabit. All of which knocks the props under the Second Wave idea of Universal linear time—without substituting ancient notions of cyclical time. At precisely the same moment, therefore, that we are radially restructuring our social uses of time—by introducing flextime on the job, by decoupling workers from the mechanical conveyor, and in the other ways previously described—we are also fundamentally reformulating our theoretical images of time. And while these theoretical discoveries seem at the moment to have no practical application to daily life, the same was true of those seemingly speculative chalk marls on the blackboard—the formulas that led ultimately to the smashing of the atom. It is of particular importance to every human to whom a glimpse has been vouchsafed, that after it one summoned to begin one’s life afresh, to try a new start. If one heeds the summons no matter how unpromising one’s circumstances are for such a start—and this requires both faith and courage—eventually help will come, a change for the better. During the glimpse one left oneself and found a being within which transcended it. After the glimpse one has the chance to create a conscious relationship between them. One’s outer life ought to carry the mark of this extraordinary event. What was seen in the glimpse must now be taken into the heart and mind, the thought and memory, the whole being of the human. Henceforth one is to live and at among other humans as one who is marked for a higher destiny than semi-animal, incompletely human, blind existence. The more glimpses one gets, the more will one want to become like the ideal in all its beauty, and the longer each glimpse lasts, the longer will one seek to use its light and strength to make oneself a better human or to build a better World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Blessing of galaxies, blessing of stars: Great stars small stars, red stars, blue ones. Blessing of nebula, blessing of supernova, planets, satellites, asteroids, comets. Blessings of our sun and moon, blessing of our Earth; oceans, river, continents, mountain ranges, blessing of wind, and cloud, blessing of rain; fog bank, snowdrift, lightning and thunder. Bless the wisdom of the holy one above us. Bless the truth of the holy one beneath us. Bless the love of the holy one within us. Blessing of green plants, blessings of forests: Cedar, douglas fir, swordfern, salal bush, blessing of fish and birds, blessing of mammals: Salmon, eagle, cougar and mountain goat. May all humankind likewise offer blessing: Old woman, young woman, wise men and foolish blessing of youthfulness, blessing of children, big boys, little body, big girls and little ones. Bless the wisdom of the holy one above us; bless the truth of the holy one beneath us; bless the love of the holy one within us. Bring us back, O Father to Thy Torah; draw us near, O our King to Thy service, and restore us unto Thy presence in wholehearted repentance. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who desirest repentance. Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned; pardon us, O our King, for we have transgressed. Verily Thou art merciful and forgiving. Blessed art Thou, O gracious Lord, who art abundant in forgiveness. Behold our affliction and plead our cause. Hasten to redeem us for the sake of Thy name, for Thou art a mighty Redeemer. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Redeemer of America and Africa. Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; save us and we shall be saved, for to Thee we offer praise. Grant complete healing for all our ailments for Thou, O God art our King, our faithful and merciful Healer. Praised art Thou, O Lord, who healest the sick among Thy people of American and Africa. Bless this year unto us, O Lord our God, and bless its yield that it may be for our welfare. Please send Thy blessing upon the Earth. Please send dew and rain for a blessing upon the Earth. Satisfy us out of Thy bounty, O Lord. Do Thou bless this year that it be for us a year of abundance. Praised be Thou, O Lord, who dost bless the years. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Architectural details on the wall add dimension and interest to a space. Innovations are everywhere in our #Havenwood homes!
Each home comes with owned solar included! The future is bright, indeed. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Cresleigh makes everyday living a lot more comfortable. Open, airy, bright home designs invite you to breathe and relax; and these homes welcome the beauty of nature inside with charming courtyards and covered patios.
Does the Cause of Lunacy Lie in the Heavens or in Our Minds?
If you do not run your own life, somebody else will. Your children need your presence more than your presents because the hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any. It would hardly be accurate to day that we live now in a period of great enlightenment or dependable treatment of mental disorders. In fact, some recent surveys found that 43 percent of respondents believe that people bring on mental disorders themselves, 35 percent consider such disorders to be caused by sinful behaviours, and 19 percent point to the lack of willpower or self-discipline as a cause. Nevertheless, the last 70 years have brought major changes in the ways clinicians understand and treat abnormal functioning. There are more theories and types of treatment, more research studies, more information, and, perhaps for these reasons, more disagreements about abnormal functioning today than at any time in the past. In some ways the study and treatment of psychological disorders have made great strides, but in other respects clinical scientists and practitioners are still struggling to make a difference. Primitive societies believed that the moon had magical, mystical powers and that its changes portended events of many kinds. The moon supposedly had the power to impregnate women, to make plants grow, and to drive people crazy. Later societies also credited the power of the moon to affect behaviour, and they applied the terms “lunatic” and “lunacy” to the person and the behaviour to capture their lunar, or moonlike, qualities. Even today many institutions and people believe that behaviour is affected by the phases of the moon. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Anecdotal evidence abounds: police officers have sometimes noted more violent and bizarre crimes during the full moon, and certain hospitals have claimed to experience an increase in births. One hospital even linked the full moon to the onset of ulcers and heart attacks. A Wall Street brokers for years used the schedule of the moon as a guide in giving investment advice—successfully. A number of scientists have advanced theories to explain a lunar effect on human behaviour. Some say that since the moon causes the tides of the oceans, it is reasonable to expect that it has a similar effect on the bodily fluids of human beings, whose composition is more than 80 percent water. The increase in births might therefore be explained by the force of the moon on the expectant mother’s amniotic fluid. Similar tidal and gravitational effects have been used to explain the apparent increases in bizarre behaviour during full moons. One team of researchers has noted that a full moon seemed to have a greater impact on behaviour in the past than in current times and has attributed this difference to the lack of electricity in years past. Before the advent of artificial light, they argue, full moons were a significant source of illumination that disrupted the sleep-wake cycle. This tended to cause sleep deprivation and, consequently, psychological disturbances. Still other researchers have tried to determine whether the activity of the moon is in fact related to human behaviour by calculating the precise number of births, crimes, and unusual behaviours that occur during full moons. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Some of these investigators have indeed found an association between full moons and unintentional poisonings, aggression, absenteeism, and crime. Other researchers, however, have found no relationship between full moons and increases in violence in mental health settings, suicides, car accidents, or people seeking help for anxiety or depression. Even if an association exists, skeptics have noted that it may simply be due to people’s own expectations. That is, because certain persons expect to be influenced by a full moon, they may be more attentive and responsive to their internal sensations or desires at that time. To test this interpretation, researchers recently examined the effects of moon phases on animals who presumably have little self-awareness. One group of researchers found a significant increase in the number of people who visited emergency rooms with animal bites during full moons in a small British town, suggesting that unusual animal behaviour may indeed be affected by the moon. However, other researchers—who conducted studies with other animals, breeds, and towns—found no increase in animals bites during full moons. And so the debated continues as scientists and philosophers alike try to determine whether the cause of lunacy does indeed lie in the Heavens or our minds. How are people with severe disturbances cared for? In the 1950s researchers discovered a number of new psychotropic medications—drugs that primarily affect the brain and alleviate many symptoms of mental dysfunctioning. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
These medications include the first antipsychotic drugs, to lift the mood of depressed people; and antianxiety drugs, to reduce tension and worry. When given these drugs, many patients who had spent years in mental hospitals began to show signs of improvement. Hospital administrators, encouraged by these results and pressured by a growing public outcry over the terrible conditions in public mental hospitals, began to discharge patients almost immediately. Since the discovery of these medications, mental health professionals in most of the developed nations of the World have followed a policy of deinstitutionalization, releasing hundreds of thousands of patients from public mental hospitals. On any given day in 1955, close to 600,000 people were confined in public mental institutions across the United States of America. Today the daily patient population in the same kinds of hospitals is around 60,000. In short, outpatient care has now become the primary mode of treatment for people with severe psychological disturbances as well as for those with moderate problems. Today when severely impaired people do need institutionalization, they are usually given short-term hospitalization. Ideally, they are then given outpatient psychotherapy and medication in community programs and residences. Community mental health approach is an emphasis on social care for people with severe psychological disturbances. The approach has been helpful for many patients, but too few community programs are available to address current needs in the United States of America. As a result, hundreds of thousands of persons with severe disturbances fail to make lasting recoveries, and they shuffle back and forth between the mental hospital and the community. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
After release from the hospital, patients at best receive minimal care and often wind up living in decrepit rooming houses or on the streets. In fact, only 40 percent of persons with severe psychological disturbances currently receive treatment of any kind. At least 100,000 individuals with such disturbances are homeless on any given day; another 135,000 or more are inmates of jails and prisons. Their abandonment is truly a national disgrace. How are people with less severe disturbances treated? The treatment picture for people with moderate psychological disturbances has been more positive than that for people with severe disorders. Since the 1950s, outpatient care has continued to be the preferred mode of treatment for them, and the numbers and types of facilities that offer such care have expanded to meet the need. Before the 1950s, almost all outpatient care took the form of private psychotherapy, an arrangement by which an individual directly pays a psychotherapist for counseling services. This tended to be an expensive form of treatment available only to the wealthy. Since the 1950s, however, most healthy insurance plans have expanded coverage to include private psychotherapy, so that it is now also widely available to people with modest incomes. In addition, such as community mental healthy centers, crisis intervention centers, family service centers, and other social service agencies. The new settings have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of persons seeking outpatient care for psychological problems. Nationwide surveys suggest that one of every six adults and one of every five children between the ages of 9 and 17 now receive some form of mental health service in the course of a year. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Outpatient treatments are also becoming available for more and more kinds of problems. When Dr. Freud and his colleagues first began to practice, most of their patients suffered from anxiety or depression. These problems still dominate therapy today; almost half of all clients suffer from them. However, people with other kinds of disorders are also receiving therapy. In addition, at least 25 percent of clients enter therapy because of milder problems in living, problems with marital, family, job, peer, school, or community relationships. Yet another change in outpatient care since the 1950s has been the development of programs devoted exclusively to one kind of psychological problem. We now have, for example, suicide prevention centers, substances abuse programs, eating disorders programs, phobia clinics, and sexual dysfunction programs. Clinicians in these programs have the kind of expertise that can be acquired only by concentration in a single area. One caustic interpersonal phenomenon that has received considerable interest in the literature on eating disorders is childhood sexual abuse. A common form of abuse reported by people with eating disorders childhood sexual abuse, represents a gross violation of boundaries, particularly when perpetrated in the family context. This abuse often causes guilt, confusion, repulsion, and distrust of others. These potentially vicious psychosocial repercussions can make intimate relations later in life very difficult. Contrasting findings and possible explanations—there is at least some evidence to suggest that histories of sexual abuse are more common among those with eating disorders, especially bulimia nervosa, than what would be expected by chance alone. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, after numerous studies on the topic, findings remain mixed. For example, some estimates indicate that rates of childhood sexual abuse run as high as 70 percent among patients with eating disorders. One study of such patients found that 65 percent has experienced physical abuse, 28 percent has been sexually abused, and 23 percent had been raped. These statistics are shocking both for their indication of what appear to be extremely high prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse among persons with eating disorders, and for their stark contrast to other epidemiological estimates indicating a far lower occurrence of sexual abuse in the background of such persons. For example, two reviews concluded that there was no evidence of higher rates of eating disorders among sexually abused versus nonabused women. Furthermore, one study found that among normal-weight women with bulimia nervosa, only 7 percent included a history of sexual abuse involving physical contact. Since it is estimated that the prevalence of sexual abuse in the general female population is 27 percent, it appears as if sexual abuse was less prevalent in the sample than in the general population. To complicate matters further, still another review found that rates of sexual abuse were no higher among those with eating disorders than among those in the general population. What conclusions can be drawn from the literature on childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders? First, some of the variance in these prevalence estimates can be explained by wildly discrepant operationalizations of “sexual abuse.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Second, the samples on which these estimates are based are also nonequivalent. For example, it is reasonable to expect a greater history of childhood sexual abuse in clinical samples than in samples with eating disorders drawn from the general population. Third, there is some consensus that childhood sexual abuse is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of eating disorders in later life. This may explain the high rates of sexual abuse in some samples, and the lower rates in others. “One that covers one’s sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy,” reports Proverbs 28.13. Abuse tends to happen and it should not. A few decades ago, several American companies authorized by the U.S. government attempted to bury toxic-waste products underground. They filled large mental containers with chemical waste and other life-threatening products, sealed the drums tightly, and buried them deep down below the topsoil. They thought that was the end of it. Within a short time, however, many of the containers began to leak and the toxic waste started seeping to the surface, causing all sorts of problems. In some locations, it killed off the vegetation and ruined the water supply. People had to move out of their homes. What went wrong? They tried to bury something that was toxic. They never dreamed that the materials they were attempting to bury were so powerful that they were too toxic for the containers to hold. They did not imagine that one day those contaminants would resurface, and they would have to deal with the problem all over again. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
However, this time, the toxic materials would be dispersed and much more difficult to deal with. Had they disposed of them properly in the first place, they would not have had this terrible problem. It is the same with us. When somebody hurts us, someone does us wrong, instead of letting it go and trusting God to make it up to us, we bury it deep down inside. We attempt to cram unforgiveness, resentment, anger, and other destructive responses into our “leakproof” containers. We seal those lids tightly, but unfortunately, just as that toxic waste tends to resurface, one day the things you have tamped into your subconscious or buried deeply in the recesses of your heart will rise to the surface and begin to contaminate your life. We cannot live with poison inside us and not expect it to eventually do us harm. Forgiveness is the key to being free from toxic bitterness. Forgive the people who hurt you. Forgive the boss who did you wrong. Forgive the friend who betrayed you. Forgive the patent who mistreated you when you were younger. Do not let the root of bitterness grow deeper and continue to contaminate your life. What does this toxic waste look like in our lives? For some people, it seeps out as anger. In other people, it smells like depression. For others, it reeks of low self-esteem. It can show up in many different ways, sometimes doing damage before we even realize it has reappeared. One can have success on the outside, but if one is bitter on the inside, it is going to spoil and taint every success. One must deal with the inside first, then one can really be happy. Then one can experience true, untainted, unalloyed success in one’s life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
You may think forgiveness is too hard. However, you are not forgiving for their sake, you are forgiving for your sake. You are forgiving so that poison does not continue to contaminate your life. If someone has done you a great wrong, do not allow them to continue to hurt you by hanging on to it. You are not hurting them at all. You are hurting yourself. It is the laden bough that hangs low, and the most fruitful Christ who is the most humble. In American culture, there is a taboo against vulnerability, especially from dominant personalities. Seldom can we allow ourselves such phrases as “I am unsure,” “I feel vulnerable,” “I feel hurt,” or “I feel helpless.” And yet we all have these feelings from time to time. We all feel anxious, sacred, helpless, or weak. In our culture, where competition, individuality, and performance reign supreme, it is no surprise that any sense of weakness is repressed from awareness. Yet, when a part of us that is quite real is pushed out of consciousness, we are more vulnerable than ever because we lose touch with our core being. Then our energies are diverted into presenting a false self to the World. We even believe that this ideal self—secure, flawless, and capable in all situations—is our real self. This kind of vanity is the real target of the scriptural “pride goeth before destruction,” reports Proverbs 16.18. Surrender to God and understand that God is the Ground of Being. This powerful experience will enable one to get in touch with a power greater than oneself, the Supreme Being. Father, I know when I forgive those who hurt me, it pleased You. Please help me to recognize that forgiveness of others is in my best interest. “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but one who trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on the Lord shall be compassed about with mercy and with lovingkindness. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you [uncompromisingly] righteous [you who are upright and right standing with Him]; shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” reports Psalm 32.10-11. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
We have here two very distinct moral persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and consequently two wills, one in relation to all the citizens, the other only for the members of the administration. Thus, although the government can regulate its internal administration as it chooses, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign, that is to say, in the name of the populace itself. This is something not to be forgotten. The first societies governed themselves aristocratically. The leaders of families deliberated among themselves about public affairs. Young people deferred without difficulty to the authority of experience. This is the origin of the words priests, ancients, senate and elders. The natives of North America still govern themselves that way to this day, and are very well governed. However, to the extent that inequality, wealth or power was preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Finally, the transmission of the father’s power, together with his goods, to his children created patrician families; the government was made hereditary, and we know of senators who were only twenty years old. There are therefore three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to some people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. In addition to the advantage of the distinction between the two powers, aristocracy has that of the choice of its members. For in popular government all the citizens are born magistrates; however, this type of government limits them to a small number, and they become magistrate only through elections, a means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other reasons for public preference and esteem are so many new guarantees of being well governed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Furthermore, assemblies are more conveniently held, public business better discussed and carried out with more orderliness and diligence, the reputation of the state is better sustained abroad by venerable senators than by a multitude that is unknown or despised. In a word, it is the best and most natural order for the wisest to govern the multitude, when it is certain that they will govern for its profit and not for their own. There is no need for multiplying devices uselessly or for doing with twenty thousand men what one hundred hand-picked men can do even better. However, it must be noted here that the corporate interest begins to direct the public force in less strict a conformity with the rule of the general will, and that another inevitable tendency removes from the laws a part of the executive power. With regard to the circumstances that are specifically suitable, a state must not be so small, nor its people so simple and upright, as is the case in a good democracy. Now must a nation be so large that the leaders, scattered about in order to govern it, can each play the sovereign in one’s own department, and begin by making themselves independent in order finally to become masters. However, if aristocracy requires somewhat fewer virtutes than popular government, it also demands others that are proper to it, such as moderation among wealthy and contentment among the poor. For it appears that rigorous equality would be out of place here. It was not observed even in Sparta. Moreover, if this form of government carries with it a certain inequality of fortune, this is simply in order that in general the administration of public business may be entrusted to those who are best able to give all their time to it, but not, as Aristotle claims, in order that the rich may always be given preference. On the contrary, it is important that an opposite choice should occasionally teach people that more important reasons for preference are to be found in a man’s merit than in one’s wealth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Neither is our image of evolution—or, for that matter, evolution itself what it used to be. Biologist, archaeologist, and anthropologists, attempting to unravel the mysteries of evolution, similarly find themselves in a bigger and more complex World than previously imagined and are discovering that laws once regarded as universal in application are actually special cases. Since Dr. Darwin, biologists have gradually developed a chart of the mechanism of evolution, called natural selection. On that basis attempts have often been made to portray all evolution—cosmic, chemical, cultural, ideological, social—as governed by a similar selection mechanism. However, such understandings seem doomed, inasmuch as the rules change at every plane. Even on the biological plane, rules once thought to apply across the board are in question. Thus scientists are being forced to ask whether all biological evolution is a response to variation and natural selection or whether, at the molecular level, it may depend instead on an accumulation of variations which result in “genetic drift” without the operation of Darwinian natural selection. Says Dr. Motoo Kimura of the National Institute of Genetics in Japan, evolution at the molecular level appears to be “quite incompatible with the expectations of Neo-Darwinism.” Other long held assumptions are being shaken as well. Biologist have told us that eukaryotes (human beings and most other forms of life) are ultimately descended from simpler cells called prokaryotes (among which are bacteria and algae). Fresh research is now undermining that theory, leading to the unsettling notion that the simpler life forms may have descended from the more complex. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Furthermore, evolution is supposed to favour adaptations that enhance survival. Yet we are now finding striking examples of evolutionary developments that seem to confer long-term benefit—at the cost of short-term disadvantage. Which does evolution favour? Then there is the startling news from, of all places, the Grant Park Zoon in Atlanta, where the chance mating of two species of ape with two quite different sets of chromosomes has produced the first known hybrid ape. Even though researchers are unsure whether the hybrid will be fertile, her bizarre genetics lend support to the idea that evolution may occur in leaps and bounds as well as through the accretion of small changes. Indeed, instead of seeing evolution as a smooth process, many of today’s life scientists and archaeologists are studying the “theory of catastrophes” to explain “gaps” and “jumps” in the multiple branches of the evolutionary record. Others are studying small changes that may have been amplified through feedback into sudden structural transformations. Heated controversies divide the scientific community over every one of these issues. However, all such controversies are dwarfed by a single history-changing fact. By 1957, as the first string of the Third Wave were being felt, Dr. Arthur Kornberg learned how DNA reproduced itself. Since then, as one popular summary describes the sequences “We have cracked the DNA code. We have learned how DNA transmits its instructions to the cell. We have analyzed chromosomes to determine genetic function. We have synthesized a cell. We have fused cells from two different species. We have isolated pure human genes. We have ‘mapped’ genes. We have synthesized a gene. We have changed the heredity of a cell.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Today genetic engineers in laboratories around the World are capable of creating entirely novel life forms. They have end-run evolution itself. Second Wave thinkers conceived of the human species as the culmination of a long evolutionary process; Third Wave thinkers must now face the fact that we are the designers of evolution. Evolution will never look the same. Like the concept of nature, evolution too is in the process of being drastically reconceptualized. With Second Wave ideas about the nature and evolution both changing, it is hardly surprising that we are also sharply re-evaluating Second Wave ideas about progress. The industrial period was characterized by a facile optimism that saw each scientific breakthrough or “new improved product” as evidence of an inevitable advance toward human perfection. Since the mid 19050’s, when Third Wave began battering Second Wave civilization, few ideas have taken as rough a beating as this cheery creed. The “beats” of the fifties and the hippies of the sixties made pessimism about the human condition, not optimism, a pervasive cultural theme. These movements did much to replace knee-jerk optimism with knee-jerk despair. Soon pessimism because positively chic. Hollywood movies of the 1950’s and 1960’s, for example, replaced the jut-jawed heroes of the 1930’s and 1940’s with alienated antiheroes—rebels without a cause, stylish gunmen, dope pushers with charm, angst-ridden motorcyclists, and hard, inarticulate (but soulful) punk. Life was a game nobody won. Fiction, drama, and art also took on a graveyard hopelessness in many Second Wave nations. By the early fifties, Camus had already defined the themes that countless novelists would subsequently purse. A British critic summed these up as: “Man is fallible, political theories are relative, automatic progress is a mirage.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Even science fiction, once filled with utopian adventures, turned bitter and pessimistic, generating countless poor imitations of Huxley and Orwell. Technology, instead of being portrayed as the engine of progress, increasingly appeared as a juggernaut destroying both human freedom and the physical environment. For many environmentalists, indeed, “progress” became a dirty word. Weighty volumes poured into the bookshops, bearing titles like The Stalled Society, The Coming Dark Age, In Danger of Progress, or The Death of Progress. As Second Wave society lurched into the seventies, The Club of Rome report on The Limits to Growth set a funereal tone for much of the decade that followed, with its projections of catastrophe for the industrial World. Upheavals, unemployment, and inflation intensified by the pandemic of 2020, adding to the spreading pall of pessimism and the rejection of the idea of the idea of inevitable human progress. Former Governor of California, Jerry Brown, spoke about the future being filled with “darkness and massive debt,” as he was leaving office, and the decline of the West—sending yet another frisson of fear down a good many spines. Whether such despair was, or is, justified remains for each reader to decide. One thing is clear, however: the notion of inevitable single-track progress, another pillar of indust-reality, is finding fewer takers as the start of the Fourth Wave civilization is looming close. There is fast a fast-spreading recognition around the World that progress can no longer be measure in terms of technology or material standards of living alone—that a society that is morally, aesthetically, politically, or environmentally degraded is not an advance society, no matter how rich or technically sophisticated it may be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In fact, we are moving toward a far more comprehensive notion of progress—progress no longer automatically achieved and no longer defined by material criteria lone. We are also less inclined to think of societies as moving along one track, each society traveling automatically from one cultural way-station to the next, one more “advanced” than another. There may be many branch lines, as it were, rather than a single roadbead, and societies may be able to achieve comprehensive development in a variety of ways. We are beginning to think of progress as the flowering of a tree with many branches extending into the future, the very variety and richness of human cultures serving as a measure. In this light, today’s shift toward a more diverse, de-massified World may itself come to be seen as an important forward leap—analogous to the tendency toward differentiation and complexity so common in biological evolution. Whatever happens next, it is unlikely that the culture will ever again return to the naïve, unilinear, Pollyannish progressivism that characterized and inspired the Second Wave era, unless we discover another planet we can live on and start over. Nonetheless, the past decades, therefore, have witnessed a forced reconceptualization of nature, evolution, and progress alike. These concepts, however, were in turn based on still more elemental ideas—our assumptions about time, space, matter, and causality. And the Third Wave is dissolving even these assumptions—the intellectual glue that held the Second Wave civilization together. So start the face with all deliberate speed, and try not to flop. Through frequent prayers and confessions and the sacred reception of Jesus Christ’s Host, we can get wind again and rejoin the race. If one does not do this or something like it soon, one will just never have the strength to stay on the course. Be partaker and heir of Eternal Glory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
From adolescence on—the Author of Genesis knew this (8.21)—the senses of Humankind are prone to evil, and unless Divine Medicaments help, Humankind will go to the dogs; that is to say, proceed from the lesser sins to the greater. That is how Holy Communion pulls one back from evil and pushes one toward good. As long as your soul is entrapped, or enshrined in your mortal body, it travels through life as a part of Jesus Christ; that is as Paul put in in Second Corinthians (5.6). Therefore, your soul should be mindful of God Himself from time to time and receive its beloved Friend with a devout mind. Blessed is the soul that is finally prepared itself to receive Jesus Christ, the Lord God, with devotion! In return, He will fill that soul with spiritual joy! Happy is the mind that receives the Great Lord, welcomes as guest, receives a congenial companion, accepts a faithful friend, embraces a noble bachelor in front of a party of friends, a Friend of friends! May Heaven with all its pendants and Earth with all its ornaments pause in their tinkling orbits for a moment to homage to Jesus Christ, our Sweetest Friend! Whatever praise seeps or grace drips from the largesse of His Comedown, it is only spillage from His Ever-flowing Fount. As the Psalmist has sung, “There is no accounting for Your Wisdom” (147.5). Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Hope is an emotion which brings richness to our everyday lives. It is defined as “the feeling that events will turn out for the best. When we exercise hope, we look forward with desire and reasonable confidence. As such, hope brings a certain calming influence to our lives as we confidently look forward to future events. Sometimes we hope for things over which we have little or no control. We hope for good weather. We hope for an early spring. We hope our favourite sports team will win the World Cup, Super Bowl, or the World Series. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Such hopes make our lives interesting and can often lead to unusual, even superstitious behaviour. Other times our hopes can lead to dreams which can inspire us and lead us to action. If we have the hope to do better at work, that hope can be realized by dedicated work and sacrifice. If we have the hope to play on a winning team, that hope can lead to consistent practice, dedication, teamwork, and ultimately success. Hope can inspire dreams and spur us to realize those dreams. Hope alone, however, does not cause us to succeed. Many honourable hopes have gone unfulfilled, shipwrecked on the reefs of good intentions and laziness. Our hope in the Atonement empowers us with eternal perspective. Such perspective allows us to look beyond the here and now on into the promise of the eternities. We do not have to be trapped in the narrow confines of society’s fickle expectations. We are free to look forward to celestial glory, sealed to our family and loved ones. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither can ye if we have no hope,” reports Moroni 10.20-21. Faith is rooted in Jesus Christ. Hope centers in the Atonement. Charity is manifest in the pure love of Christ. These three attributes are intertwined like strands in a cable and may not always be precisely distinguished. Together they become our tether to the celestial kingdom. “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all humans,” reports 2 Nephi 31.20. This hope has lead humans through the ages to do remarkable things. It is my prayer that our hopes will lead to the fulfillment of our righteous dreams. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
I particularly pray our hope in the Atonement will strengthen our faith and charity and give us an eternal perspective of our future. May we all have this perfect brightness of hope. Lord, I come today seeking a financial breakthrough and your supernatural blessing. I know God that you are moving things and working all things together for my good. God, create an opening of your abundant supernatural supply. Break the curse of poverty and lack. And I thank You for all the blessings you have bestowed already. O Father the hem of whose garment is in the sky, whose grace falls from His glance, who gives life from the touch of one finger. O Father whose hair is the willow, whose breath is the riversong, who lopes through the milky way, baying, stars going out, O Lord whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes eye socket black imploded stars, who trails frail as a northern virgin on the mist, O Lord flying your bright drops to us, emblems of your love, throw your green scarf on the battered Earth once more. O smile, disrobe for us, unveil your eyes. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy king. We sanctify Thy name on Earth even as it is sanctified in the Heavens above, as described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called one unto another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole Earth is full of His glory. Whereupon the angles declare; Blessed be the glory of God from His Heavenly abode. And as it is written in the holy Scripture: The Lord shall reign forever; Thy God, O Zion, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah! Unto all generations we will declare Thy greatness and to all eternity we will proclaim Thy holiness. Our mouth shall ever speak Thy praise, O our God, for Thou art a great and holy God and King. Blessed Art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. Thou endowest humans with knowledge and teachest mortal humans understanding. O great us knowledge, understanding, and discernment. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bestowest knowledge upon humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
For the first time, you won’t need a folding table for Thanksgiving! 🦃 A gorgeous eat-in island plus space for a full dining set means everyone has a chair in the Mills Station Residence 3 model.
Now to plan the menu…
Traditional single-family homes offer space for multi-generational families with kid zones and living suites. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-3/
Better to Have Liberty Fraught with Danger than Servitude in Peace!
Respect is what we owe; love is what we give. As the moral movement was declining in the late 1800s, due to overcrowding, limited funding, and ineffective hospital treatments in state hospitals across the United States of America, which has continued well into the twenty-first century, two opposing perspectives emerged and began to vie for the attention of clinicians (a doctor having direct contact with and responsibility for patients, rather than one involved with theoretical or laboratory studies): the somatogenic perspective, the view that abnormal psychological functioning has physical causes, and the psychogenic perspective, the view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are psychological. These perspectives came into full bloom during the twentieth century. The somatogenic perspective has at least a 2,400-year history—remember Hippocrates’ view that abnormal behaviour resulted from brain disease and an imbalance of humors? Not until the late nineteenth century, however, did this perspective make a triumphant return and begin to gain wide acceptance. Two factors were responsible for this rebirth. One was the work of an eminent German researcher, Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926). In 1883 Dr. Kraepelin published an influential textbook which argued that physical factors, such as fatigue, are responsible for mental dysfunction. In addition, he also constructed the first modern system for classifying abnormal behaviour. He identified various syndromes, or clusters of symptoms; listed their physical causes; and discussed their expected course. Dr. Kraepelin also measured the effects of various drugs on abnormal behaviour. New biological discoveries also triggered the rise of the somatogenic perspective. One of the most important discoveries was that an organic disease, syphilis, led to general paresis, an irreversible disorder with both physical and mental symptoms, including paralysis and delusions of grandeur. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
In 1897 Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), a German neurologist, injected matter from syphilis sores into patients suffering from general paresis and found that none of the patients developed symptoms of syphilis. Their immunity could have been caused only by an earlier case of syphilis. Since all patients with general paresis were now immune to syphilis, Dr. Krafft-Ebing theorized that syphilis had been the cause of their general paresis. Finally, in 1905, Fritz Schaudinn (18871-1906), a German zoologist, discovered that the microorganism Treponema pallida was responsible for syphilis, which in turn was responsible for general paresis. The work of Dr. Kraepelin and the new understanding of general paresis led many researchers and practitioners to suspect that organic factors were responsible for many mental disorders, perhaps all of them. These theories and the possibility of quick and effective medical solutions for mental disorders were especially welcomed by those who worked in mental hospitals, where patient populations were now growing at an alarming rate. Despite the general optimism, biological approaches yielded largely disappointing results throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Although many medical treatments were developed for patients in mental hospitals during that time, most of the techniques failed to work. Physicians tried tooth extraction, tonsillectomy, hydrotherapy (alternating how and cold baths), and lobotomy, a surgical cutting of certain nerve fibers in the brain. Even worse, biological views and claims led, in some circles, to proposals for immoral solutions such as eugenic sterilization. In the years 1896, Connecticut became the first state in the United States of America to prohibit persons with mental disorders from marrying. 1896-1933, every state in the United States of America passed a law prohibiting marriage by persons with mental disorders. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Indiana became the first state to pass a bill calling for people with mental disorders, as well as criminals and other “defectives,” to undergo sterilization in the year 1907. Just 20 years later, in 1927, the United States of America’s Supreme Court ruled that eugenic sterilization was constitutional. Between the years 1907-1945, around 45,000 Americans were sterilized under eugenic sterilization laws; 21,000 of them were patients in state mental hospitals. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland passed eugenic sterilization laws from 1929-1932. In 1933, Germany passed a eugenic sterilization law, under which 375,000 people were sterilized by 1940. That very same year, Nazi Germany begin to use “proper gases” to kill people with mental disorders; 70,000 or more people were killed in less than two years. Whenever, therefore, Man takes up the task of ordering life on a rational and human basis, he has to been the problem of deciding what is to be done about this surplus. All human societies have been perpetually concerned with this problem from the outset, to a large extent unconsciously, to an ever-increasing degree consciously. By a systematic survey of the various races of the World, it is clear how the natural tendency to excess of population is among every human race. Naturally, the goal is checked in a great variety of ways, preventive, by the exercise of a restraint on procreation, and positive, by the destruction of the excess due to unrestrained procreation. These positive checks are extremely various and include every cause, whether arising from vice or misery, which in any degree contributes to shorten the natural duration of life. Under this head are enumerated all unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the entire train of common diseases, and epidemics, pandemics, wars, plagues, famines. The whole of the obstacles to increase of population, preventative and positive, are regarded as resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The Eugenics Education Society believes that we need a decrease among the grossly defective class and that may be accompanied by an even greater increase among the less defective class just above them. The whole tone of a nation is permanently affected by the moral and intellectual contagion which is due to the presence in its ranks of persons of inferior type, even thought they are not of the lowest type. No compulsory sterilization can be enforced here; it is a problem which must be met indirectly. There can be no reasonable doubt that it makes for some benefit to the race, and is certainly for the benefit of the children who remain unborn and the parents who are spared the pains and trouble of begetting them, that parents who are mentally abnormal or defective should not begat or conceive children. During World War I in the United States of America, a number of laws were passed in many states for ordaining compulsory sterilization. These laws were often badly made as well as premature, frequently repealed or declared unconstitutional. Modern California has become so liberal, but that was not always the case. The sterilization of the insane or defective began in California in 1927, and it was the ordinary course carried out by agreement with the husband or wife or nearest relations when the patients are not legally competent to give their consent. During that time, in Californian mental hospitals, if strong objections were offered to it, though, by a wise precaution, sterilization was not performed. However, the inmates of mental homes were not allowed out, even for a short period, without sterilization. It has been estimated that the sterilization of even one tenth of the population would produce an appreciably beneficial eugenic effect on the whole nations, which is why so many people are happy that OSHA declared President Biden’s mandated vaccination of termination of employment unconstitutional. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
However, it is by the increase in the knowledge of heredity, by the spread of education among the masses of the population, and—perhaps above all—by the growth of the sense of social responsibility, that alone real progress is possible. Not until the 1950s, when a number of effective medications were finally discovered, did the somatogenic perspective truly begin to pay off for patients. The psychogenic perspective—the late nineteenth century also saw the emergence of the psychogenic perspective, the view that the chief causes of abnormal functioning are often psychological. This view, too, had a long history. The Roman statesman’s and orator Cicero (106-43 B.C.) held that psychological disturbances could cause bodily ailments, and the Greek physician Galen believed that many mental disorders are caused by fear, disappointment in love, and other psychological events. However, the psychogenic perspective did not gain much of a following until studies of hypnotism demonstrated its potential. Hypnotism is a procedure that places people in a trancelike mental state during which they become extremely suggestible. It was used to help treat psychological disorders as far back as 1778, when an Austrian physician named Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) established a clinic in Paris. His patients suffered from hysterical disorders, mysterious bodily ailments that had no apparent physical basis. Dr. Mesmer had his patients sit in a darkened room filled with music; then he appeared, dressed in a flamboyant costume, and touched the troubled area of each patient’s body with a special rod. A surprising number of patients seemed to be helped by this treatment, called mesmerism. Their pain, numbness, or paralysis disappeared. Several scientists believed that Dr. Mesmer was inducing a trancelike state in his patients and that this state was causing their symptoms to disappear. The treatment was so controversial, however, that eventually Dr. Mesmer was banished from Paris. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It was not until years after Dr. Mesmer died that many researchers had the courage to investigate his procedure, later called hypnotism (from hypnos, the Greek word for “sleep”), and its effects on hysterical disorders. By the late nineteenth century, two competing vies had emerged. Because hypnosis—a technique relying on the power of suggestion—was able to alleviate hysterical ailments, some scientists concluded that hysterical disorders must be caused by the power of suggestion—that is, by the mind—in the first place. In contrast, other scientists believed that historical disorders had subtle physiological causes. For example, Jean Charot (1825-1893), Paris’s most eminent neurologist, argued that hysterical disorders were the result of degeneration in portions of the brain. The experiments of two physicians practicing in the city of Nancy in France finally seemed to settle the matter. Hippolyte-Marie Bernheim (1840-1919) and Ambroise-Auguste Liebault (1823-1904) showed that hysterical disorders could actually be induced in otherwise normal subjects while they were under the influence of hypnosis. That is, the physicians could make normal people experience deafness, paralysis, blindness, or numbness by means of hypnotic suggestion—and they could remove these artificial symptoms by the name means. Thus, they established that a mental process—hypnotic suggestion—could both cause and cure even a physical dysfunction. Leading scientists, including Dr. Charcot, finally embraced the idea that hysterical disorders were largely psychological in origin, and the psychogenic perspective rose in popularity. Among those who studied the effects of hypnotism on hysterical disorders was Josef Breuer (1842-1925) of Vienna. This physician discovered that his patients sometimes awoke free of hysterical symptoms after speaking candidly under hypnosis about past upsetting events. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
During the 1890s Dr. Breuer was joined in his work by another Viennese, physician, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Dr. Freud’s work eventually led him to develop the theory of psychoanalysis, which holds that many forms of abnormal and normal psychological functioning are psychogenic. In particular, he believed that unconscious psychological processes are at the root of such functioning. Dr. Freud also developed the technique of psychoanalysis, a form of discussion in which clinicians help troubled people gain insight into their unconscious psychological processes. He believed that such insight, even without hypnotic procedures, would help the patients overcome their psychological problems. Dr. Freud and his followers applied the psychoanalytic treatment approach primarily to patients suffering from anxiety or depression, problems that did not typically require hospitalization. These patients visited therapists in their offices for session of approximately an hour and then went about their daily activities—a format of treatment now known as outpatient therapy. By the early twentieth century, psychoanalytic theory and treatment were widely accepted throughout the Western World. The psychoanalytic approach had little effect on the treatment of severely disturbed patients in mental hospitals, however. This type of therapy requires levels of clarity, insight, and verbal skill beyond the capabilities of most such patients. Moreover, psychoanalysis often takes years to be effective, and the overcrowded and understaffed public mental hospitals could not accommodate such a leisurely pace. If you have every struggled with an eating disorder in the past, you know that the path to recovery can be hard. Therefore, it is important that the government offers more funding to help people with dysfunctional behaviour. There is commonly held misconception that eating disorders are a lifestyle choice. Eating disorders are actually serious and often fatal illnesses that are associated with severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviours and related thoughts and emotions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Preoccupation with food, body weight, and shape may also signal an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. People with anorexia nervosa may see themselves as overweight, even when they are dangerously underweight. People with anorexia nervosa typically weigh themselves repeatedly, severely restrict the amount of food they eat, often exercise excessively, and/or may force themselves to vomit or use laxatives to lose weight. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder. While many people with this disorder die from complications associated with starvation, others die of suicide. People with bulimia nervosa have recurrent and frequent episodes of eating unusually large amounts of food and feeling a lack of control over these episodes. This binge-eating is followed by behaviour that compensates for the overeating such as forced vomiting, excessive use of laxatives or diuretics, fasting, excessive exercise, or a combination of these behaviours. People with bulimia nervosa may be slightly underweight, normal weight, or above average weight. People with binge-eating disorder lose control over his or her eating. Unlike bulimia nervosa, periods of binge-eating are not followed by purging, excessive exercise, of fasting. As a result, people with binge-eating disorder often are above average weight or obese. Binge-eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States of America. Binge-eating may be considered a medical concern and not dysfunctional behaviour. The ratio of females to males suffering from anorexia nervosa is approximately 10.1. This may be due to the greater concerns with body image, dieting, and weight control among women compared to men. Perhaps owing to the widely held importance of the relationship with the same-sex parent in a child’s development, a great deal of attention has been granted to mother-daughter relationships in eating disorders. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Girls with eating disorders have been known to describe their mothers as overprotective and less caring. In light of such findings, it is not surprising to discover that mothers of daughters with eating disorders have expressed a desire for greater family cohesion than what they currently perceive. A group of young women with eating disorders retrospectively reported maternal relations that involve more emotional coldness, indifference, and rejection, compared to a sample of controls. Some evidence suggests that dietary restraint may be passed on from other to daughter. In this particular sample of mother, they had a history of eating disorders. In a very carefully controlled study, rates of eating disorders in mothers of a group of probands (a person serving as the starting point for the genetic study of a family) diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, but with no history of anorexia nervosa. Their results indicated that 26 percent of the mothers of probands with bulimia nervosa had a lifetime diagnosis of some form of eating disorder (exempli gratia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, eating disorder not otherwise specified, binge-eating disorder). This rate was significantly higher than that for mothers of a control group with no history of eating disorders. Of course, family studies confound the effects of genes and environment; thus it is not entirely clear whether the association between mothers’ and daughters’ eating disorders is the result of maternal genetic contributions, or of the social environment to which mothers contribute. Investigations of mothers’ attitudes toward their daughters’ body image paint an even more dismal picture of mother-daughter relations. Mothers of girls with eating disorders in one study thought that their daughters ought to lose significantly more weight than mothers of girls without eating disorders thought about their daughters. Sadly, these same mothers rated their daughters as significantly less attractive than the daughters rated themselves! This is particularly amazing, given that people with eating disorders typically have low self-esteem and a negative body image, and hence are unlikely to inflate ratings of their own attractiveness. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Data provided by mothers in an interview study indicated that mothers of daughters with bulimia nervosa were more controlling and held higher expectations for their daughters than control mothers. The effects of being in a relationship with a mother prone to such negative and excessive evaluations could be extremely caustic for an adolescent girl. The attention grated to mothers of children with eating disorders has been criticized by feminist scholars as “mother-blaming.” The tendency to see mothers as casually related to child problems is a legacy of the psychoanalytic school, which overemphasized mothers’ roles and devalued the influence of fathers. At the same time, however, psychodynamically oriented theorists argue that many girls with eating disorders use food as a means of fighting a battle (both interpersonally and intrapsychically) with their overprotective but nonempathic mothers. The data on mothers’ roles in the pathogenesis of eating disorders are alluring. Whether they represent a disrespectful and misguided focus, or a theoretically and etiologically meaningful domain of inquiry, will best be resolved through future empirical investigation, particularly with comparative collateral data from fathers. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you,” reports Isaiah 60.1. A lot of people subconsciously feel like victims and they project this victim mentality on to others. They are so focused on what they have been through, complaining about how unfair it was, and they do not even realize they are living in the past. It is they get up each day with a new story of how hurt and weak they are and want to share that misery with others. However, one has to get some therapy, go to church, or talk to a doctor and get on some medication and let that stuff go! #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The past does not have to poison your future. Just because you have been through the ringer, or perhaps your dreams have been shattered, that does not mean that it is the end for you. God has another plan. God still have a bright future mapped out for you on this journey. However, each and every last one of us needs to understand this one important principal: The past is not present. One cannot undo anything that has happened to one. One cannot relive one moment in the past. However, one can do something right now. Do not dwell on the negative things that have happened. Do not think about all you have lost. Do not focus on what could have been if Taylor Swift did not steal your man. Be like Celine Dion and proclaim a new day has come. If one does that, God will give one a new beginning. God allows people to grieve for a certain period of time, but then He expects them to get up and go one with their lives. However, God does not expect us to be emotionless. It is okay to allow hurts from the past to register and process, but do not hold yourself there for too long or you might miss the new man God has lined up for you. Therefore, do not let that season of mourning turn into a lifetime of dysfunction, living a sour and negative life, going around with static. Some people wake up in the morning and before they groom themselves, brush their teeth or change their underwear, they out there hating on Paris Hilton. It is what brings them joy. However, that is why no one wants them. They are miserable and unhappy, evil and ugly. No man wants that kind of sour patch in his life. We all are living through tough times, no matter how rich one is, but it is important to shake it off, shake it off, and expect good things to happen. Enjoy life. We are so blessed to be alive. Are you still sour because Beyonce got that promotion a couple of years ago instead of you? Is your attitude negative because you were not able to buy that Cresleigh Home at Millionaires Station or the Ultimate Driving Machine? Are you bitter because Paris Hilton got married and your relationship is headed for the rocks? Are you angry because you were abused as a child? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Are you jealous because Aaliyah’s hair is longer and more shinny than yours? Stop! Stop morning over something you do not have or something that is already over and done. You have to let go of that mentality that you are so pathetic that all you can do is lay around eating, and complaining how hard your life is. Your future can start right now. It does not matter what you have been through. God wants to turn that around. God wants you to invite him into your life. Stop lying and being jealous. No one can make you open the door to God. All others can do is encourage you, but it is your choice what type of life you want to live. Develop a successful mentality. Let love fill your heart. Greet each day with a smile and a flip of your hair. Know that God is going to make it up to you. Just because your parents could not send you to Princeton does not mean that you have to fill your life with poison. There is nothing more than the enemy loves more than to see you sour, jealous and bitter. Many people have made a lot of mistakes, but the good news is we can all repent. God wants to take those negative experiences and use them to you advantage to make you stronger. Forget what lies behind with you and press on. Jesus Christ desires us to receive Him devoutly and reverently. Jesus Christ desires us to lead Him into our home, so He will favour us. Let your soul desire Christ’s Body in your Host. Christ’s heart desires to be united with you. Let Jesus Christ hand Himself over to you, and know that will be enough to satisfy your desires. For without the Holy Presence of Christ, consolation grows stale, falls flat, loses its flavour. Without Jesus Christ, we all have the staggers. Without Jesus’ sacramental visits, we would not have the strength to carry one. Approach the Holy Table frequently. If you do not stop, Jesus will stop the Celestial Alimony, and one will lose what little sense of direction one has. When preaching to the people and healing their maladies, Jesus in His mercy sometimes had to stop cold and says, “Those of you who are fasting, I cannot send you away on empty stomachs for fear you will never make it home.” That is how Matthew put it (15.32). #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The government is here on Earth for our well-being and to protect the rights of our citizens. Never forget that America is one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. The sovereign can entrust the government to the entire people or to the majority of the people, so that there are more citizens who are magistrates than who are ordinary private citizens. This form of government is given the name of democracy. Or else it can restrict the government to the hands of a small number, so that there are more ordinary citizens than magistrates; and this form is called aristocracy. Finally, it can concentrate the entire government in the hands of a single magistrate from whom all the others derive their power. This third form is the most common and is called monarchy or royal government. It should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two, can be had in greater or lesser degrees, and even have a rather wide range. For democracy can include the entire populace or be restricted to half. Aristocracy, for its part, can be indeterminately restricted from half the people down to the smallest number. Even royalty can be had in varying levels of distribution. Sparta always had two kings, as required by its constitution; and the Roman Empire is known to have had up to eight emperors at a time, without it being possible to say that the empire was divided. Thus there is a point at which each form of government is indistinguishable from the next, and it is apparent that, under just three names, government can take on as many diverse forms as the state has citizens. Moreover, since this same government can, in certain respects, be subdivided into other parts, one administered in one way, another in another, there can result from the combination of these three forms a multitude of mixed forms, each of which can be multiplied by all the simple forms. There has always been a great deal of argument over the best form of government, without considering that each one of them is best in certain cases and the worst in others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If the number of supreme magistrates in the different states ought to be in inverse ratio to that of the citizens, it follows that in general democratic government is suited to small states, aristocratic government to states of intermediate size, and monarchical government to large ones This rule is derived immediately from the principle; but how is one to count the multitude of circumstances that can furnish exceptions? One who makes the law knows better than anyone else how it should be executed and interpreted. It seems therefore to be impossible to have a better constitution than one in which the executive power is united to the legislative power. However, this is precisely what renders such a government inadequate in certain respects, since things that should be distinguished are not, and the prince and sovereign, being merely the same person, form, as it were, only a government without a government. It is not good for the one who makes them laws to execute them, nor for the body of the people to turn its attention away from general perspectives in order to give it particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs; and the abuse of the laws by the government is a lesser evil than the corruption of the legislator, which is the inevitable outcome of particular perspectives. In such a situation, since the state is being substantially altered, all reform becomes impossible. A people that would never misuse government would never misuse independence. A people that would always govern well would not need to be governed. Taking the term in the strict sense, a true democracy has never existed and never will. It is contrary to the natural order that the majority govern and the minority is governed. It is unimaginable that the people would remain constantly assembled to handle public affairs; and it is readily apparent that it could not establish commissions for this purpose without changing the form of administration. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
In fact, I believe I can lay down as a principle that when the functions of the government are shared among several tribunals, those with the fewest members sooner or later acquire the greatest authority, if and only if because of the facility in expediting public business which brings this about naturally. Besides, how many things that are difficult to unite are presupposed by this government? First, a very small state where it is easy for the people to gather together and where each citizen can easily know all the others. Second, a great simplicity of mores, which prevents the multitude of public business and thorny discussions. Next, a high degree of equality in ranks and fortunes, without which equality in rights and authority cannot subsist for long. Finally, little or no luxury, for luxury either is the effect of wealth or it makes wealth necessary. It simultaneously corrupts both the rich and the poor, the one by possession, the other by covetousness. It sells the homeland to softness and vanity. It takes all its citizens from the state in order to make them slaves to one another, and all of them to opinion. This is why a famous author has made virtue the principle of the republic. For all these conditions could not subsist without virtue. However, owing to one’s failure to have made the necessary distinctions, this great genius often lacked precision and sometimes clarity. And one did not realize that since the sovereign authority is everywhere the same, the same principle should have a place in every well constituted state, though in a greater or lesser degree, it is true, according to the form of government. Let us add that no government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and continuously to change its form, or demands greater vigilance and courage to be maintained in its own form. Above all, it is under this constitution that the citizens ought to arm oneself with force and constancy, and to say each day of one’s life from the bottom of one’s heart with a virtuous Palatine said in the Diet of Poland: Better to have liberty fraught with danger than servitude in peace. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Were there are people of gods, it would govern itself democratically. So perfect a government is not suited to humans. The organized politico-economy substitutes for organized religion have hardly proved any better when put into active life rather than mere theory. They have introduced much hate, misery, oppression, persecution, superstition, and war, like the other. In connection with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Mao Tsetung wrote that the working classes would from then on take over leadership in all activities. That is to say, the least fitted by natural mental development, experience, and acquired education would dictate what was to be taught in philosophical and similar reflections about life, man, and history, if indeed such subjects would not be dropped altogether as unpractical, hence useless. The Peking Institute of Philosophy, a leading one in China, stopped publishing its journal Philosophical Research in 1966. The fundamental mistakes which is responsible for the harm and evil and misery caused when these teachings of economic equality are put into harsh practice, is to do so in separation from the teachings concerning man’s spiritual life and spiritual needs. If the two were joined together then the fanaticism, delusion, and brutality of such practice would eliminate itself. It is inevitable that a group which espouses belief in atheistic materialism will also espouse belief in the use of force and violence to establish itself and its views. If there will be no peace, it is because they do not really want it. The most frenzied exponents of materialistic values today are those who have developed enough intellect to lose their faith in the hypocrisies of conventional religion but who have lost their true intuition along with their false belief. Such are the leaders and advocates of communism everywhere. Thus the good in their development is offset by the evil. The result is spiritual chaos and social turmoil for the masses who follow them. Since both the religious and their rebels have contributed to this situation, there is no remedy save in a clearer insight on the part of both. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
It is impossible to reconcile the criminal ethics and materialistic ideology of Communism with the lofty ethics and mystical ideology of philosophy. There is no communication and every disparity between them. The itch to meddle in other people’s affairs and to mind their business for them is an ancient one. It reaches its extreme degrees in tyrannies like the Germany Nazi and the Russian Communist and certain American political parties and clubs, where state interference in the people’s lives, culture, religion, and freedom become intolerable. Never before have so many people in so many countries—even educated and supposedly sophisticated people—been so intellectually helpless, drowning, as it were, in a maelstrom of conflicting, confusing, and cacophonous ideas. Colliding visions rock our mental Universe. Every day brings some new fad, scientific finding, religion, movement, or manifesto. Nature worship, ESP, holistic medicine, sociobiology, anarchism, structuralism, neo-Marxism, the new physics, Eastern mysticism, technophilia, technophobia, social media, the Internet, and a thousand other currents and crosscurrents sweep across the screen of consciousness, each with its scientific priesthood or ten-minute guru. We see a mounting attack on establishment science. We see a wildfire revival of fundamentalist religion and a desperate search for something—almost anything—to believe in. Much of this confusion is actually the result of an intensifying cultural war—the collision of an emerging Third Wave culture with the entrenched ideas and assumptions of industrial society. For just as the Second Wave engulfed traditional views and spread the belief system I call indust-reality, so today we see the beginnings of a philosophical revolt aimed at overthrowing the reigning assumptions of the past 360 years. They key ideas of the industrial period are being discredited, discounted, superseded, or subsumed into much larger and more powerful theories. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The core beliefs of Second Wave civilization did not win acceptance during the nearly past four centuries without a bitter struggle. In science, in education, in religion, in a thousand fields, the “progressive” thinkers of the industrialism fought against the “reactionary” thinkers who reflected and rationalized agricultural societies. Today it the defenders of industrialism who have their backs against the wall as a new, Third Wave culture has taken form. Nothing illustrates this clash of ideas more clearly than our changing image of nature. In the past decade a Worldwide environmental movement has sprung up in response to fundamental, potentially dangerous changes in the Earth’s biosphere. And this movement has done more than attack pollution, food additives, nuclear reactors, highways, and hairspray aerosols. It has also forced us to rethink or dependency on nature. As a consequence, instead of conceiving ourselves as engaged in a bloody way with nature, we are moving toward a fresh view that emphasizes symbiosis or harmony with the earth. We are shifting from an adversary to a nonadversary posture. At the scientific level, this has led to thousands of studies aimed at understanding ecological relationships so that we can soften out impacts on nature or channel them in constructive ways. We have just begun to appreciate the complexity and dynamism of these relationships and to reconceptualize society itself in terms of recycling, renewability, and the carrying capacity of natural systems. All this is mirrored in a corresponding shift of popular attitudes toward nature. Whether we examine opinion surveys or the lyrics of pop songs, the visual imagery in advertising or the content of sermons, we find evidence of a heightened, though often romantic regard for nature. City dwellers by the millions of years for the countryside, and the Urban Land Institute reports a significant population shift toward rural areas. Interest in natural foods, hunting one’s own food, and natural childbirth, biorhythms, or body care has boomed in recent years. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
And public suspicion of technology is so widespread that even the most single-minded pursuers of GNP (Gross National Product) today pay at least lip service to the idea that nature must be protected, not raped—that the adverse side effects of technology on nature must be anticipated and prevented, not simply ignored. Because our power to damage has escalated, the Earth now is regarded as far more fragile than Second Wave civilization suspected. At the same time, it is seen as a diminishing dot in a Universe that grows larger and more complex with every passing moment. Since the Third way began some 85 years ago, scientists have developed a whole battery of new tools for probing nature’s most distant reaches. In turn these lasers, rockets, accelerators, plasmas, fantastic photographic capabilities, computers, laser lock cutters, and colliding-beam devices have burst our conception of what surrounds us. We are not looking at phenomena that are bigger, smaller, and faster by orders of magnitudes than any we examined during the Second Wave. Today we are probing phenomena that are as tiny as 1/1,000,000,000,000,000th of a centimeter in an explorable Universe whose edge lies at least 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away. We are studying phenomena so short-lived that they occur in 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of a second. By contrast our astronomers and cosmologists tell us the Universe is some 20,000,000,000 years old. The sheer scale of explorable nature has burst beyond yesterday’s wildest assumptions. Moreover, in this swirling vastness, we are told, the Earth may not be the only inhabited sphere. Says astronomer Otto Struve, “the vast number of stars that mist possess planets, the conclusions of many biologists that life is an inherent property of certain types of complicated molecules or aggregates of molecules, the uniformity throughout the Universe of the chemical elements, the light and heat emitted by solar-type stars, and the occurrence of water not only on the Earth but on Mars and Venus, compel us to revise out thinking” and consider the possibility of extraterrestrial life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
This does not mean little green humanoids. And it does not mean (or not mean) UFOs. However, by suggesting that life is not unique to the Earth, it further alters our perception of nature and our place in it. Since 1960, scientists have been listening in the dark, hoping to detect signals from some distant intelligence. The United States of America’s Congress has held hearings on “The Possibility of Intelligent Life Elsewhere in the Universe.” And the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, as it streaked into interstellar space carried with it a pictorial greeting to extraterrestrials. There is a rover on Mars surveying and taking pictures, and even private corporations planning to go into outer space. As the Third Wave dawns, our own planet seems much smaller and more vulnerable. Our place in the Universe seems less grandiose. And even the remote possibility that we are not alone gives us pause. Our image of nature is not what it used to be. Someday, let us be sure, the World will recognize all that it owes to those noble pioneers who, at the risk of obloquy, had the vision to see the fate that Threatens Man and the courage to face it with hope. Dear Lord in Heaven, I know the ashes signify that which has been destroyed in my life, but beginning this moment, I believe You can bring new fire into my life. I refuse to dwell on my disappointments. Instead, I will trust You for new appointments. Remember, remember, the circles of the sky, the stars and the brown eagle, the supernatural winds breathing night and day from the four directions. Remember, remember the great life of the sun breathing on the Earth, it lies upon the Earth to bring out life upon the Earth, life covering the Earth. Remember, remember the sacredness of things running streams and dwellings the young within the nest, a hearth for sacred fire the holy ray of light. Thou sustainest the living with lovingkindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keepest faith with those that sleep in the durst. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Who may be compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to everlasting. Holy art Thou, and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Time outdoors impacts mental health! 🌳 Green space + fresh air = reduced stress, depression, and anxiety.
When your home includes a beautiful, designated outdoor space, you’ve just increased your happiness levels! Love this little spot at the Meadows Residence 1 model. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-1/
Do Not Leave Me. See How Hard I am Trying! Are I Not Cute?
If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It is the ultimate hustle. As 1800 approached, the treatment of people with mental disorders began to improve once again. Historians usually point to La Bicetre, and asylum in Paris for male patients, as the first site of asylum reform. In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) was named the chief physician there. He argued that the patients were sick people whose illness should be treated with sympathy and kindness rather than chains and beatings. He unchained them and allowed them to move freely about the hospital grounds, replaced the dark dungeons with sunny, well-ventilated rooms, and offered support and advice. Dr. Pinel’s approach proved remarkably successful. Patients who had been shut away for decades were now enjoying fresh air and sunlight and being treated with dignity. Many improved greatly over a short period of time and were released. Dr. Pinel later brought similar reforms to a mental hospital in Paris, France for female patients, La Salpetriere. Jean Esquirol (1772-1840), Dr. Pinel’s student and successor, went on to help establish 10 new mental hospitals that operated on the same principles. Meanwhile an English Quaker named William Tuke (1732-1819) was bringing similar reforms to northern England. In 1796 he founded the York Retreat, a rural estate where about 30 mental patients lived as guests in quiet country houses and were treated with a combination of rest, talk, prayer, and manual work. “For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice],” reports Romans 8.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
The spread of moral treatment—the methods of Dr. Pinel and Mr. Tuke, called spectful techniques, caught on throughout Europe and the United States of America. Patients with psychological problems were increasingly perceived as potentially productive human beings whose mental functioning had broken down under stress. They were considered deserving of individual care, including discussions of their problems, useful activities, work, companionship, and quiet. The person most responsible for the early spread of moral treatment in the United States of America was Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), an eminent physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Limiting his practice to mental illness, Dr. Rush developed innovative, humane approaches to treatment. For example, he required that the hospital hire intelligent and sensitive attendant to work closely with patients, reading and talking to them and taking them on regular walks. He also suggested that it would be therapeutic for doctors to give small gifts to their patients now and then. Dr. Rush, widely considered the father of American psychiatry, also wrote the first American treatise on mental illness and organized the first American course in psychiatry. Dr. Rush’s work was influential, but it was a Boston Schoolteacher named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) who made humane care a public and political concern in the United States of America. In 1841 Mrs. Dix had gone to teach Sunday school at a local prison and been shocked by the conditions she saw there. Before long, her interest in prison conditions broadened to include the plight of poor and mentally ill people throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
A powerful campaigner, Mrs. Dix went from state legislature to state legislature speaking of the horrors she had observed and calling for reform. Similarly, she told the Congress of the United States of America that mentally ill people across the country were still being “bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls attached to drag chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods and terrified beneath storms of execration and cruel blows.” From 1841 until 1881, Mrs. Dix fought for new laws and greater government funding to improve the treatment of people with mental disorders. Each state was made responsible for developing effective public mental hospitals. Mrs. Dix personally helped established 32 of these state hospitals (state-run public mental institutions in the United States of America), all intended to offer moral treatment. Similar hospitals were established throughout Europe. The Decline of moral treatment—as we have observed, the treatment of abnormality has followed a crooked path. Over and over again, relative progress has been followed by serious decline. Viewed in this context, it is not surprising that the moral treatment movement began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century. Several factors were responsible. One was the speed with which the moral movement had spread. As mental hospitals multiplied, severe money and staffing shortages developed, recovery rates declined, and overcrowding in the hospitals became a major problem. Under such conditions it was often impossible to provide individual care and genuine concern. Another factor was the assumption behind moral treatment that if treated with humanity and dignity, all patients could be cured. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
For some, being treated with compassion and respect was indeed sufficient. Others, however, needed more effective treatments than any that had yet been developed. Many of these people remained hospitalized until they died. An additional factor contributing to the decline of moral treatment was the emergence of a new wave of prejudice against people with mental disorders. As more and more patients disappeared into large distant mental hospitals, the public came to view them as strange and dangerous. In turn, people were less open-handed when it came to making donations or allocating government funds. Moreover, many of the patients entering public mental hospitals in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century were impoverished foreign immigrants, whom the public had little interest in helping. By the early years of the twentieth century, the moral treatment movement had ground to a halt in both the United States of America and Europe. Public mental hospitals were providing only custodial care and ineffective medical treatments and were becoming more overcrowded every year. Long-term hospitalization became the rule once again. Beware of the evil eye—a number of demonological explanations for abnormal behaviour continue in today’s World. In rural Pakistan, for example, many parents apply special makeup around the eyes of their young children, as their ancestors have done for centuries. A paste of hazelnut powder and several oils, known as surma, is applied partly to protect the eyes from the smoke given off by home heating fires and partly to cool and clean the eyes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
However, another less acknowledged reason is to ward off nazar, the “evil eye,” thought to be responsible for the many deaths among the infants and for poor health and behavioural problems in those who survive. The American Psychiatric Association recognizes two distinct subtypes of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Obesity is currently considered more of a medical condition than a mental health problem. The defining features of anorexia nervosa include a refusal to maintain a normal body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a disturbance in body image and perception. Bulimia nervosa is defined by recurrent episodes of uncontrolled binge eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviours to control weight gain (exempli gratia, self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics), and an undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluations. A chief difference between the two disorders is that individuals with bulimia nervosa are able to maintain their body weight at or above normally prescribed levels, whereas those with anorexia nervosa have a body weight below 85 percent of what is expected. Similar to depression and alcoholism, eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa, have a lethal component. The long-term mortality for those afflicted with anorexia nervosa is estimated to be over 10 percent. The standardizes mortality ratio (observed mortality divided by expected mortality) for people with eating disorders is 3.6 for people under 20 years of age, 9.9 for those aged 20-29, and 5.7 for those over age 30. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Among females, the lifetime prevalence of anorexia nervosa has been estimated at 0.5 percent, and 1.3 percent for bulimia nervosa. The descriptions of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023). The description of these disorders in the DSM-VI-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2023) contain references to interpersonal problems. Associated features of anorexia nervosa include social withdrawal and lessened interest in pleasures of the flesh; episodes of binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa are often triggered by interpersonal stressors. Research on interpersonal relationships and eating disorders has been typical of the work on interpersonal relationships and mental healthy more generally. The recognition of some type of relational difficulty associated with the disorder predates current investigations by at least a century and a quarter. One of Lasegue’s more notable contributions was the suggestion of “prentectomy”—hospitalization of the patients to remove them from exacerbating parental forces. Family-of-origin relationships in particular have been a focal point in this line of work. Finally, the proliferation of studies on this associated feature of eating disorders has been particularly evident over the past 50 years. In one longitudinal investigation, patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were followed for a period of 5 years. Among the most notable features of those who did not recover over the course of the investigation (53 percent) were unsatisfactory family-of-origin relationships and problems with making personal contacts outside the family. Findings such as these are suggestive of the important role played by social relationships in the course of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
As noted above, research emanating from the interpersonal paradigm has sought to understand eating disorders largely through a focus on family-of-origin experiences. Extreme levels of family adaptability and cohesion, family expressed emotion (EE), inappropriate parental pressure, low parental care, parental overinvolvement, sexual abuse, and battles for control are dominant themes in the family histories of people with eating disorders. Some models and theories suggest that these family-of-origin processes play a critical role in the development of these disorders. Some problems with interpersonal communication may be secondary to these pathological family processes. In particular, there is some evidence linked childhood sexual abuse to a failure to develop adequate social skills, which in turn contributes to the development of eating disorders. Recent studies on the general personal relationships of people with eating disorders are also suggestive of interpersonal difficulties. Interpersonal rejection and distressed personal relationships are common problems in this population. Findings on family-of-origin experiences show that among those who are married, there is a strong association between eating disorders and marital distress. Like so many other psychological problems, eating disorders are situated in a network of other psychological problems with which they coexist, such as depression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), substance use disorders, and anxiety disorders. In the family-of-orientation experiences in eating disorders, there are family process variables. There is a dysfunctional interaction pattern among families of patients with anorexia nervosa. The interaction in these families often minimized conflict, with a rigid, nonadaptable style. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
These interactions were argued to be entwined with the symptoms of the disorder. Other family systems researchers and clinicians also saw eating disorders as built into and around family relations. Significant others usually interact with the bulimic in ways that exaggerate relationship characteristics that were present, but in a more subtle form, before the bulimia was revealed. The bulimia becomes a symptom around which the whole family revolves. While it may appear to be the individual’s problem, bulimia is a signal that the environment is not meeting one’s needs. In a family system perspective, disordered eating is understood to be caused and maintained by a family’s interpersonal behaviour, which itself is assumed to be influenced by the disordered eating of one of its members. Family process variables continue to receive a great deal of attention from those who seek to explain the origins and course of eating disorders. Examples of this can be found in the investigations on family cohesion and family adaptability. System-oriented researchers have emphasized these variables as two dimensions of family relationships that are crucial to healthy family functioning, provided that neither one is too extreme. Multiple studies indicate that eating disorders are associated with perceptions of low family cohesion. Although this finding has been relatively stable across child and parent reports, children with eating disorders give lower ratings of their families’ cohesiveness than their parents do. Generally, daughters’ ratings of family interaction have more diagnostic utility for predicting their eating disorders than mothers’ and especially fathers’ ratings do. Regardless of which family member’s perception is actually “correct,” the fact that a parent and a child with an eating disorder differ in their view of the family’s cohesiveness is perhaps itself diagnostically significant. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Investigations of family adaptability have yielded less consistent results than those of cohesion. Some evidence indicates a negative association between family adaptability and symptoms of eating disorders. However, a study found more chaos, less organization, and more poorly defined boundaries in the family, all suggestive of pathologically high level of adaptability, among patients with eating disorders. In most studies, the families appeared to be extreme in their adaptability (either too much or too little) indicating potentially detrimental family relations. As in schizophrenia, family EE is emerging as an important family process variable in eating disorders. Investigation indicated that aspects of maternal EE during the interactions of patients with eating disorders and their families explained 28-34 percent of the variance in the patients’ eventual outcome and response to therapy. The extent to which mothers made openly critical comments during family interaction assessment was a stronger predictor of patients’ outcomes than a host of other impressive predictors, such as premorbid body weight, duration of illness, body mass index, and age at onset. Inappropriate parental pressure is a phenomenon that may be particularly prominent in families of people with eating disorders. When compared to both psychiatric controls and nonpsychiatric controls, one sample of patients with eating disorders experienced excessive pressure from parents. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This phenomenon is described as “gender-inappropriate pressure, age-inappropriate pressure, and inappropriate to the child’s abilities…the adolescents felt that they had been forced into an exaggerated feminine style of behaviour, that their parents had discussed topis (such as parental pleasures of the flesh) before the adolescents were prepared to deal with such subjects, and that the adolescents had been made to engage in activities which reflected their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. This leaves an adolescent in a state of conflict between premature exposure to the World of adults and anxiety over what is involved in that World, such as sexuality and high levels of achievement. Perhaps by exerting control over their own eating, adolescents may gain some feeling of mastery or control over this conflict. The families of patients with eating disorders identified four mechanisms by which family members contributed to the eating disorders, two of which are indicative of inappropriate parental pressure: high emphasis on achievement/perfection and overconcern with beauty/appearance/thinness. In American society, it is easy to locate very young children involved in competitive activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and beauty contests. When 3- and 4- year-olds are seriously involved in such endeavours, it is difficult to avoid wondering about whose ambition is being pursued. In cases where the motivation come largely from the parents, and where the activity places an emphasis on physical appearance, the risk for later development of eating disorders is serious. Excessive parental pressure may also engender a sense of perfectionism among children. Perfectionism involves both self-oriented aspects (expecting the self to be perfect) and socially prescribed aspects (perceiving that other expect perfection). #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Perfectionism has proven to be a risk factor for bulimia nervosa, particularly for women who are otherwise low in self-esteem. By pressuring their children to achieve, parents may inadvertently convey the attitude that anything less than “perfect” is a failure. Children who harbour such an attitude, and then perceive that they are not meeting some perfect standard of weight or body image, may engage in binge eating as an escape response to their painful self-awareness, which is then corrected with purging. Other family process variable that have been implicated in eating disorders include disturbed affective expression, low levels of family communication, lack of parental care, excessive parental overprotectiveness and intrusiveness, and excessive parental control. This last variable has particular significance, in that that symptoms of eating disorders may be overt manifestations of a struggle for control. Particularly among women with eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse, an external locus of control (id est, feeling little personal control over one’s fate) is common. Although the struggle for control may originally be with the parents, there is no reason to believe that it may extend to others with whom such women are in relationships. The rather paradoxical nature of some of these family processes in eating disorders is nicely illustrated. It was found that parents of patients with anorexia nervosa were simultaneously more nurturing and comforting, but also more ignoring and neglecting of their daughters, than were parents of either healthy controls or patients with bulimia nervosa. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
In contrast, the patients with bulimia nervosa and their parents showed signs of hostile enmeshment. These mixed messages create ambivalence about separation for daughters with anorexia nervosa. “Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 8.37-39. We all make mistakes, but God does not disqualify us simply because we have failed. He is the God of forgiveness. Even if you have missed your journey, God will always find a way to get you to a position of success. Some people have made some serious mistakes; they have done some things that were not the best for their life, and now they are living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of disqualification and disappointment and disillusionment. Several individuals feel they are in a trap house. The way to escape the trap house and trap spouse is to seek and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness, and move on with one’s life. Let go of the condemnation of the past mistakes. Seek God’s forgiveness, pick up the pieces and move on. God still have a great future for you. Keep on striving for success, continue, expect, endure in the face of opposition. Be persistent. Do not leave until you receive. Be just that stubborn about things that are significance to you, as long as it is safe and a rational desire. Have a persistent faith. True faith asks and receives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Persistent faith is faith that receives or takes from God. Faith takes This is what Jesus Christ is telling us. “Ask once and you receive.” That is consistent with Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Receive and keep on receiving every time you ask. If you child asks you for food, you would it to him or her. You would not make one ask a hundred more times, then change your mind The enemy would like for you to believe that is what God is like. That kind of thinking will lead one into error and hold one in bondage. The adversary wants to twist the Word and distort your image of God. Jesus Christ said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieiveth.” Jesus Christ said it, ad you can be sure Jesus meant what He said. Father, today I receive Your mercy and forgiveness. Despite my past, I believe You still have great things in store for me. Teach me how to shake off disappointment, guilt, or condemnation and live today in an attitude of faith. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” reports 1 John 1.9. The intellect, uncontrolled by intuition and unguided by revelation, has spawned the two great masters of our time—Science holding the atom bomb and Communism holding the revolution. Science, which is the last century promised so much, gave us the terrible problem of atomic war instead. Its ardent advocates pointed at it only yesterday as the road to our salvation. Today it has become the road to our destruction. This is not to say that it was a false light, but that we mistook its proper place and claimed too much for its human possibilities. We let it run away with us and our religion. We lost ourselves and our bearings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The atom bomb made us regard Nature as self-operative in a solely mechanical way. It left life on Earth without spiritual meaning, without moral purpose. Communism is another Heaven-promising panacea which has helped to make this Earth a little hell. If it accepts the leadership of humans, such as Communists, who regard conscience as a disease, there can be no worthwhile future for humanity. The Communist insensibility in practice to human suffering accords ill with its vaunted idealism in theory. Communism’s twisted ethic of wild hatred, its hard cruel face, its blind slavish obedience to a brutal organization which cares more for itself than for the workers it was supposed to save, its insane preachments against religion and denial of life beyond matter, have brought enough suffering to makes claims sound absurdly exaggerated. However, the intellectual movement which produced Science and the social movement which produced Communism will not continue unchecked. They are approaching the utmost limit possible. The violent materialism for which they are responsible will culminate in the next Armageddon, which will not only end them, but also end the epoch itself. In order to lay out the general cause of the difference, a distinction has to be made here between the prince and the government. The body of the magistrates can be made up of a larger or smaller number of members. We have said that the ratio of the sovereign to the subjects was greater in proportion as the populace was more numerous, and by a manifest analogy we can say the same thing about the government in relation to the magistrates. Since the total force of the government is always that of the state, it does not vary. Whence it follows that the more of this force it uses on its own members, the less that is left to it for acting on the whole populace. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Therefore, the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. Since this maxim is fundamental, let us attempt to explain it more clearly. We can distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, the individual’s own will, which tends only to its own advantage. Second, the common will of the magistrates which is uniquely related to the advantage of the price. This latter can be called the corporate will, and is general in relation to the government, and particular in relation to the state, of which the government form a part. Third, the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both in relation to the state considered as the whole and in relation to the government considered as part of the whole. In a perfect act of legislation, the private or individual will should be nonexistent; the corporate power will proper to the government should be very subordinate; and consequently the general or sovereign will should always be dominant and the unique rule of all the others. According to the natural order, on the contrary, these various wills become more active in proportion as they are the more concentrated. Thus the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will has second place, and the private will is first of all, so that in the government each member is first oneself, then a magistrate, and then a citizen—a gradation directly opposite to the one required by the social order. Granting this, let us suppose the entire government is in the hands of one single human. In that case the private will and the corporate will are perfectly united, and consequently the latter is at the highest degree of intensity it can reach. However, since the use of force is dependent upon the degree of will, and since the absolute force of the government does not vary one bit, it follows that the most active of governments is that of one single human. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
On the other hand, let us suppose we are uniting the government to the legislative authority. Let us make the sovereign the prince and all the citizens that many magistrates. Then the corporate will, confused with the general will, will have no more activity than the latter, and will leave the private will all its force. Thus the government, always with the same absolute force, will have it minimum relative force or activity. These relationships are incontestable, and there are still other considerations that serve to confirm them. We see, for example, that each magistrate is more active in one’s body than each citizen is in one’s, and consequently that the private will has much more influence on the acts of the government than on those of the sovereign. For each magistrate is nearly always charged with the responsibility for some function of government, whereas each citizen, taken by oneself, exercises no function of sovereignty. Moreover, the more the state is extended, the more its real force increases, although it does not increase in proportion to its size. However, if the state remains the same, the magistrates may well be multiplied without the government acquiring any greater real force, since this force is that of the state, whose size is always equal. Thus the relative force or activity of the government diminishes without its absolute or real force being able to increase. It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it; that in attaching too much importance to prudence, too little importance is attached to fortune, opportunities are missed, and the fruits of deliberation are often lost by dint of deliberation. I have just proved that the government becomes slack in proportion as the magistrates are multiplied; and I have previously proved that the more numerous the people, the greater should be the increase of repressive force. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Whence it follows that the ratio of the magistrate to the government should be the inverse of the ratio of the subjects to the sovereign; that is to say, the more the state increases in size, the more the government should shrink, so that the number of leaders decreases in proportion to the number of people. I should add that I am speaking here only about the relative force of the government and not about its rectitude. For, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the more closely the corporate will approaches the general will, whereas under a single magistrate, the same corporate will is, as I have said, merely a particular will thus what can be gained on the one hand is lost on the other, and the art of the legislator is to know how to determine the point at which the government’s will and force, always in a reciprocal proportion, are combined in the relationship that is most advantageous to the state. What has gone almost unnoticed is not merely a change in the patterns of participation in the market but, even more fundamentally, the completion of the entire historical process of market-building. This turning point is so revolutionary in its implications, yet so subtle, that capitalist and Marxist thinkers alike, lost in their Second Wave polemics, have scarcely noticed its signs. It fits into neither of their theories and thus has remained undetectably by them. The human race has been busy constructing a Worldwide exchange network—a market—for at least 10,000 years. In the past 360 years, ever since the Second Wave began, this process has roared forward at very high speed. Second Wave civilization “marketized” the World. Today—at the very moment when prosuming begins to rise again—this process is coming to and end. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The immense historical meaning of this cannot be appreciated unless we are clear about what a market exchange network is. It helps to imagine it as a pipeline. When the industrial revolution burst forth on the Earth, launching the Second Wave, very few people on the planet were tired into the money system. Trade existed but only the peripheries of society were touched by it. The various networks of jobbers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, bankers, and other elements of the trade system were small and rudimentary—providing only a few narrow pipelines through which goods and money might flow. For 360 years we poured Earth-cracking energies into building this pipeline. In was accomplished in three ways. First the merchants and mercenaries of the Second Wave civilization spread around the globe, inviting or coercing new populations to enter the market—to produce more and prosume less. Self-sufficient African tribesmen were induced or compelled to grow cash crops and dig copper. Asian who once grew their own food were put to work on plantation instead, trapping rubber trees to put tires on automobiles. Latin Americas began growing coffee for ale in Europe and the Untied States of America. With each such development the pipeline was built or further elaborated and more and more populations drawn into dependence on it. The second way in which the market expanded was through the increasing “commoditization” of life. Not only were larger populations enmeshed in the market but more and more goods and services were designed for the market, requiring a continual enlargement of the “channel capacity” of the system—a widening, as it were, of the diameter of the pipes. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Finally, the market expanded in another way. As society and the economy grew more complex, the number of transactions required for, say, a single bar of soap to pass from producer to consumer multiplied. The more intermediaries, the more ramified the maze of channels or pipes became. This growing elaborateness of the system was itself a form of further development, like the addition of still more special tubes and values to a pipeline. Today all these forms of market expansion are reaching their outer limits. Few populations still remain to be brought into the market. Only a handful of the remotest people remain untouched by the market. Even the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers in poor countries are at least partially integrated into the market and the accompanying money system. What remains, therefore, is a mopping-up operation at best. The market can no longer expand by engulfing vast new populations. The second form of expansion is still at least theoretically possible. With imagination, we can still, no doubt, think up additional services or goods to sell or barter. However, it is precisely here that the rise of the prosumer becomes significant. The relationships between Sector A and Sector B are complex, and many of the activities of prosumers depend on the purchase of materials or tools from the market. However, the rise of self-help, in particular, and the de-marketization of many goods and services suggests that here, too, the end of the process of marketization may be insight. Lastly, the increasing elaborateness of the “pipeline”—the growing complexity of distribution, the interpolation of more and more middlemen—also appears to be reaching a point of no return. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The costs of exchange itself, even as conventionally measured, are now outrunning the costs of material production in many fields. At some point this process reaches a limit. Computers, meanwhile, and the emergence of a prosumer-activated technology both point to smaller inventories and simplified, rather than more complex chains of distribution. Once again, therefore, the evidence points to the end of the process of marketization, if not in our time, then soon after. If our “pipeline project” is nearing completion, what might this mean for our work, our values, and our psyches? A market, after all, does not consist of the steal or shoes or cotton or canned food that flows through it. The market is the structure through which such goods and services are routed. Moreover, it is not simply an economic structure. It is a way of organizing people, a way of thinking, an ethos, and a shared set of expectations (exempli gratia, the expectation that goods purchased will indeed be delivered). The market is thus as much a psychosocial structure as an economic reality. And its effects far transcend economics. By systematically interrelating billions of people to one another, the market produced a World in which no one had independent control over one’s destiny—no person, no nation, no culture. It brought with it the belief that economics and economic motivation were the primary forces in human life. It fostered a view of life as a succession of contractual transactions, and of society as bound together by the “marriage contract” or the “social contract.” Marketization thus shaped the thoughts and values, as well as the actions, of billions and set the tone of Second Wave civilization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
It took an enormous investment of time, energy, capital, culture, and raw materials to create a situation in which a purchasing agent in South Carolina could do business with an unseen and unknown clerk in South Korea—each with one’s own abacus or computer, each with an internalized image of the market, each with a set of expectations about the other, each performing certain predictable acts because both have been life-trained to play certain prespecified roles, each part of a giant global system involving millions, indeed billions, of others. One might plausibly argue that the construction of this elaborate structure of human relationships, and its explosive diffusion around the planet, was the single most impressive achievement of Second Wave civilization, dwarfing even its spectacular technological achievements. The step-by-step creation of this essentially sociocultural and psychological structure for exchange (quite apart from the torrent of goods and services that flowed through it) can be likened to the building of the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman aqueducts, the Great Wall of China, and the medieval cathedrals, combined and multiplied a thousandfold. This grandest construction project of all history, the laying into place of the tubes and channels through which much of the economic life of civilization pulsed and flowed, gave Second Wave civilization everywhere its inner dynamism and propulsive thrust. Indeed, if this now dying civilization can be said to have had a mission at all, it was to marketize the World. Today that mission is almost fulfilled. The heroic age of market-building is over—to be replaced by a new phase in which we merely maintain, renovate, and update pipeline. We will undoubtedly have to redesign important pieced of it to accommodate radically increased flows of information #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
The system will increasingly depend on electronics, biology and new social technologies. This, too, will no doubt require resources, imagination, and capital. However, compared with the exhausting effort of Second Wave marketization, this renewal program will absorb a far smaller fraction of our time, energy, capital, and imagination. It will use less, not more, hardware and fewer, not more people than the original process of construction. However complex conversion process to be, marketization will fail to be the central project of the civilization. More and more people are seeking intimacy, personality, and humanity. The Third Wave is therefore producing history’s first “transmarket” civilization. By trans-market I do not mean a civilization without exchange networks—a World thrown back into small, isolated, completely self-sufficient communities unable or unwilling to trade with one another. I do not mean a move backward. By “trans-market” I mean a civilization that is dependent on the market but is no longer consumed by the need to build, extend, elaborate, and integrate this structure. A civilization able to move on to a new agenda—precisely because the market has already been laid in place. And just as no one living in the sixteenth century could have imagined how the growth of the market would change the World’s agenda in terms of technology, politics, religion, art, social life, law, marriage, or personality development—so too it is extremely difficult for us today to envision the long-range effects of the end of marketization Yet these are likely to radiate into every cranny of our children’s lives, if not our own. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The marketization project exacted a price. Even in purely economic terms this price was enormous. As the productivity of the human race rose during the past three hundred years, a significant part of that productivity—in both sectors—was set aside and allocated to the market-building project. With the basic construction task now virtually complete, the enormous energies previously poured into building the World market system become available for other human purposes. From this fact alone will flow a limitless array of civilization changes. New religions will be born. Works of art on a hitherto unimagined scale. Fantastic scientific advances. And, above all, wholly new kinds of social and political institutions. What is at stake today is more than capitalism or socialism, more than energy, food, population, capital, raw material, or jobs; what is at stake is the role of the market in our lives and the future of civilization itself. This, at its core is what the rise of the prosumer is about. Change in the deep-structure of the economy is part of the same wave of interrelated changes now striking our energy base, our technology, or information system, and our family and business institutions. These are intertwined, in turn with the way we view the World. And in this sphere, too, we are undergoing an historic upheaval. For the entire World view of industrial civilization—indust-reality—is not being revolutionized. Excerpt from an article in a Czech magazine on contemporary Czech literature: “Those ideals which were formerly given to the World by prophets of religion, headed by Jesus the Nazarene, are now practically applied by scientific socialists beginning with Karl Marx.” Such is the plausible self-deception into which so many intellectuals have fallen. This quotation shows a grave lack of understanding of religion, of the prophets, and especially of Jesus. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
This distance between the Nazarene and the author of the First Communist Manifesto is not merely horizontal, it is vertical. The two men stand on different levels, belong to different Worlds. The presence of hatred as one of its animating ingredients is a moral disadvantage to any social movement. This is one reason why modern Communism is built on an unsure foundation. From the Center Galactic Source which is everywhere at once, may everything be known as the light of mutual love. O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom; O Hidden Light! shining in every creature; O Hidden Love! embracing all in Oneness; may each who feels oneself as one with Thee, know one is also one with every other. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. When I call upon the Lord, ascribe greatness unto our God. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. Remember us unto life, O King who delightest in life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life so that we may live worthily for Thy sake, O Lord of life. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, be Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Close Out!
Here is a chance to make my dream house your own! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier.
Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! 4-5 Bedrooms – 3.5 Bathrooms – 3,501 sq. ft. – Call for Pricing! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/new-home-rancho-cordova-homesite-17/
See What a Big Heart I Have? God, See How Good I am? See How Much You Need Me?
Believe it or not, the focus on mental health has been around as long as human beings. It is not a new science, but an evolving science. In fact, in the Stone Age, doctors had methods for treating mental disorders. And before the American Revolution, only 10 percent of the 3,5000 doctors in the country had any formal training. Fewer than 5 percent had medical degrees. As of the year 2021, there are nearly 1 million physicians in the United States of American, and approximately 650,000 are active. If you think about it, that is a relatively small number. By the 1970s exorcism had all but disappeared from Western culture. Then in 1973, the enormously popular book and movie The Exorcist spurred an onslaught of books and movies on demonic possession, and public interest in this kind of intervention increased dramatically. Since then, numerous evangelical ministers and charismatics have declared themselves exorcists and performed exorcisms on people with behavioural disturbances. In most such instances, the person’s problems have failed to respond to a conventional intervention such as psychotherapy or drug therapy. Typically, the exorcist blesses the person who is thought to be possessed, recites passages from the Bible, and commands the evil spirits to leave the body. Often a support group is present to pray for the person while one cries out and perhaps even thrashes on the floor, regurgitates, or flails out. During the 1900s, the techniques used by some contemporary exorcists seemed to grow more extreme, at times dangerous. The media reported cases of death by exorcism; a New York mother accidentally smothered her teenage daughter during one such procedure and a Rhode Island man jammed steel crosses down his mother-in-law’s throat. In addition, a growing number of priests began to perform spiritual cleansing ceremonies not sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. By 2020, hundred of exorcists, from evangelical ministers and charismatics to unsanctioned priests, were performing a wide variety of exorcisms in the United State of America. Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto proesidium. Imperet Illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princepes militioe coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtue. In infernum detrude. Amen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
In order to regulate this growing field, both within and outside the church, and to ensure more acceptable procedures, the Roman Catholic church in the United States of America has become more actively involved in exorcisms during the past decade. The number of full-time exorcists formally appointed by the church increased from 1 in 1990 to 250 in 2020. Over the past several years, these officials have investigated and evaluated hundreds of cases in which individuals or their relatives or priests have sought exorcisms, determining in each case whether exorcism is appropriate. In 1999 the church issued a revised Catholic rite of exorcism for the first time since 1614, establishing rules to be followed in making such decisions and in the exorcisms themselves. For example, a church exorcism can take place only after the church-approved exorcist consults with physicians to rule out mental or physical disorders. Also church exorcism must be approved by a bishop. As a result of such rules and procedures, only a small number of potential cases actually result in church-approved exorcisms. Even a small number of exorcisms, however, is excessive in the eyes of many mental health professionals. They argue that one can never totally rule out and physical causes in cases of abnormal functioning and that exorcism—even those that are carefully selected and conducted—divert attention from more accurate explanations of abnormal behaviour and more appropriate interventions. Given its long history and deep roots, this debate is not likely to be settled in the near future. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Now, reflecting on the Middle Ages (from the 5th century to the late 15th century), when they drew to a close, demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Medical views of abnormality gained favour once again. When lunacy trials were heled in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsibility for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illnesses, and keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” During the early part of the Renaissance, a period of flourishing cultural and scientific activity (about 1400-1700), demonological views of abnormality continued to decline. The German physician Johann Weyer (151501588), the first physician to specialize in mental illness, believed that the mind was as susceptible to sickness as the body. He is now considered the founder of the modern study of psychopathology. The care of people with mental disorders continued to improve in this atmosphere. In England such individuals might be kept at home while their families were aided financially by the local parish. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Across Europe religious shrines were devoted to the humane and loving treatment of people with mental disorders. The best known of these shrines was actually established centuries earlier at Gheel in Belgium, but beginning in the fifteenth century, people came to it from all over the World for psychic healing. Local residents welcomed these pilgrims into their homes, and many stayed on to form the World’s first “colony” of mental patients. Gheel was the forerunner of today’s community mental healthy programs, and it continues to demonstrate the people with psychological disorders can respond to loving care and respectful treatment. Today patients are still welcome to live in foster homes in this town, interacting with other residents, until they recover. Unfortunately, these improvements in care began to fade by the mid-sixteenth century. By then municipal authorities had discovered that percentage of those with severe mental disorders and that medial hospitals were too few and too small. Increasingly, they converted hospitals and monasteries into asylums, institutions whose primary purpose was to care for people with mental illness. These institutions were founded with every intention of providing good care. Once the asylums started to overflow, however, they became virtual prisons where patients were held in filthy conditions and treated with unspeakable cruelty. The first asylum had been founded in Muslim Spain in the early fifteenth century, but the idea did not gain full momentum until the 1500s. In 1547, Bethlehem Hospital was given to the city of London by Henry VIII for the sole purpose of confining the mentally ill. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
In the Bethlehem Hospital asylum patients bound in chains cried out for all to hear. During certain phases of the moon in particular, they might be chained and whipped in order to prevent violence. The hospital even became a popular tourist attraction; people were eager to pay to loo at the howling and gibbering inmates. The hospital’s name, pronounced “Bedlam” by the local people, has come to mean a chaotic uproar. Similarly, in the Lunatics’ Tower in Vienna, patients were herded into narrow hallways by the outer walls so that tourist outside could look up and see them. In La Bicetre in Paris, patients were shackled to the walls of cold, dark, dirty cells with iron collars and given spoiled food that could be sold nowhere else. Outrageous devices and techniques, such as the “crib,” which was basically like a combination of a baby’s crib and a coffin, which was about six feet long, 12 inches off the ground, 12 inches deep, with bars on the side and a coffin top, were used in asylums, and some continued to be used during the reforms of the nineteenth century. However, for the most part, such asylums remained a popular form of “care” until the late 1700s. For most people with a personality disorder, the extent of their psychosocial problems often does not stop there. One could also say that many people with other psychosocial problems also have personality disorders. It is of interest that personality disorders are comorbid with other personality disorders. For example, one study estimated the comorbidity of HPD (histrionic personality disorder, a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking) and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder, an exaggerated sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim) at 30.4. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The rates of personality disorders among people with major depression are astonishingly high. As many as 20-50 percent of inpatients and 50-85 percent of outpatients with major depressive disorder have a personality disorder. Chief among these are BPD (borderline personality disorder, which involves instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image; exhibiting intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour) and HPD. This high rate of comorbidities (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient) by appealing to common interpersonal issues. By definition, people with personality disorders have a rigid and otherwise problematic interpersonal style. This personality pathology can generate interpersonal stressors, leading to depression. In fact, researchers have identified interpersonal styles that play a role in stress generation in romantic contexts. These include a dependent style, which is submissive, fearful of abandonment, and reliant on others for self-esteem; and an obsessive-compulsive style, reflecting perfectionism, rigidity and distrust in others. These personality profiles are remarkably similar to those of DPD (a strong sense of interpersonal submission) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Personality disorders are also evident among those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As many as 38 percent of patients with bipolar disorder meet the criteria for at least one personality disorder. At the time of hospital admission in one study, 30-45 percent of patients with schizophrenia were also found to have personality disorder. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Problems as serious as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder have a profound impact on interpersonal behaviour and relationships. In schizophrenia, depending upon the particular type, delusional thinking can prompt severely withdraw and avoidant behaviour, as well as conduct that reflect ambivalence about relationships with other people. Similarly, the fluctuating affect states of patients with bipolar disorder can produce interpersonal behaviour that ranges from withdrawn to grandiose, dramatic, and voraciously self-entitled. One thread that connects all of these disorders is maladaptive interpersonal behaviour. This behavior which is intrinsic to personality disorders, may then perpetuate and maintain symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder because of the often negative and harmful interpersonal consequences it produces. Alcoholism and other substance use problems are evident in as many as 66.3 percent of makes and 33.3 percent of females with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights). This particular personality disorder generally precedes substance use disorders, since it is defined in part by a pattern of behaviour that is evident before the age of 15 (id est, conduct disorder), whereas evidence of full-blown substance dependence is generally not evident until later in the teens or early 20s. Problems with socialization, generally at the hands of parents, appear to be key interpersonal antecedents to both problems. Ineffective parenting, modeling of antisocial behaviour, and modeling of substance use may dually predispose young children to develop both ASPD and drug or alcohol dependence. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
In addition to being comorbid with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other personality disorders, the incidence of personality disorders is also elevated among those with eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders. Problems, like depression and schizophrenia, share common interpersonal motifs with various personality disorders. In the case of eating disorders, there is no reason to suspect that the rigid and maladaptive interpersonal behaviour inherent in the personality disorders predisposes such individuals to developing these related psychosocial problems. Personality disorders are defined, in part, by inflexible and generally maladaptive modes of relation to other people. Although the personality disorders are not as well researched and understood as many other psychological problems, interpersonal relations appear to play a prominent role in both the origins and consequences of these sometimes enigmatic disorders. A number of hypotheses, some with attendant empirical support, suggest that early experiences in the family of origin may be crucial mechanisms in the pathogenesis of some personality disorders. Family interactions involving excessive admiration and attention, physical and sexual abuse, inconsistent reinforcement, and rejection are replete in descriptions of the early childhood experiences of people with personality disorders. Perhaps as a result of these pathological interpersonal experiences, people with personality disorders develop ways of relating to other people that are extremely maladaptive and unsuitable to the needs of those in their social environment. Consequently, the persistence of interpersonal problems and distress is almost guaranteed, making personality disorders particularly interactable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Our time here on Earth is so short. What a shame it would be to allow something that happened in the past—whether it was twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago—to ruin the rest one’s life or Earth. No matter how extravagantly Jesus Christ squandered His charity, it never seemed to lessen. No matter how recklessly He paid out the fruits of His propitiation, they never seemed to be exhausted. Every time we approach the Sacrament, we ought to spend some time recollecting our souls, and praying on the great Mystery of Salvation. Whether we celebrate the Sacrament or just heat the Mass, come afresh. That is to say, think of it as the very day that Christ descended into the womb of the Virgin and was made Man. Or very day that Christ hung on the cross, suffering and dying for the salvation of Humanity. That is how to turn an experience grown dull into a truly enormous, novel, joyful event. One must make up one’s mind to do one’s best to enjoy every single day. We all make mistakes; things may not always go the way one wants them to go. We may be disappointed at times, but think about that joy and freedom that comes from making a decision to live one’s life happy anyway. It is a great goal to not allow what does or does not happen to one steal one’s joy and keep one from God’s abundant life. Sometimes an individual may allow something that happens in the morning to disrupt one’s entire day. Getting stuck in traffic can be a real let down. Being an hour late to work can produce a lot of anxiety, which will cause fear and frustration. However, do not let that ruin your day because no matter how upset one gets, there is nothing one can do to change that event when it is already set in motion. Just enjoy the day and know God is in control. Next time just wake up an hour earlier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Sure, words can hurt us all. However, just because someone offends you in the morning, understand they may be going through something and brush it off. Often times, people’s bad attitudes have nothing to do with the personal they are projecting on. They just want to release some frustration and hurt someone else to make themselves feel better. “Lead me, O Lord, in Your righteousness because of my enemies; make Your way level (straight and right) before my face. For there is nothing trustworthy or steadfast or truthful in their talk; their heart is destructive [or a destructive chasm, a yawning gulf]; their throat is an open sepulcher; they flatter and make smooth with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God; et them fall by their own designs and counsels; cast them out because of the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. However, let all those who take refuge and put their trust in You rejoice; let them ever sing and shot for joy, because You make a covering over them and defend them; let those also who love Your name be joyful in You and be in high spirits. For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [one who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround one with goodwill (pleasure and favour),” reports Psalms 5.8-12. When you wake up in the morning, do not recall mistakes from the past. Instead wake up and pray, “Father, I thank You that this is going to be a great day. I thank You that I have discipline, self-control; that I make good decisions. I may not have what I could have yesterday, but that day is gone. I am going to get up and do well today.” Wake up every morning and receive God’s love and mercy. When one makes mistakes, be so critical. Ask God for forgiveness and then move on, confident that the moment you ask, God forgives you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
God does not want His children to mope around defeated. He wants one to get up and prepare for success and to be kind and loving. Not only is God a loving and forgiving God, but He also chooses not to remember your mistakes. If someone keeps brining up negative incidents from your past, you know that is not God. One may have done some things one is not proud of, but when one asks God to forgive one, He washed those things away. Furthermore, God does not even keep a record of it. He is not going to flip back through His DVD player and say, “Oh, wait a minute. I found something on your record back there in 2001. I cannot bless you.” No, as far as God is concerned, you do not even have a past. It is forgiven and gone. You are ready for a great present and a bight future. God let go of the past. The question is: Will you let it go? Will you quit remembering what God has chosen to forget? Behold, we come to You, O Lord, that Your Gift will do us well. Also, we want to rejoice at the party “You have so thoughtfully prepared for the poor, O God”; that felicitous phrasing is the Psalmist’s (68.10). Behold, in You everything that we can and ought to desire. You are our Salvation and Redemption, our Hope and Fortitude, our Grace and Glory. Therefore today, “Make joyful the soul of Your servant, for we are turned to You, Lord Jesus Christ,” if we may paraphrase the Psalmist; “for today is the day I lift up my soul,” (86.4). Yes, Father, I accept Your forgiveness. Thank You for loving me even when I make mistakes, poor choices, or wrong decisions. Please Help me to live today free of the past. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His rightness and justice, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High,” reports Psalm 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
In the government one finds the intermediate forces whose relationships make up that of the whole to the whole or of the sovereign to the state. This last relationship can be represented as one between the extremes of a continuous proportion, whose proportional mean is the government. The government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives the people, and, for the state to be in good equilibrium, there must, all things considered, be an equality between the output or the power of the government, taken by itself, and the output or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on the one hand and subjects on the other. Moreover, none of these three terms could be altered without the simultaneous destruction of the proportion. If the sovereign wishes to govern, or if the magistrate wishes to give laws, of if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder replaces rule, force and will no longer act in concert, and thus the state dissolves and falls into despotism or anarchy. Finally, since there is only one proportional mean between each relationship, there is only one good government possible for the state. However, since a thousand events can change the relationships of a people, not only can different governments be good for different peoples, but also for the same people at different times. In trying to provide an idea of the various relationships that can obtain between these two extremes, I will take as an example the number of people, since it is a more easily expressed relationship. Suppose the state is composed of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body. However, each private individual in one’s position as a subject is regarded as an individual. Thus the sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand is to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
In other words, each member of the state has as one’s share only one ten-thousandth of sovereign authority, even though one is totally in subjection to it. If the populace is made up of a hundred thousand humans, the condition of the subjects does not change, and each bears equally the entire dominion of the laws, while one’s vote, reduced to one hundred-thousandth, has ten times less influence in the drafting of them. In that case, since the subject always remains one, the ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. Whence it follows that the larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. When I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it places a distance between itself and equality. Thus the greater the ratio is in the sense employed by geometricians, the less relationship there is in the everyday sense of the word. In the former sense, the ratio, seen in terms of quantity, is measured by the quotient; in the latter sense, ratio, seen in the terms of identity, is reckoned by similarity. Now the less relationship there is between private wills and the general will, that is, between mores and the laws, the more repressive force ought to increase. Therefore, in order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. One the other hand, as the growth of the state gives the trustees of the public authority more temptations and the means of abusing their power, the more the force the government must have in order to contain the people, the more the force the sovereign must have in order to contain the government. I am speaking here not of an absolute force but of the relative force of the various parts of the state. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
It follows from this twofold relationship that the continuous proportion between the sovereign, the prince and the people, is in no way an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body of politic. It also follows that since one of the extremes, namely the people as subject, is fixed and represented by unity, whenever the doubled ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or decreases in like fashion, and that as a consequence the middle term is changed. This makes it clear that there is no unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there can be as many governments of differing natures as there are states of differing sizes. If, in ridiculing this system, someone were to say that in order to find this proportional mean and to form the body of the government, it is necessary merely, in my opinion, to derive the square root of the number of people, I would replay that here I am taking this number only as an example; that the relationships I am speaking of are not measure solely by the number of humans, but in general by the quantity of action, which is the combination of a multitude of causes; and that, in addition, if to express myself in fewer words I borrow for the moment the terminology of geometry, I nevertheless, am not unaware of the fact that geometrical precision has no place in moral quantities. The government is on a small scale what the body politic which contains it is on a large scale. It is a moral person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign and passive like the state, and capable of being broken down into other similar relationships whence there arises according to the other of tribunals, until an indivisible middle term is reached; that is, a single leader or supreme magistrate, who can be represented in the midst of this progression as the unity between the series of fractions and that of the whole numbers. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Without involving ourselves in the multiplication of terms, let us content ourselves with considering the government as a new body in the state, distinct from the people and sovereign, and intermediate between them. The essential difference between these two bodies is that the state exists by itself, while the government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is not and should not be anything other than the general will of the law. One’s force is merely the public force concentrated in one. As soon as one wants to derive from oneself some absolute and independent act, the bond that links everything together begins to come loose. If it should finally happen that the prince had a private will more active that that of the sovereign, and that he had made use of some of the public force that is available to him in order to obey this private will, so that there would be, so to speak, two sovereigns—one de jure and the other de facto, at that moment the social union would vanish and the body politic would be dissolved. However, for the body of the government to have an existence, a real life that distinguishes it from the body of the state, and for all its members to be able to act in concert and to fulfill the purpose for which it is instituted, there must be a particular self, a sensibility common to all its members, a force or will of its own that tends toward its preservation. This particular existence presupposes assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and decide, rights, titles and privileges that belong exclusively to the prince and that render the condition of the magistrate more honourable in proportion as it is more onerous. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The difficulties lie in the manner in which this subordinate whole is so organized within the whole, that in no way alters the general constitution by strengthening its own, that is always distinguishes its particular force, which is intended for its own preservation of the state, and that, in a word, it is always ready to sacrifice the government to the people and not the people to the government. In addition, although the artificial body of the government is the work of another artificial body and has, in a sense, only a borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent it from being capable of acting with more or less vigour or speed, or from enjoying, so to speak, more or less robust health. Finally, without departing directly from the purpose of its institution, it can deviate more or less from it, according to the manner in which it is constituted. From all these differences arise the diverse relationships that the government should have with the body of the state, according to the accidental and particular relationships by which the state itself is modified. For often the government that is best in itself will become the most vicious, if its relationships are not altered according to the defects of the body politic to which it belongs. It is possible that the much-bewailed decline of the Protestant work ethic is linked to this shift from production for others to production for self? Everywhere we see the decay of the industrial ethos that promoted hard work Western executive mutter darkly about this “English disease” which is supposed to reduce us all to penury if we do not cure it. “Only the Japanese will work hard,” they say. Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan’s top University, leapt to her death in December of 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked more than 105 hours of overtime in October of 2015, before becoming depressed. Her death, deemed by the government to Karushi, or death by overwork. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
In many other cases, the very people who are supposedly unwilling to work hard on the job are often the same people who are, in fact, working hard off the job—laying bathroom tile, weaving carpets, building tables, creating computer programs, doing household chores, lending their time and talents to a political campaign, attending self-help meetings, sewing, growing vegetables in the garden, writing short stories, or remodeling the attic bedroom. Can it be that the driving motivation that powered the expansion of Sector B is now being channeled into Sector A—into prosuming? The Second Wave brought with it more than steam engines and mechanical looms. It brought with it an immense characterological change. Today we can still see this shift occurring among populations moving from First Wave to Second Wave societies—like the Koreans, for example, who are still busy expanding Sector B at the expense of Sector A. (In Sector A, people produce for their own use. In Sector B, they produce for trade or exchange.) By contrast, in the mature Second Wave societies reeling under the impact of the Third Wave—as production moves back to Sector A and the consumer is drawn back into the production process—another characterological shift begins. Later on we will explore this fascinating change. For now we need only bear in mind that the structure of personality itself is likely to be heavily influenced by the rise of presumption. Nowehere, however, are the changes wrought by the rise of the prosumer likely to be more explosive than in economics. Economists, instead of training all their guns on Sector B, will have to develop a new, more wholistic conception of an economy—will have to analyze what happens in Sector A as well and learn how the two parts relate to one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
As the Third Wave has begun to restructure the World economy, the economics profession has been savagely attacked for its inability to explain what is happening. It is most sophisticated tools, including computerized models and matrices, seem to tell us less and less about how the economy really works. Indeed, many economists themselves are concluding that conventional economic thought, both Western and Marxist, is out of touch with a fast-changing reality. One key reason may be that, more and more, changes of great significance lie outside Sector B—id est, outside the entire exchange process. To bring economics back in touch with reality Third Wave economists will need to develop new models, measures, and indices for describing processes in Sector A and will have to rethink many root assumptions in the light of the rise of the prosumer. Once we recognize that powerful relationships link the measured production (and productivity) in Sector B and the unmeasured production (and productivity) in Sector A, the invisible economy, we are compelled to redefine these terms. As early as the mid-1960’s, economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research sensed the problem, pointing out that the rise of services made traditional measures of productivity obsolete. Declared Fuchs: “The knowledge, experience, honesty, and motivation of the consumer affects service productivity.” However, even in these words the “productivity” of the consumer is still seen only in terms of Sector B—only as a contribution to production for exchange. There is no recognition as yet that actual production also takes place in Sector A—that goods and services produced for oneself are quite real, and that they may displace or substitute for good and services turned out in Sector B. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Conventional production figures, especially GNP (Gross National Product, which measures the scale of the economy by totting up the value of goods and services produced it in) figures, will make less and less sense until we explicitly expand them to include what happens in Sector A. An understanding of the rise of the prosumer also helps bring the concept of cost into sharper focus. Thus we gain powerful insights once we recognize that the effectiveness of the prosumer in Sector A can lead to higher or lower costs to companies or government agencies operating in Sector B. For example, high rates of alcoholism, absenteeism, psychosis and neurosis, dysfunctional behaviour, and psychological problems in the work force all add to the “cost of doing business” as measures conveniently in Sector B. (Alcoholism alone has been estimated to cost American industry $249 billion, or about $2.05 per drink, in production time a year.) To the degree that self-help groups alleviate such problems in the work force, they reduce these operating costs. The efficiency of presumption thus affects the efficiency of production. Subtler factors also influence the cost of production in business. How literate or articulate are the workers? Do they all speak the same language? Can they tell time? Are they culturally prepared for the job? Do the social skills learned in family life add to or detract from their competence? All these character traits, attitudes, values, skills, and motivations necessary for high productivity in Sector B, the exchange sector, are produced or, more accurately, prosumed in Sector A. The rise of the prosumer—the reintegration of the consumer into production—will force us to look far more closely at such interrelationships. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
The same powerful change will compel us to redefine efficiency. Today, in determining efficiency, economists compare alternative ways of producing the same product or service. They seldom compare the efficiency of producing it in Sector B as against that of prosuming it in Sector A. Yet this is precisely what millions of people—supposedly innocent of economic theory—are doing. They are finding that, once a certain level of money income is assured, it may be more profitable, economically as well as psychologically, to prosume than to earn more cash. Nor do economists or businessmen systematically track the negative effects of Sector B efficiency on Sector A—as for example when a company demands extremely high mobility of its executives and cause a wave of stress-related illness, family breakdown, or increased alcohol intake as a result. We may very well find that what appears to be inefficient in conventional Sector B terms is, in fact, tremendously efficient when we look at the whole economy and not just part of it. TO make sense, “efficiency” must refer to secondary, not merely first order, effects, and to both sectors of the economy, not just one. What about concepts like “income,” “welfare,” “poverty,” or “unemployment”? If a person lives half-in and half-out of the market system, which products, tangible or intangible, are to be regarded as part of one’s income? How meaningful are income figures at all in a society in which prosuming may account for much of what the average person has? How do we define welfare in such a system? Should welfare recipients work? If so, should all this work necessarily be in Sector B? Or should welfare recipients be encouraged to prosume? #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
What is the real meaning of unemployment? Is a laid-off auto science engineer who puts a new roof on his or her house, or overhauls his or her care, unemployed in the same sense as one who sits idly at home watching football on television? The rise of the prosumer forces us to question our entire way of looking at the twin problems of unemployment, on the one hand, and bureaucratic waste and featherbedding, on the other. Second Wave societies have attempted to cope with unemployment, for example, by resisting technology, closing off immigration, creating labour exchanges, increasing exports, decreasing imports, setting up public works programs, cutting back on work hours, attempting to increase labour mobility, deporting whole populations, and even waging war to stimulate the economy. Yet the problem becomes more complex and difficult every day. Can it be that the problems of labour supply—both gluts and shortages—can never be satisfactorily solved within the framework of a Second Wave society, whether capitalists of socialist? By looking at the economy as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on one part of it, can we frame the problem in a new way that helps us solve it? If production occurs in both sectors, if people are busy producing goods and services for themselves in one sector and for others in a different sector, how does this affect the argument over a guaranteed minimum income for all? Typically, in Second Wave societies, income has been inextricably linked to work for the exchange economy. However, are not prosumers also “working,” even if they are not part of the market or are only partially in it? Should not a man or woman who stays at home and rears a child, thereby contributing to the productivity of Sector B through one’s efforts in Sector A, receive some income, even if one does not hold down a paid job in Sector B? #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
An income tax credit for housewives or househusbans would reduce single parent household, and welfare and would contribute to the stimulation of the economy. The rise of the prosumer will decisively alter all our economic thinking. It will also shift the basis of economic conflict. The competition between worker-producers and manager-producers will no doubt continue. However, it will shrink in importance as prosuming increases and we move father into Third Wave society. In its place, new social conflicts will arise. Battles will flare over which needs will be met by which sector of the economy. Struggles will sharpen, for example, over licensing, building codes, and the like, as Second Wave forces attempt to hold on to jobs and profits by preventing prosumers from moving in. Teachers’ unions typically fight to keep parents out of the classroom with all the zeal of building tradesmen fighting to preserve obsolete building codes. Yet just as a number of health problems (like those deriving from overeating, lack of exercise, or smoking, for example) cannot be solved by doctors alone but require instead the active participation of the patient, so a number of educational problems cannot be resolved without the parent. The rise of the prosumer changes the entire economic landscape. Thus all these effects will be intensified and the entire World economy changed by a massive historical facts now staring us in the face—which seems to have gone unnoticed by Second Wave economists and thinkers. This last towering fact sets into perspective all we have discussed in the past few weeks on the rise of the prosumer. Oh Great Spirit of the North, we come to you and ask for the strength and the power to bear what is cold and harsh in life. We come like the buffalo ready to receive the winds that truly can be overwhelming at times. Whatever is cold and uncertain in our life, we ask you to give us the strength to bear it. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Do not let the winter blow us away. Oh Spirit of Life and Spirit of the North, we ask you for strength and for love. Oh Great Spirit of the East, we turn to you where the sun comes up, from where the power of light and refreshment come. Everything that is born comes up in this direction—the birth of babies, the birth of the puppies, the birth of ideas, and the birth of friendship. Let there be light. Oh Spirit of the East, let the colour of fresh rising in our life be glory to you. Oh Great Spirit of the South, spirit of all that is warm and gentle and refreshing, we ask you to give us this spirit of growth, of fertility, of gentleness. Caress us with a cool breeze when the days are hot. Please gives us seeds that the flowers, trees and fruits of the Earth may grow. Please give us the warmth of good friendships. Oh Spirit of the South, please send the love and growth of your blessings. Oh Great Spirit of the West, where the sun goes down each day to come up the next, we turn to you in praise of sunsets and in thanksgiving for changes. You are the great coloured sunset of the red west which illuminates us. You are the powerful cycle which pulls us to transformation. We ask for the blessing of the sunset. Please keep us open to life’s changes. Oh Spirit of the Est, when it is time for us to go into the Earth, do not desert us, but receive us in the arms of our loved one. Art Father Who art in Heaven, Thy Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The Lord upholdeth al who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look hopefully to Thee. And Thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand ad satisfiest every living thing with favour. The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and gracious in all His works. The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that revere Him; He will also hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He bring low. My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord; let all human bless His holy name for ever and ever. We will bless the Lord from this time forth, and forevermore. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Cresleigh Homes
After this past year, many families have realized the importance of a home office. 💻A dedicated space for working from home is non-negotiable!
Good thing the #Havenwood floor plans include the space! The four distinct layouts offer up to five bedrooms. That’s some serious legroom!
I Will Recue You. Please Like Me. Yes…O.K…. All Right. Do Not Leave Me.
Mental health includes our emotional psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and makes choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. In the years from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, in the flourishing Greek and Roman civilizations, philosophers and physicians identified a number of mental disorders. Heading the list were melancholia, a condition marked by unshakable sadness; mania, a state of euphoria and frenzied activity; dementia, a general intellectual decline; hysteria, the presence of a physical ailment with no apparent physical cause; delusions, blatantly false beliefs; and hallucinations, the experience of imagined sights or sounds as if they were real. Although demonological interpretations of mental and physical illness were still widespread, philosophers and physicians began to offer alternative explanations during this period. Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), often called the father of modern medicine, taught that illness had natural causes. He saw abnormal behaviour as a disease arising from internal physical problems. Specifically, he believed that some form of brain pathology was the culprit and that it resulted—like all other forms of disease, in his view—from an imbalance of four fluids, or humours, that flowed through the body: yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. An excess of yellow bile, for example caused mania; and excess of black bile was the source of melancholia. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
To treat psychological dysfunctioning, Hippocrates sought to correct the underlying physical pathology. He believed, for instance, that the excess of black bile underlying melancholia could be reduced by a quiet life, a vegetable diet, temperance, exercise, celibacy, and even bleeding. Hippocrates’ focus on internal causes for abnormal behaviour was shared by the great Greek philosophers Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and by influential Greek and Roman physicians. During the Middle Ages, there was, on average, one church for every 200 people. The enlightened views of Greek and Roman physicians and scholars did not prevent ordinary people from continuing to believe in demons. And with the decline of Roman, demonology enjoyed a strong resurgence, as a growing distrust of science spread throughout Europe. From A.D. 500 to 1350, the period known as the Middle Age, the power of the clergy increased greatly throughout Europe. In those days the church rejected scientific forms of investigation, and it controlled all education. Most of the patients in asylums, from all classes and circumstances, were women. Religious beliefs, which were highly superstitious and demonological at this time, came to dominate all aspects of life. Once again behaviour was usually interpreted as a conflict between good and evil, God and the devil. Deviant behaviour, particularly psychological dysfunctioning, was seen as evidence of Satan’s influence. Although some scientists and physicians still insisted on medical explanations and treatments, their views carried little weight in this atmosphere. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
The Middle Ages were a time of great stress and anxiety, of war, urban uprisings, and plagues. People blamed the devil for these troubles and feared being possessed by him. The incidence of abnormal behaviour apparently increased dramatically during this period. In addition, there were outbreaks of mass madness, in which large numbers of people apparently shared delusions and hallucinations. In one such disorder, tarantism (also known as St. Vitus’s dance), groups of people would suddenly start to jump, dance, and go int convulsions. Some dressed oddly; others tore off their clothing. All were convinced that they had been bitten and possessed by a wolf spider, now called a tarantella. In anther form of madness, lycanthropy, people thought they were possessed by wolves or other animals They acted wolflike and imagined that fur was growing all over their bodies. Stories of lycanthropes, more popularly known as werewolves, have been passed down to us and continue to fire the imagination of writers, moviemakers, and their audiences. Not surprisingly, some of the earlier demonological treatments for psychological abnormality reemerged during the Middle Ages. Once again they key to cure was to rid the person’s body of the devil that possessed it. Exorcisms were revived, and clergymen, who generally were in charge of treatment during this period, would plead, chant, or pray to the devil or evil spirit. If these techniques did not work, they had others to try, some indistinguishable from of torture. They would administer holy water or bitter solutions, or even starve or stretch the bodies of the individuals in question. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It was not until the Middle Ages drew to a close that the demonology and its methods began to lose favour. Towns throughout Europe grew into cities, and municipal authorities gained more power and took over nonreligious activities. Among their other responsibilities, they began to run hospitals and direct the care of people suffering from mental disorders. Doctors who treated people with mental disorders were called “mad-doctors.” Medical abnormality gained favour once again When lunacy trials were held in the late thirteenth-century England to determine the sanity of certain persons, it was not unusual for natural causes, such as a “blow to the head” or “fear of one’s father,” to be held responsible for an individual’s unusual behaviour. During these same years, many people with psychological disturbances received treatment in medical hospitals. The Trinity Hospital in England, for example, was established to treat “madness,” among other kinds of illness, and to keep the mad “safe until they are restored to reason.” If ASPD (anti-social personality disorder) can be located on the hostile-dominant quadrant of the interpersonal circumplex, dependent personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as DPD) is almost the polar opposite, located in the nurturant-submissive quadrant. Perhaps the chief feature of DPD is a strong sense of interpersonal submission. Individuals with this disorder have a strong need to be taken care of, couple with a strong fear of rejection. Additional symptoms include difficulty making decisions without support and reassurance from others, a need for others to assume responsibility for decisions about the self, difficulty expression disagreement due to fear of rejection, difficulty initiating independent activities and projects, going to excessive lengths to secure nurturance from others, feeling uncomfortable when alone, urgent seeking of another relationship for support when a close relationship ends, and preoccupation with fear of being left to take care of the self. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
People with DPD appear ill equipped to handle mature and independent roles in life, while displaying a naïve and gullible cognitive style. Because of their weak and fragile self-image, they entrust others with the responsibility for addressing major tasks and fulfilling their needs. Their delicate self-image suggest that they will not be competent or able to take on life’s tasks, and therefore need others to do these for them. If any, this excessive reliance on others appears to pay few dividends when it comes to establishing satisfactory personal relationships. People with DPD report low frequencies of positive social behaviours, reduced directness of communication with others, less positive interactions with close friends, and less helpfulness from friend than those with less dependent personalities. The interpersonal style of people with DPD (exempli gratia, acting weak, and submissive) is designed to pull for the complementary interpersonal response from others, particularly protection, nurturance, and control. Also the desperate search for acceptance and approval from others is especially pronounced during times of stress. Should there even be a hint of failure to secure nurturance and care from others, persons with DPD will catastrophize, seeing themselves as totally alone and dismissed by the World. Despite their suggestible and complaint tendencies, people with DPD report high degrees of loneliness. This calls into question the authenticity of the interpersonal connections that they establish. When their dependency need are not met, those with DPD may become demanding, and tis attention seeking may elicit interpersonal rejection from others, only further aggravating dependency needs. Consistent with this hypothesis, symptoms of DPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with conflict. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
It has been argued that parental overprotectiveness combined with authoritarians may serve to reinforce dependent behaviours in children, while simultaneously preventing the children from developing a sense of independence and autonomy. By catering to children’s every need, parents may inadvertently, or perhaps unconsciously, encourage dependency and inhibit the children’s natural tendencies to explore the environment and develop a sense of mastery and autonomy. Although the excessive control that is pursuant to overprotectiveness may be deployed with the best intentions, it interferes with children’s development of basic social competencies and a sense of security when separated from their caregivers. In fact, relative to healthy controls, those with DPD experience greater parental control in their families of origin. However, other examinations of physical and sexual abuse, maternal and paternal care, and maternal and paternal overprotection have found nothing unique in the family-of-origin background of those with DPD. It must be noted that the size of the group with DPD in each of these studies was small; thus these null findings must be interpreted with caution until they can be replicated. DPD (dependent personality disorder) involves a powerful need to be take care of, resulting in clinging and submissive behaviours, as well as fear of separation. Despite their strong desires for connection with and care taking from others, people with DPD experience less rewarding social interactions, less social support, and more loneliness than people without this disorder. A prominent interpersonal theory of DPD locates its origin in excessively overprotective parenting that fails to stimulate a sense of exploration and independence. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Thanks to You, Good Jesus, Eternal Pastor, for thinking us poor paupers and poopers worthy of refreshment by Your precious Body and Blood. Thanks also for Your personal invitation to come to a better understanding of the mysteries surrounding Communion; that is to say, when You said, “Come to me, all you who are lumbered and encumbered; I will find places for you to slumber.” We have all had negative thigs happen to us. Maybe recently, perhaps in the past, someone hurt us. And too often, instead of letting it go and giving it to God, we have held on to it. We have not forgiven, and that will sour the crystal-clear water of our souls and contaminate our lives. Furthermore, this contamination will produce a root of bitterness than will take hold of our hearts, minds, soul and body. And to make matter worse, after a while, we accept it. We make room in our hearts for that bitterness; we learn to live with it, and some even enjoy it. However, with all due respect, that is not how God intended us to be. God wants of to purge our lives of the bitter poison that is polluting our soul. Our souls were made to be crystal clear streams that connect us to God. God created us in His image. And the Lord wants us to be happy, healthy and have an abundance of pleasant things. God put us on this Earth to enjoy life, not to live with bitterness, sinister intentions, sarcasm, and resentment. If that becomes our nature, we have become polluted and we are contaminating everyone else with whom we have influence. However, even though our souls may be polluted right now, they do not have to stay that way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
The more we read the Word of God and adopt Christian principles, and act out of love and kindness and use great discernment, the more we are able to filter the poison out of our lives and our environment, until our souls become crystal clear again. Then, we will begin to experience the joy, peace, and freedom God intended us to have. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way,” reports Psalm 139.23-24. We need to search our hearts and make sure we have not let any roots of bitterness take hold. It may not be a big thing that is polluting one’s soul. Maybe one’s spouse is not spending as much time with one as one would like, and one can feel oneself starting to get resentful. However, do not become sarcastic, cryptic, or unfriendly. That will intentionally make one harder to get along with, and that root of bitterness will contaminate one’s life. Keep your soul pure. Do not let your heart get polluted. The Christian Bible talks about being quick to forgive, and the longer we wait, the harder it is going to be. The longer we hold on to resentment, the deeper that root of bitterness grows. Sometimes, instead of forgiving quickly, letting go of the hurts and pains of the past, we quietly bury them deep down inside our hearts and minds. We do not want to talk about the issues. We do not want to think about it. We want to ignore it and hope that it will go away. It will not. That contamination will show up in one’s life, and it will be a mess. It will cause one even more pain and sorrow, and it could even kill you. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Deal with the poison in your soul today by forgiving anyone who has hurt you, and then choose to live today in freedom and freshness. As one does that, the joy of the Lord will burst forth within one like a freshness mountain spring. Lord, your great goodness and mercy have made me well again; nonetheless, I am sick as a dog. That is why I come to You, my Saviour, with empty mouth and dry tongue, to the Font of Life, a destitute in the Court of Heaven, a slave to the Lord, a creature to the Creator, a desolate to the Consolate. The remedy? The Sacrament. I have trouble with that; and so did Your Everlasting Luke (1.43). I should be going to You; instead, You are coming to me. Well, I am miffed again! You cannot come to my house. I am a sinner, and You should know what that means. I may not have been discovered in the same room as You. Yes, I confess my vilety. I acknowledge Your goodness. I praise You piety. I thank You for Your charity—it seems to know no bounds. Father, I want the streams of my life to flow pure, clean, and fresh. Please search my heart, O God, and help me to detect anything profane or unwelcome in Heaven. Please give me the courage to make the changes You are calling me to make. Of course, I realize that You are just doing this for Yourself. My meager merits have nothing to do with it. That is to say, it is just Your way of bringing my attention Your goodness, Your charity, Your humility. It pleases You to do so. However, at the same time, it teased me, my Divine Friend, this comely Comedown of Yours. “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with the songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods,” reports Psalm 95.2-3. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Would that the floor were not littered with my iniquities! O Sweetest, Gentle Jesus Christ, how much reverence and gratitude with praise unending I owe You when I receive Your Holy Body! No human alive can be found who can fully unfold the dignity of this act! However, what shall I think of this Communion? It gives me access to the Lord, whom I am unable to reverence devoutly enough and yet whom I devoutly wish to receive? What better, more salutary course of action can I take in Your presence, except perhaps humbling my poor self and exalting Your infinite goodness? I praise You, my God, and I exalt You forever. I despise myself and subject myself to You. Why? My vileness has yet to bottom out. Look at You, the Holy of Holies! And what am I? A Shittite among Shittites. Yes, I can see You across the crowded floor. I am looking right at You, in fact. However, are You gesturing me to come forward? There must be some mistake. I am not worthy to return to Your glance, let alone to meet Your gaze! Yes, it is awkward, but it gets worse! You are coming toward me. You actually want to be with me. you invite me to join you for a meal. You want to show me just how good the Divine Diet can be. Especially, Bread of Angels. That is how the Psalmist described it. (78.25). Which, of course, is none other than You Yourself, the Living Loaf, who descended from Heaven to give nourishment to the World; my reference here is John (6.33, 51). Some questions for You, my Eclectic if Encyclopedic Friend. Where does Love come from? What gives Largesse its glow? How many grateful acts of praise are due You for these two virtues? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
However, before you answer, here are some exclamations. How helpful and practical Your counsel is! How pleasant and comfortable that dinner was when You Yourself were the food! How admirable Your operation, O Lord! How powerful Your Virtue! How ineffable Your Truth! Now, some conclusions. You just gave the command, and the World was created. You gave the command again, and the Sacrament was created. Apparently, everything went according to plan. Worthy of wonder, worthy of faith, worthy of warping the human intellect! You, my Lord God, True God and True Man, You are contained whole and entire in some modest species. The Bread is eaten and the Premium Cranberry Justice is drunk, but Your Body and Blood remain forever. O Lord and Tailor of the Universe, so far as I know, You do not keep a lost of wants and needs. Yet You have long wanted to dwell in us through Your Sacrament. Please help keep my body and soul sinless. Why? So that with a spotless yet sportive conscience I can celebrate the Mysteries—that is to say, receive the Sacrament—more frequently. For my perpetual salvation, then, please help me receive the Sacrament that You sanctioned and instituted as a special honour and perennial memorial to remind us of Yourself. Rejoice, my soul, and give thanks to God for the Sacrament, that noble gift and singular solace left behind for me in this valley of tears! Every time I receive the Body of Christ, it rekindles this Mystery. Every time I become a co-conspirator in all Your redemptive work, O Christ, as well as a co-participant in all Your merits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
What we re ordinarily conscious of are the thoughts and feelings of the ego, but there is much more in us than that. There is the true self, of which the ego is only a miserable caricature. If we could penetrate to this, the fundamental element of our selfhood, we would never again be satisfied with a wholly egoistic life—the call of the Quest would come again and again in our ears. And indeed it is through such rare glimpses, such exalted moments, when they become conscious of a presence, higher and more blessed than their ordinary state, that humans are drawn to the Quest in the effort to recapture those moments and those moods. The recapturing is done, not by taking possession of something but by allowing oneself to be possessed, not by a positive and affirmative movement of the will, but by a yielding to, and acceptance of, the gentlest and most delicate thing in humans’ psyche—the intuition. Another purpose of these glimpses is to show one how ignorant of truth one really is, and, having so shown, to stimulate one’s effort to get rid of this ignorance. For they will light up the fanciful or opinionative nature of so much that one hitherto took to be true. The bestowal of a glimpse is not merely for one’s pleasure and satisfaction: there are certain self-cleansing duties and self-improving obligations which follow in its train. The light it throws into one is thrown on one’s sins and weaknesses too. One sees them more plainly for what they are, as well as the amendment one must make. However, one sees also the forgiveness which grace grants. The glimpse affords its own proof, supplies its own evidence, certifies by itself the truths it yields. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
However, if its experiencer falls back into one’s ego and lets its prejudice, opinion, and expectation intrude into those truths, that is one’s own fault, not the Glimpse’s. A single glimpse will offer all the evidence one’s reason needs, all the proof one’s judgement demands that there is a kingdom of Heaven, and that it is the best of all things to search for. One of the first consequences of the glimpse ought to be—if it is properly received and sufficiently understood—a resolve to improve oneself, to be more truthful and less excitable, for instance. The effect of a Glimpse upon character may show itself as a passing feeling but it is the business of a quester to show it as a habit of life. Intellectually, the actualizing Christian is committed to the principle that to experience, or to be, the feeling of strength is commendable and is not an expression of conceit. The person therefore enjoys and even savours feelings of security, adequacy, and worth. The peaceful sense of strength and self-confidence that emerges from being aware of one’s own worth and uniqueness is vital for effective living. Jensen is a Christian who is struggling to understand the real meaning of personal strength. He strove desperately, especially with peers where he works, to prove to everyone how adequate he was. He tried to do more work in less time than anyone else. His real motives tended to surface during the lunch hour, when everyone paused for a quick volleyball game. Jensen’s mood for the rest of the day depended upon whether or not his team won the game. If they won, his ego was bolstered and he felt exuberant. If they lost, he became irritable and depressed. On days that he lost, his wife and child noticed he was less involved in family time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
What Jensen has learned through participating in a church growth group is that there is a deeper, more reliable source of personal worth and adequacy available to him. It is the love of God, the love and respect that others have for him, and his own ability to value himself beneficially. As this sinks in more and more, Jensen is becoming increasingly consistent in feeling adequate and worthy throughout the day—regardless of how much work is done or whether his volleyball tram wins or loses. He is becoming freer to approach both his work and his relationships in a creative rather than a competitive way. This is the actualizing expression of the strength polarity. Jensen is learning to transform striving and achieving into contributing and cooperating. Emotionally, the actualizing person is committed to the expression of inner strength, not as an attempt to experience power over others, but rather as an expression of the potency of one’s own being. The person who knows how to experience and express strength in an actualizing way is a real asset to any relationship of which one is a part. For instance, in friendship, marriage, work or community life, this person can be relied upon to be fresh and original. Because the person is not bound by false modesty, there will be a continual flow of creative contributions that come from deep within. These qualities make the person inwardly attractive and interesting. This reflects both how the person experiences life and how other people tend to experience the person who is realistically in good contact with the strength polarity of personality. A key to the healthy expression of strength for the actualizing person is that the personal power that is experienced is used not only in behalf of one’s own well-being, but also as a service to facilitate the well-being and happiness of others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Thus the power of the actualizing Christian is used to edify or build up others, rather than to dominate, intimidate, or exploit them. It is a power made gentle by Christ’s love and insulated by the virtue of humility. Bodily, the strength dimension is experienced by a sense of being able to stand on one’s own two feet and by the ability to reach out and ask for what one wants. We have found that people who are out of touch with the strength polarity can to some extent begin to discover it by stamping their feet firmly into the ground until one feels the muscle strain in calves and thighs, one’s feet will seem to become firmly planted in the ground, like the root of a tree. This helps one feel a sense of strength and self-support. A second exercise, helpful for developing strong resistance to manipulation from one’s environment is to lie on a bed with both knees up and to pound the bed with both fists and say, “I will not give up! I can do it!” Both movements and voice should express conviction. Some practical ways that one’s strengths might be expressed in everyday living are as follows” participating equally in conversations, taking initiative in greeting or meeting others, giving and receiving genuine compliments, giving and receiving constructive criticism, speaking up and negotiating for your reasonable rights, speaking out for the reasonable rights of others, using expressive talk to show feelings, being able to say yes or no when necessary, being willing to confront and handle stressful situations. This may seem like a formidable list for people who are not used to experiencing or expressing their strength. However, it is important to have these behaviours as part of one’s total repertoire of possibilities for interacting with others. #RandolphHaris 15 of 21
These self-actualizing Christian skills can be learned with patience and practice. A great part of courage is having done the thing before. One further characteristic of strength is that it enables us to become active participants in life. When we are in touch with our strength, we do not sit around and gripe, complain, or whine. We do something. We take responsibility for shaping our own lives and the World around us. We may pray with St. Francis of Assisi: “Lord, please help me to accept the things I cannot change, and change the things that I can. And please give me wisdom to know the difference.” “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication]. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts as at Meribah and as at Massah in the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tried My patience and tested Me, proved Me, and saw My work [of judgment]. Forty years long was I grieved and disgusted with that generation, and I said, It is a people that do err in their hearts, and they do not approve, acknowledge, or regard My ways. Wherefore I swore in My wrath that they would not enter My rest [the land of promise],” reports Psalm 95.6-11. Let us look at another passage of Scripture where Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray: And it came to pass, that, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, one of his disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” reports Luke 11.1. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Notice that the disciple did not say, “Teach us how to heal the sick or how to cast out demons.” Neither did he ask to be taught how long to pray or when to pray, but he recognized that the power behind Jesus’ ministry was the fact that He knew how to pray accurately. Knowing how to pray accurately is one of the keys to victorious living. The story is told of a missionary walking down a jungle trail in African when suddenly a huge lion appeared in the trail. Being the man of prayer that he was, the missionary fell to his knees and prayed, “Father, I pray that this will be a good Christian lion.” The lion immediately fell to the ground, put his paws together, and said, “Father, I thank You for this food. Now bless it to my body.” The missionary’s payer was answered, but he was still in trouble because it did not bring deliverance. Learn to be specific and accurate in prayer. The disciple asked, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus Answered: When ye pray, say Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. They kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in Heaven, so in Earth. Give us day by day or daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Notice that Jesus is asking a question here.To help you understand clearly what Jesus is saying, I want to ask you the same question: Would you have a friend like that? If you went to him at midnight and said, “Company came in unexpectedly and I need a loaf of bread. Would you lend me one?” would he say, “No, you ugly thing, you ought to have come by before I went to bed. I cannot give you any bread now”? Would you have a friend like that? Would you want a friend like that? No, of course not. With friends like that, you would not need any enemies. Now you can see what Jesus is saying. Notice He is talking about a friend. There is no relationship, no kinship here at all. He is just a friend. He wants to know if you would have a friend like that. I am sure you have already answered it in your own mind None of us would want a friend like that. “For a friend of mine in his journey has come unto me and I have not what I shall set before him.” Now you can recognize this as a faith statement. He does not have it or see it yet, but he says, “I will set it before him.” Now the Word of God says, “Come boldly unto the throng of grace that we may obtain,” reports Hebrews 4.16. We are to come boldly before the throne of grace—not to beg, plead or hope that something will happen but we should come to obtain! This fellow came to obtain. He did not say, “I hope you will loan me some bread.” He said, “I do not have what I shall set before him.” He did not have it yet, but he was taking faith. It was already in his mouth. “I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give hi, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Now let us find out what the word importunity means. Much has been said about this word, and most of it has been commentary. We need to watch many of the paraphrased editions, for so much of the is the translators’ and editors’ own interpretation. We need to check the Greek and other references to make sure the meaning we have has not been added by man. Some say the work importunity means “persistence.” To just keep on and on. I had a fellow tell e one time: “Now that man just kept beating on the door. He just kept knocking on that door until the man came to give him bread. That is what Jesus is teaching us to do. We are to just keep asking.” That idea is not present in this passage of scripture. In fact, it is exactly opposite of what Jesus is teaching here. This is where we have missed it. This religious thinking has heled people in bondage. This line of thinking has taught us that we receive from God by beating and knocking on the same door until finally we wake up God and eventually talk Him into it. Importunity comes from two Greek words: aneu which means “without” and aidos which means “bashfulness.” Therefore, a literal meaning would be “without bashfulness.” It means bare faceness or boldness (without shame). Because of his boldness he came even at midnight. He had faith that, even if he came at that late hour, he would receive bread. He said, “I have not what I shall set before him.” Jesus said that man will get up and give him all that he needs. Notice that Jesus did not say that his actually happened. He asked us the question: “Would you have a friend like that?” We get the idea that this actually happened, but it did not. Jesus is only using this as an illustration. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus said, “Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” Now hold onto the word friend because it is another key to understanding this scripture. Jesus then says, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh recieveth; and one that seeketh findeth; and to one that knocketh it shall be opened. The Amplified Bible reads: “Ask and keep on asking’ with a footnote that says, “This is the present imperative and often repeated.” It might be often repeated; but, in this instance, it is not because that would be contrary to other scriptures concerning prayer. (See Mark 11.24; John 15.7,8; 1 John 5.14, 15.) If you take that commentary to be the true meaning of this scripture, it is already distorted in your mind Most people never read the footnote anyway, so they are left with a false impression that will defeat them in their prayer life. When you run into a situation like this, study it carefully and see if it compares to the other teachings of Jesus. Here the translator said that it could have meant that, but it did not because it would refute other things Jesus taught concerning prayer. Those who wished to invigorate themselves quickly should practice prayer. Goals of prayer include: to reduce the number of wandering thoughts; to stop wandering thoughts completely; potential production of a glimpse; lengthening of a glimpse, if obtained; and brining about a glimpse if lost. Draw the Force of God into every pore of your skin until it pervades your whole body. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
At this moment and very fateful hour, I place all Heaven with its power, and the sun with its brightness, and the snow with its whiteness, and fire with all the strength it has, and lightning with its rapid wrath, and the winds with their swiftness along the path, and the sea with its deepness, and the rocks with their steepness, and the Earth with its starkness; all these I place by God’s almighty help and grace, between myself and the powers of Darkness. I arise today though a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. I arise today through the strength of Heaven; light of sun, radiance of moon, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of wind, depth of sea, stability of Earth, firmness of rock. I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the threeness, through confession of the oneness of the Creator of Creation. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Three, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare Thy mighty acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendour, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts, and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in they righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Old, and Thy faithful ones shall bless Thee. They shall declare the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of humans His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!
Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Tell Me What to Do. I’m Sorry. Protect Me. I Can’t. Pray for Me. Help. It’s No Use Anyway.
So much for what you know, My dear Devout. Now let me tell you some things you may not know. When you receive this Sacramento, Spiritual Grace is conferred, and Virtue dimmed is restored to its original beauty. Once covered with soot and sin, the pallid soul will soon blush into a full palette of colours. Sometimes this grace is so great and devotion so great and devotion so pent that they burst, coursing through not just the mind, but the body, replacing weakness with strength. Yet, our own tepidity and negligence cause a great deal of pain, even misery. We should be drawn to receive You, O Christ, with greater affection, but we are not. How is this possible since You are the Total Hope, Total Merit, of those who will be saved? You are our Sanctification and Redemption, are you not? Consolation of us poor wayfarers, and the Eternal Fruition of the Saints? And so it is that Jesus Christ Grieves—and grieves again—that so many turn so little to this Salutary Mystery, which praises Heaven and supports the World! Alas, how blind, how hard, the human heart is! We should develop more devotion to the Ineffable Gift we receive every Sunday. If our devotion takes a dip, as for the rest of these days of the week, then we should do something about it. In any given year as many as 30 percent of the adults and 20 percent of the children and adolescents in the United States of America display serious psychological disturbances and are in need of clinical treatment. It is estimated that up to 25 percent of adults have a significant anxiety disorder (in flexible and maladaptive personality traits), 1 percent has schizophrenia (loses touch with reality for an extended period of time), 1 experiences the brain deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease, and 11 percent abuse alcohol or other drugs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Add to these figures as many as 600,000 suicide attempts, 500,000 sexual assaults by physical force, and 3 million cases of child abuse each year, and it becomes apparent that abnormal psychological functioning is a pervasive problem in this country. The numbers and rates in other countries are similarly high. Furthermore, most people go through periods of extreme tension, demoralization, or other forms of psychological discomfort in their lives and at such times experience at least some of the distress associated with psychological disorders. It is tempting to conclude that unique characteristics of the modern World are responsible for these numerous emotional problems—perhaps rapid technological change, the growing threats of terrorism, or a decline in religious, family, or other support systems. Although the special pressures of modern life probably do contribute to psychological dysfunctioing, they are hardly its primary cause. Historical records demonstrate every society, past and present has witnessed psychological abnormality. Perhaps, then, the proper place to begin our examination of abnormal behavior and treatment is in the past. As we look back, we can see how each society has struggled to understand and treat psychological problems, and we can observe that many present-day ideas and treatments have roots in the past. A look backward makes it clear that progress in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders has already been a steady movement forward. In fact, many of the inadequacies and controversies that mark the clinical field today parallel those of the past. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
At the same time, looking back can help us to appreciate the significance of recent breakthroughs and the importance of the journey that lies ahead. Most of our knowledge of prehistoric societies has been acquired indirectly and is based on inferences made from archaeological discoveries. Historians scrutinize the unearthed bones, artwork, and other remnants of ancient societies to find clues to people’s customs and beliefs. Any conclusions are at the best tentative and are always subject to revision in the face of new discoveries. Thus our knowledge of how ancient societies viewed and treated people with mental disturbances is limited. Most historians believe that prehistoric societies regarded abnormal behaviour as the work of evil spirits. These early societies apparently explained all phenomena as resulting from the actions of magical, sometimes sinister beings who controlled the World. In particular, they viewed the human body and mind as a battle ground between external forces of good and evil. Abnormal behaviour was typically interpreted as a victory by evil spirits, and the cure for such behaviour was to force the demons from a victim’s body. This supernatural view of abnormality may have begun as far back as the Stone Age, a half-million years ago. Some skulls from that period recovered in Europe and South America show evidence of an operation called trephination, in which a stone instrument, or trephine, was used to cut away a circular section of the skull. Historians surmise that this operation was performed as a treatment for severe abnormal behaviour—either hallucinations, which people saw or heard things not actually present, or melancholia, characterized by extreme sadness and immobility. The purpose of opening the skull was to release the evil spirits that were supposedly causing the problem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
In recent decades, some historians have questioned whether Stone Age people actually believe that evil spirits caused abnormal behaviour. Trephination may instead have been used to remove bone splinters or blood clots caused by stone weapons during tribal warfare. Either way, later societies clearly did attribute abnormal behaviour to possession by demons. Egyptian, Chinese, and Hebrew writings all account for psychological deviance this way. The Christian Bible, for example, describes how an evil spirit from the Lord affected King Saul and how David feigned madness in order to convince his enemies that he was visited by divine forces. However, did anyone else find it odd that when King David’s newborn baby was dreadfully sick near death, David prayed night and day, believing that God could heal his child. He would not eat or drink; he did not shave or shower. He did not attend to any business. He would not do anything but pray, crying out to God. Despite David’s passionate prayers, on the seventh day the child died. David’s servants worried how they were going to tell the king that his baby was dead. They thought he would be so devastated, so distraught that he could not handle it. However, when David finally figured out what had happened, he surprised them all. He got up off the floor, washed his face, and put on some fresh clothes. Then he asked his servants to bring him some food, and he sat down and ate a meal. His servants were confused. They said, “David, when your child was alive, you fasted and prayed. But now that he is gone, you act as though nothing is wrong.” David answered, “Yes, I fasted and prayed when my son was sick, thinking that God might heal him. But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
“But now that he is gone, I cannot bring him back. He will not return to me, but I will go to be with him.” Notice David’s attitude. He did not get bitter. He did not question God. He could have snarled, “God, I thought You loved me. Why didn’t You answer my prayers?” David did not do that. He dared to trust God in the midst of his disappointment. He washed his face and moved on with his life. The treatment for abnormality in these early societies was often exorcism. The idea was to coax the evil spirits to leave or to make the person’s body an uncomfortable place in which to live. A shaman, or priest, might recite prayers, plead with the evil spirits, insult them, perform magic, make loud noises, or have the person drink bitter potions. If these techniques failed, the shaman performed a more extreme form of exorcism, such as whipping or starving the person. The key feature of antisocial personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as ASPD) is a pervasive pattern od disregard for and violation of other persons’ rights. This pattern is manifested in failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, lying, impulsivity, aggressiveness, disregard for the safety of others, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse for wrongdoing to others. The pattern is evidenced by age 18 and is foreshadowed by conduct disorder before the age of 15. People with ASPD behave as if the rules and norms of society do not apply to them. Of all the personality disorders, ASPD is characterized by the greatest hostility. Also, not that the terms psychopathy and sociopathy have often been used to descried ASPD. They argue that the distinction between the two lies in the origins of the disorder: Psychopathy arises from a constitutional disposition, whereas sociopathy results from poor socialization, typically defective parenting. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Like all other personality disorders, ASPD is associated with numerous and serious interpersonal implications. In a unique comparative study, it was found that adolescents who went on to develop ASPD as young adults were typified by trouble with the law, a poor work record, and early cohabitation. In contrast, those who developed other personality disorders were characterized more by social isolation and other types of problematic interpersonal relations. People with symptoms of ASPD tend to endorse a ludus (game-playing) love style, and score low on the eros (pleasures of the flesh) love style. The ludus love styles appears to fit well with ASPD in that it is not an intimate means of relating to another person, and may well be seen as irritating by a large percentage of the population. This irritation and displeasure in others are obviously of little concern to a person with ASPD. On the contrary, the manipulations and “mind games” played upon others may be sources of satisfaction and amusement for such a person. The family-of-origin backgrounds of people with ASPD are expectedly troublesome. Poor relations with parents and a history of physical abuse have been tired to symptoms of ASPD. Gross neglect, to the point of abuse, is also fairly common in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD. Parental absence is equally prevalent in these families, especially through separation, divorce, death, or incarceration. A provocative hypothesis that may link these dysfunctional family-of-origin experiences with adult ASPD centers around a breakdown in the normal development of empathy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
During childhood, those who will later develop ASPD learn to recode vicarious fear as excitement and their victims’ suffering as something akin to righteous punishment. One must entertain the possibility that this inverted emotional reaction was learned from the parents of future adults with ASPD may model an emotional indifference to their children’s suffering—an indifference that the children eventually internalize, and with which they then treat others. It would be a gross oversimplification to asset that parental neglect and abuse lead to ASPD. Parental abuse may be an adequate explanation for the aggressiveness and hostility of those with ASPD, but it does not explain their resistance to control and conformity with social norms. The combination of parental neglect and abuse with sporadic and harsh discipline is what leads more specifically to ASPD. The parents of future adults with ASPD, who perhaps have psychosocial problems of their own, may oscillate between excessive permissiveness due to their absence, and stern discipline driven by unchecked impulse. This accordingly makes these children resent any intrusion, while placing a high premium on independence and a lack of interference from others. Like empathy breakdown hypothesis, this formulation has considerable intuitive appeal, but has yet to be fully tested and supported empirically. People with ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) appear to lack a social conscience. They shamelessly exploit, manipulate, and aggress against others, with no apparent remorse. They often run afoul of the law and have difficulties in their work and personal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
People with ASPD have an orientation toward romantic relationship that has more to do with playing games than establishing a mutually meaningful connection. One often finds considerable dysfunction in the family backgrounds of those with ASPD, replete with the attendant physical abuse and neglect. Sporadic and harsh parental discipline may also figure into the etiology of this personality disorder. These disordered family processes may contribute to ASPD through modeling the replacement of vicarious fear with excitement, and by creating hostility and fierce independence as a result of stern but sporadic discipline. To live in the present moment, making the most of this day, we must forgive those people who have hurt us in the past. “Now we recognize and know that the Law is good if anyone uses it lawfully [for the purpose for which it was designed], knowing and understanding this: that the Law is not enacted for the righteous (the upright and just, who are in right standing with God), but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinful, for the irreverent and profane, for those who strike and beat and [even] murder fathers and strike and [beat and [even] murder mothers, for manslayers, [for] impure and immoral persons, those who abuse themselves with humans, kidnapers, liars, perjurers—and whatever else is opposed to wholesome teaching and sound doctrine,” reports I Timothy 2.8-10. Too often, we try to collect our debts from other people. When somebody hurts us, we feel like they owe us. Somebody should pay for that pain we have suffered! That is what happen when one is trapped in the past. One is always trying to collect those debts. One will take it out on other people even thought they were not even involved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Moreover, one should not drag something that happened in the past into one’s relationships today. Do not punish one’s spouse, children, pets, friends, neighbours, nor coworker for something that happened to one when one was growing up. Instead, turn it over to God. Keep your heart free from bitterness and resentment, and do not try to collect a debt that only God can pay. Start each day afresh and anew, especially in your family relationship. Do not let little things build up. Do not harbour unforgiveness and resentment. Do not allow the attitude of entitlement to overcome you. If one is not careful, even though vengeful snubs may seem insignificant to one, but over time that bitter attitude will build up, and it will end up causing one major problems. “Holding fast to faith (that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence) and having a good (clear) conscience. By rejecting and thrusting from them [their conscience], some individuals have made shipwreck of their faith,” reports I Timothy 1.19. If one is poisoned with unforgiveness, bitterness, or resentment on the inside, one has got to do one’s best to keep one’s own heart free and clean, because it will eventually show up on the outside. One cannot keep it buried. It will come out and begin to affect one’s personality. One will be hard to get alone with, easily offended, uptight, and negative. “You are to deliver this human over to Satan for physical discipline [to destroy carnal lusts which prompted one to incest], that [one’s] spirit may [yet] one saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ,” reports I Corinthians 5.5. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
That is why the Scripture instructs us to put on a fresh new attitude every morning. Each morning, forgive the people who hurt you. Every morning, let go of your disappointments and setbacks. Each new morning, receive God’s mercy and forgiveness for the mistakes one has made, and forgive others for the hurts they have inflicted on one. Today focus on one’s possibilities; focus on what one can change rather than what one cannot change. What is done is done. If somebody offended, disappointed, or mistreated one yesterday, either one can get bitter or one can forgive them and move on. Remember, if one refuses to forgive others, God will not forgive one. If one lost one’s temper (went off) yesterday, quit dwelling on it. One cannot undo that. One needs to ask for forgiveness and then do better today. Was your boss, Dr. Blake, rude to you and jumped down your throat? Let it go. Maybe she sees great potential in you and expects you to put in 110 percent so you can excel. Do not go to work tomorrow with a chip on your shoulder. It is a new day. If things did not workout in a situation the way you thought they would, that is okay, God has something better for you. Press on and know that all things work out for the best for those who love God. However, do not take the easy way out and evade responsibility for your words or actions. If you have done wrong, offended someone or hurt somebody, you should seek that person’s forgiveness. However, if you are trying to fix something that you know there is no way to fix, and you have done everything you can do, you must simply leave that up to God. Receive His mercy and go out to live a successful life now. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In obedience to the revelation commanding the New York Saints to move to Ohio, all those living in New York who belonged to the church prepared to leave as soon as spring arrived. Early in the spring of 1831 many gathered at a house on the Erie Canal, which had been rented by Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith, Sr. The Erie Canal crossed the state of New York and was actually only a large ditch. It was scarcely wider than a present-day city street, and the water in it was about four feet deep. The boats were pulled along the canal by horses which walked along a pathway at the edge of the canal. It was quite expensive to travel by canal, but the Saints considered this the best way to travel with their women and children. They rented a boat to save expenses. This boat would take them by canal to Buffalo, and there they would take a lake boat on Lake Erie to a point near Kirtland. The prospects of traveling so far caused much excitement among the people, for most of the had not been farther than a few miles from their homes. About eighty of them gathered together. Each brought one’s personal belongings and as much food as was considered necessary for the trip. A friend gave Joseph’s mother, Lucy Smith, seventeen dollars (2021 adjusted for inflation $540.46), which she later used to buy food for those who had not brought enough. One day while they were traveling on the canal, there was a breakdown and they had to wait until the canal was repaired. That evening some of the men preached to a large number of people who gathered. These people asked them to return and preach again the next night, but they breakdown had been repaired and by morning the Saints were on their way again. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
They were met at Buffalo by another group of Saints who were going to Ohio. They all were anxious to be on their way to Kirtland, but there was four feet of ice on the lake and boats could leave. Food and money were so limited that the Saints were faced with the problem of where to stay. Mother Smith remembered that her brother’s former partner was now a lack-boat captain, and she had no trouble finding him. When she explained their trouble, he suggested that she and all her friends come on board his ship to wait until the ice broke so they could sail. After boarding the boat the little band of pilgrims knelt in prayer on the deck to thank God this this pressing problem had been solved. Almost immediately the ice broke, opened up a channel, and they were able to sail. The ice closed behind them and it was three weeks before another boat left the port. The trip was long and stormy. The boat was reported lost and their Kirtland friends feared they might never see them again. At last, weary with the storms, the boatload of Saints landed about eleven miles from Kirtland. Two young men walked to Kirtland, and soon the Kirtland Saints were taking them home. The reunion was a happy one and everyone enjoyed the breakfast at the Edward Partridge Home. For many of them it was the first real meal they had eaten in weeks. In the Early months of 1831 Orson Pratt walked from New York to Kirtland (about three hundred miles) preaching as he traveled. His missionary efforts were very successful and he baptized many people. Lyman Wight traveled about six hundred miles through Ohio and Pennsylvania, preaching as he went. He baptized 393 people. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Many of these newly baptized Saints obeyed God’s instructions to father to Kirtland. As summer neared practically all those who belonged to the church, with the exception of the little band in Missouri, were living in Kirtland. It was a strain on the small community to care for so many people. Some were very poor. Others were families of missionaries who were away preaching, and were thus unable to earn a livelihood for their families. All who came to Kirtland needed homes, and many were without sufficient food and clothing. God wished His people to be equal and to have their need supplied. To help the Saints know how to care for so many people, a revelation was given through Joseph Smith in May 1831, in which Edward Partridge was given the responsibility of organizing the people. Instructions given at the time have formed the basis for the law of the church which teaches people to be unselfish and to have consideration one for another. God instructed His Saints to build a storehouse. All things, both money and food which were more than was needful for the want of the people, were to be brought to the storehouse to be kept in the hands of the bishop. Those who were in need could then go to the storehouse and receive their needs. According to this law they were to be given help in accordance with the size of their families and the amount of help they required. In this revelation a promise was given to those who would be obedient to this law and contribute to the storehouse: “Behold, this shall be an example unto my servant Edward Partridge, in other places, in all churches. And whoso is found a faithful, a just, and a wise steward, shall enter into the joy of one’s Lord, and shall inherit eternal life.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
A General Conference was held at Kirtland on June 6, 1831. All the elders who could attend were there, for Joseph had written them telling them God had instructed all who possibly could to attend this Conference. By revelation God commanded Joseph and Oliver Cowdery to ordain each other to the office of the high priest. They then ordained sixteen other men to this same office. The office of high priest is the highest office in the Melchisedec priesthood. It is the office held by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. During this conference a revelation was given through Joseph Smith, Jr., which indicated the future location of Zion: “I, the Lord, will make known unto you what I will that ye shall do from this time until the next Conference, which shall be held in Missouri, upon the land which I will consecrate unto my people.” This caused much excitement because Missouri was far away on the edge of the Indian country. Father, I dare to forgive others, because I know You have forgiven me. Help me each day to be tenderhearted, to forgive those people who have hurt me, used me, or otherwise brought pain into my life. Prayer tries to imitate the death of cry of dying creatures, the vocal expression of their fear of death. Such an imitation of the physical side of dying should being with it, momentarily, the associated death fear whose gravity and importance naturally swallow up all lesser fears. If this exercise is done twice daily, these lesser fears gradually become weaker, while the fear of death is itself overcome. If the Kingdom of Heaven is atmospheric, then why should we trouble to become unselfish, disciplined, and intelligent? Why bother to improve our character at all? No! the wise student does not think like this. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The power of good behaviour and payer augment the body’s energy. A heavy weight which one could hardly lift ordinarily can be lifted much more easily if a deep, long prayer is first taken. A long forward leap or a high jump can be more successfully achieved by following the same method. Health and strength are restored to an extend as long as one believes. When a faithful prayer is united to keen thought, and when the fused result is driven upwards physically to the brain and mentally in lofty aspirations to the Soul, the visitant will know by a beautiful change of consciousness that it is welcome. The importance of prayer is not only a physical one, because prayer enables us to get the full manifestation of the lifeforce in the body, but also because it allows for a fuller and freer manifestation of the mind. The danger of developing the skills of prayer for the sake of developing personal powers is that if the powers are finally gained, the spiritual path may be lost. You know we have sung that song, “When we all get to Heaven, we will sing and shout the victory.” We have to put victory off until then; but if we would learn to act on the Word, we could shout the victory here on Earth. Jesus said we are to pray, Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven. It is God’s will that we have victory here and that we shout it here on Earth. However, this does not come overnight. I drive a car, but I did not learn to drive a car in one day. It took me months (or years because I am still learning) of study and practice. The first few lessons I thought I would never learn, but each time it became easier. The first I saw one of those big BMW’s, I wanted to drive it, but was nervous. I thought it is so beautiful. I will have to learn how to drive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
If you say, “Well, I believe in prayer, then prayer ought to work for me,” in the same way you could say, “I believe in driving, therefore I ought to be able to drive.” Just because you believe in driving does not mean you can get in that BMW M760Li XDrive sedan and drive it. You might not know how to operate it. You might push the wrong button! Well, what makes us think the Word of God is any different? If we are going to operate in the Word accurately, we will have to spend time learning. It is the same with the law of electricity. If you do not understand the laws that govern electricity, you are liable to get into trouble. If you violate the laws that govern it, the same power that will wash your clothes and cook your food and heat your house will kill you. The Word of God is no less powerful. It operates on laws that will work when applied by whosoever will. If I got in an airplane and said, “Well, I know that the book says if you are going to climb over a 50-foot obstacle in 1200 feet, you must use 20-degree flaps, but I just do not feel like it. It looks to me like it ought to clear the hanger without flaps.” It does not matter how I feel or how it looks, I better go by what the book says or I am going to be in trouble. So are our prayers in trouble when we do not use God’s rulebook. When you do thing accurately according to the Word of God, you have all Heaven behind you and the Word will work for you. God’s Word is the Answer. We could sum it up by saying that prayer is not telling God the problem. Whatever you desire is what you should pray, not the problems. Turn loose of the problem. Take hold of the answer and make it your prayer and your confession of faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
As an example, let us say you have a financial need. You would pray: Father, in the name of Jesus, Your Word says that You will supply all my need according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Your Word says that whatsoever things I desire when I pray to believe that I received them. Therefore I believe that my needs are supplied according to Your riches in glory by Christ Jesus. I have given; therefore, it is given to me—good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. I have abundance and there is no lack. I sow bountifully; therefore, I reap bountifully. Father, You make all grace abound toward me and I, having all sufficiency in all things, do abound to every good work. For the Lord is my Shepherd and I do not want. The Word of God is the answer. Pray the Word—it works! Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. You have been given a glimpse of the goal. Now you must strive to attain that goal. The glimpse itself has enabled you to understand the consciousness and the characteristics to strive for. Both are so subtle that words merely hint at them and may be meaningless. In receiving an experience beyond words, you have therefore been so fortunate as to be favoured with the Overself’s Grace. Merely to enjoy such a glimpse is not enough. It must be turned to use, made into a standard for thought and living, applied to every situation in which one finds oneself. One must let its beneficent memory shed peace, goodwill, and kindliness on all around. The illuminatory experience may come to one who is without previous preparation, seeking, effort, or self-discipline. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, if it comes so unexpectedly it leaves just as unexpectedly. The visitant is transient. The effects are permanent. If it be asked why it should come to such a person, who neither desired nor strove for it, when others are unable to secure it despite years of seeking it, the answer must be that one worked for it in earlier lives. One has forgotten oneself for an interval but the illumination recalls one to the quest even though it passes away: hence the permanency of its moral and mystical results. What one see in that sudden flash is to be slowly worked out in one’s character and conduct during the hours and months of subsequent years. Indeed, every minute offers the chance to transform oneself by the smallest of degrees. What one feels during those moments one has to become during the years that follow. All one’s life has to converge upon this divine focus, all one’s experience has to draw its supreme significance from it. Jonah the Old Testament prophet had the same problem of many modern-day Christians: he ran away from his own great calling. The nonactualizing Christian may not be swallowed by a whale, but probably God will arrange some modern kind of encounter that will awaken us to our greatness and unique mission in life. Jesus showed the ability to jar people into an awareness of their potential for fulfillment. According to the Gospel narratives, Jesus moved fancy women and men, tax collectors, religious workers, fishermen, shepherds, soldiers—anyone. Ironically, in surrendering to personal encounter with Jesus, they discovered how valuable and great they themselves were! #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Yet in the church today, there are often messages given to people that say: “Do not think too highly of yourself”; “There is nothing great about you; only God is great”; “Pride goes before the fall.” This can lead to a false sense of humility or even a self-hatred. The individual who has difficulty accepting one’s genuine and God-given strengths often discounts compliments instead of graciously receiving and appreciating them. One probably has difficulty complimenting or praising others too. The Scriptures present a different picture of the believer. Just as God gives his glory to Christ, Jesus gives His glory to the Christian (John 17.22). The actualizing Christian discovers this and feels gratitude, strength, and joy. One can vernalize one’s feelings by such phrases as “I am adequate,” “I am capable,” “I am strong,” and “I am powerful.”” The awareness of one’s strengths, gifts, and talents is an important part of healthy self-love and self-esteem. The actualizing alternative to an overbearing strength is personal power. When one does not need to use absolute control over others or oneself, but rather feels that one is a vessel through which the power of the Holy Spirit is expressed, then one can say with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” reports Galatians 2.20. When this happens, relationships cease to be authoritarian, controlling, or manipulative, but rather emphasize cooperation and give maximum space to be. Sensing one’s strengths is reflected in an unpretentious kind of self-confidence. Because the actualizing Christian’s strength is rooted in the grace of God, one shares in God’s serenity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Psalmist expressed it this way: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers,” reports Psalm 1.3. This is not the manipulative form of strength that we saw in the past; the striving Christian was rigid, tense, and compulsive. Rather, this genuine type of strength is a quiet, relaxed flow of power from the presence of the Holy Spirit in one’s life. The actualizing Christian can do great things in the World, but the way that these things are done does not come across to others as arrogant, self-conscious, or forced. The actualizing Christian experiences firsthand the biblical principle, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord,” reports Zechariah 4.6. O our Father, thy Sky, hear us and please make us strong. O our Mother the Earth, please hear us and give us support. O spirit of the East, send us your Wisdom. O Spirit of the South, may we tread your path of life. O Spirit of the West, may we always be ready for the long journey. O Spirit of the North, please purify us with your cleansing winds. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily yea, soon; and ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted be honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yes, us beyond all praises, hymns, and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and for all America; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all America; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
Lighting gives your home charm, personality, and character. An All Ready smart home lets you decide when those lights turn on! 💡💡💡
Each home also comes complete with owned solar, so you can streamline your power consumption, too. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Nothing Ever Turns Out Right! Somebody Take Care of Me! God, Why Not Make Everything O.K.?
Such great devotion was in vogue in the days the Ark of God was being built, as was remembrance of divine praise at the Ark of the Covenant. However, that was then, and this is now. Should I not, and indeed the rest of the Christian population, have more reverence, more devotion, in the presence of the Mystery and in the reception of Sacrament? Every year, any number of Christians go to great pains to visit as many shrines as they can, there to ay respects to the relics of the Saints and to hear of the wonders worked through the Saints’ intercession. Of course, the pilgrims reverence with their lips the holy bones resting on silk and cased in gold, but they also gawk at the sumptuousness of the churches housing the shrines. You know what is wrong with this picture? Right in front of one, on this very altar, without one’s having to lift a finger, let alone a foot, God is alive and well. That is to say, God, Holy of Holies, Creator of Humankind, and Lord of Angels. However, if I wonder what the dearest Lord and Friend has against pilgrimage? Perhaps this flurry of activity seems holy at first, but in reality it is a curiosity that plagues all Humankind. That is to say, there is a certain freshness that comes with hithering and thithering, with seeing new things in toxic places. However, when people tally up the expense of pilgrimaging, they have paid too much for too little. That is to say, the fruit of a pilgrimage is conversion, reform of life. However, that seems to have taken a back seat in their minds, if not their souls; they have preferred happy times in holy places to the True Contrition they could find at home, at the Winchester, the shrine where their soul resides. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Here and now, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is totally present, Jesus, Man and Christ. Right here, within one’s grasp, Eternal Salvation awaits, to be harvested just as often one undertake Communion with dignity and devotion. Pilgrims, beware! The paths to this shrine are rocky, and slippery are the pavers marked Levity, Curiosity, and Sensuality; for true cobbles, rely only on Firm Faith, Devout Hope, and Sincere Charity. O God, Invisible Creator of the World, how wondrously You treat us! How sweetly and graciously You carry on with Your chosen—these are the people You have invited to join you in Your Sacrament! Yes, I know You low opinion of Us Devouts, but I just have to say that the Sacrament has a special appeal to our hearts. We are truly faithful friends of Yours, and we have planned our whole lives around reformation of soul. As a result, we frequently receive this Most Worthy Sacrament, and from it we derive the great grace of devotion and the love of virtue. O admirable yet hidden grace of the Sacramento, only the faithful of Christ have known it well! The faithless and the sinful, however, have no experience to match it. Every relation is based either on quantity, a double and half; or on action and passion, as the doer and the deed, the father and the son, the master and the servant, and the like. Now as there is no quantity in God, for He is great without quantity, as Augustine says (De Trin. I, !) it follows that a real relation in God can be based only on action. Such relations are not based on the actions of God according to any extrinsic procession, forasmuch as the relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not external, processions in God. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
These processions are two only, as above explained, one derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word; and the other from the action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of each of these processions two opposite relations arise; one of which is the relation of the person proceeding from the principle; the other is the relation of the principle Himself. The procession of the Word is called generation in the proper sense of the term, whereby it is applied to living things. Now the relation of the principle of generation in perfect living beings is called paternity; and the relation of the one proceeding from the principle is called filiation. However, the procession of Love has no proper name of its own; and so neither have the ensuing relations a proper name of their own. The relation of the principle of this procession is called spiration; and the relation of the person proceeding is called procession: although these two names belong to the processions or origins themselves, and not to the relations. In those things in which there is a difference between the intellect and its object, and the will and its object, there can be a real relation, both of science to its object, and of the willer to the object willed. In God, however, the intellect and its object are one and the same; because by understanding Himself, God understands all other things; and the same applies to His will and the object that He wills. Hence, it follows that in God these kinds of relations are not real; as neither is the relation of a thing to itself. Nevertheless, the relation to the word is a real relation; because the word is understood as proceeding by an intelligible action; and not as a thing understood. For when we understand a stone; that which the intellect conceives from the thing understood, is called the word. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Intelligible relations in ourselves are infinitely multiplied, because a human understands a stone by one act, and by another act understands that one understands the stone, and again by another, understands that one understands this; thus the acts of understanding are infinitely multiplied, and consequently also the relations understood. This does not apply to God, inasmuch as He understand all things by one act alone. Ideal relations exist as understood by God. Hence it does not follow from their plurality that there are many relations in God; but that God knows these many relations. Equality and similitude in God are not real relations; but are only logical relations. The way from one term to another and conversely in the same; nevertheless the mutual relations are not the same. Hence, we cannot conclude that the relation of the father to the son is the same as that of the son to the father; but we conclude this of something absolute, if there were such between them. “Let one gives one’s cheek to the One Who smites one [even through His human agents]; let one be filled [full] with [men’s] reproach [in meekness]. For the Lord will not cast off forever!,” reports Lamentations 3.30-31. What are the signs whereby one shall know that this is an authentic glimpse of reality? First, it is and shall remain ever present. There is no future in it and no past. Second, the pure spiritual experience comes without excitement, is reported without exaggeration, and needs no external authority to authenticate it. The glimpse also does in part for a human what initiation did in some ancient mystical institutions. It sets one on the road of a new life, a life more earnestly and more consciously devoted to the quest of Overself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The glimpse silently bids one dedicate, or rededicate anew, the remainder of one’s life on Earth to this undertaking. It is a baptism with inner light more far-reaching than the baptism with physical water. The motives and reactions of a spiritually intuitive human will necessarily be on a higher level than those of a human driven by animal and Worldly compulsions only. And once you are reborn in the heart, life will become what it should be—the realization that you are outworking a higher destiny than the merely personal one. Another noteworthy mark of the true glimpse is its purificatory effect. This is usually temporary but in a few cases it has been permanent. When one has this first unprecedented experience, when one knows and feels that one is a part of divine being, one is born “in Christ.” However, it is not for one to stand at street corners and announce to the multitude that one has had this glimpse. The sustained consciousness of the Overself puts its mark upon a human’s face. They are humans with “the shine” on their faces, like the one who descended from Sinai. One emerges from the old human that one was, from the ego-ridden nature, as a snake emerges from its old skin. The old self which one has left behind and which once so occupied one’s interest now seems ugly, bad, and dull. So great is the change in one that it also seems like a stranger, not entitled to bear one’s name. However synical and blasé may have been one’s attitude in earlier days, it will yield to and melt in the sunny light of this second birth. Those who have experienced a glimpse of this blessed Reality or, better, established themselves in it, may share its atmosphere with others in silent communion. However, on a lesser level, they may also share with the in phrased speech the thoughts it provokes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The more one becomes familiar with this experience, the easier one can describe it. One who has been touched by the goodness comes out of one’s sleep, says the Old World wisdom. For one has a knowledge which appears as a special and unusual kind of awareness that escapes most other people. There comes a time when out of the silence within oneself there comes the spiritual guidance which one needs for one’s further course. It comes sometimes as a delicate feeling, sometimes as a strong one, sometimes in a clearly formulated message, and sometimes out of the circumstances and happenings themselves. Not only does it tell one and teach one, but sometimes it does the same for others. Such is the effect of the Divine Life now working increasingly within one. You are saved the moment this divine power takes possession of you, but not otherwise. The dictionary defines an eccentric as a person who deviates from common behaviour patterns or displays odd or whimsical behaviour. However, how can we separate a psychologically healthy person who has unusual habits from a person whose oddness is a symptom of psychopathology? For years, little research was done on eccentrics, but some recent studies and reviews seem to have started the ball rolling. For example, the researcher David Weeks studied 1,000 eccentrics over a 10-year period and was able to pin-point 15 characteristic common to them. Altogether, he estimates that as many as 1 in 5,000 persons may be “classic, full-time eccentrics.” Men and women seem equally prone to such patterns. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Weeks suggests that eccentrics do not typically suffer from mental disorders. Whereas the unusual behaviour of persons with mental disorders is thrust upon them and usually causes them suffering, eccentricity is chosen freely and provides pleasure. In short, eccentrics know they are different and glory in it. Similarly, the thought process of eccentrics are not severely disrupted, and they do not leave the person dysfunctional. In fact, it was also discovered the eccentrics actually had fewer emotional problems than the general population. Perhaps being an “original” is good for mental health. The eccentrics in his study also seemed physically healthier than others, visiting a doctor only once every eight years on average. Weeks concludes that most eccentrics, despite their deviant behaviour—perhaps even because of it—are happy, well-adjusted, and joyful people. According to Weeks, the following 15 qualities (in descending order of importance) are characteristic of eccentrics. The first 5 are the most definitive, but possessing any 10 may qualify a person as an eccentric: Nonconforming, creative, strongly curious, idealistic, happily obsessed with a hobby (often more than one), aware from early childhood of being different from others, intelligence, opinionated and outspoken, noncompetitive, unusual eating or living habits, not interested in the opinions or company of others, mischievous sense of humour, single, eldest or only child, bad speller. Are you eccentric? #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Once clinicians decide that a person is indeed suffering from some form of psychological abnormality, they seek to treat it. Treatment, or therapy is a procedure designed to change abnormal behaviour into more normal behaviour; it, too, requires careful definition. For clinical scientists, the problem is closely related to defining abnormality. Therapy has three essential features: A sufferer who seeks relief from the healer. A trained, socially accepted healer, whose expertise is accepted by sufferer and one’s social group. A series of contact between the healer and the sufferer, through which the healer, often with the assistance of a group, tries to produce certain changes in the sufferer’s emotional state, and behaviour. Some clinicians view abnormality as an illness and so consider therapy a procedure that helps cure the illness. Others see abnormality as a problem in living and therapists as teachers of more functional behavior and thought. Clinicians even differ on what to call the person undergoing therapy: those who see abnormality as an illness speak of the “patient,” while those who view it as a problem in living refer to the “client.” Because both terms are so common, many use them interchangeably. Despite their differences, most clinicians do agree that large numbers of people need therapy of one kind or another. People with histrionic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as HPD) exhibit a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking. Their social interactions are characterized by inappropriately seductive or provocative behaviour, rapidly shifting and shallow emotions, excessively impressionistic speech that is lacking in detail, and self-dramatization. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Persons with HPD tend to use physical appearances to draw attention to themselves, consider relationships to be more intimate than they really are, and are rather easily influenced by other people. These persons are resistant to being pushed into the background, and want to be made to feel special, with a tendency toward anger and jealousy when not acknowledged. Using a Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour, it has been discovered that people with HPD wish for active love and protection while harbouring a fear of being ignored by others. Unquestionably, the interpersonal theatrics of these people are cries for attention, and most of their symptoms are in the service of this primary goal. A distinctive quality of HPD is its inherent interpersonal quality: Interaction with others is required for expression of the disorder. Obviously something is seriously awry on the interpersonal terrain of persons with HPD. Although such people are often judged to be more physically attractive than their nondisordered peers, this physical attractiveness is associated with a greater reliance on immature defense mechanisms, such as projection and regression. These findings suggest a pattern of superficial relations based on gaining attention through physical attractiveness, in the absence of any well-developed interpersonal coping and problem-solving skills. Compared to healthy controls, persons with HPD score lower in assertiveness involving pleasures of the flesh despite their flirtations, and exhibit more phobic attitudes toward pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Expectedly, the subjects with HPD in this study also reported lower martial satisfactions than controls. These same respondents indicated relatively high levels of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, along with boredom and dysfunction with pleasures of the flesh. In a unique study with gay men, Johnson et al. (2000) found that symptoms of HPD were negatively correlated with receiving social support, and positively correlated with interpersonal conflict and loneliness. In an epidemiological study, it would found that the prevalence rate of HPD was about five times higher in divorced and separated persons than in people who were married. Looking back at the early interpersonal experiences of people with HPD, one sees a pattern of turmoil. For example, sexual abuse is often evident in the early home environments of such individuals. In a similar study, people with Cluster B (dramatic-emotional”) personality disorders (id est, antisocial personality disorder, BPD, HPD, and NDP) indicated that they experienced a pattern of parental overprotection coupled with lower parental care. Although parental overprotection and sexual abuse may appear antithetical at first glance, each is indicative of poor boundary regulation. Other family-of-origin processes that are related to HPD include high achievement orientation, an intellectual/cultural orientation, and high levels of parental control. What cases HPD? Undoubtedly this disorder, like other personality disorders, grows out of an amalgamation of temperament (which comes from genetic predisposition) and character (which is the developing aspect of one’s personality that is shaped by experience). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The character of people with HPD may be strongly tied to interpersonal interactions. Experts believe that this disorder is often preceded by rare parental punishment and unpredictable parental rewarding, resulting in the creation of behaviours that are directed toward securing rewards, developing a sense of personal competence, and seeking approval for approval’s sake. In developing this social learning hypothesis, it has been noted that when parents offer approval on a variable schedule, the child who will later develop HPD becomes frustrated, and learns to exaggerate one’s behaviours in the service of obtaining compliments and affection. Unless the parents recognize this conduct for what it is worthy, a vicious cycle is established in which the child performs increasingly dramatic and caricatured behaviours to secure positive responses from one’s parents. Like other old habits the die heard, this pattern of conduct is carried over beyond the childhood home to adult interpersonal relations. Psychodynamic theories of HPD originally characterized the disorder as hysterical personality. It was believed that the symptoms are the results of childhood sexual abuse. Traumatic memories of the abuse were assumed to be repressed. The strong tendencies toward repression were thought to explain the vague and shallow cognitive pattern that is so characteristic of people with HPD. From the psychodynamic perspective, the sexualization of social interactions in HPD is a defense against the fear of sexual aggression and victimization. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
By summoning that which is feared, persons with HPD may develop a sense of mastery over this fear by replacing it with attraction. This psychodynamic perspective, notwithstanding its dubious falsifiability, clearly locates the origin and consequences of the disorder in interpersonal experiences. Somewhere in between the social learning and psychodynamic hypothesis, is the pathogenic hypothesis, based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour. There are three identifiable early interpersonal experiences that figure prominently in the pathogenesis of HPD. First, these people were often loved for their good looks and entertainment value as children. Second, as children, these people quickly learned that physical appearance and charm were functional for getting what they wanted from others. Finally, their early family environments were unpredictable and chaotic. However, it was this very chaos that kindled a sense of drama in their families, in which these children could play a role. People with HPD conduct their lives in a frantic search for attention, trapped between the exploitation of sexuality and flirtation to gain this attention, and fear of its eventuality. Their interpersonal theatrics, emotional flightiness, and shallow cognitive style may have their origins in early family experiences. Proponents of both social learning and psychodynamic hypotheses converge on the belief that family dynamics such as parental boundary violation (manifested in sexual abuse and overportectivness) and inconsistent parental reinforcement set in motion the patterns of emotion, cognition, and social behaviour that are characteristic of HPD. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
People become more psychologically healthy (fully functioning, self-actualizing), they become more tolerant of “opposites” within themselves, and become more able to accept others with all their uniqueness. Others may have mistreated you, somebody may have walked out on you, or maybe you prayed fervently, yet God did not answer your prayer the way you had anticipated. That is over and done. You cannot change the past; there is nothing you can do about it now. However, you must make a decision. Are you going to relive all those painful memories, or are you going to stay in an attitude of faith? You must walk out of any emotional bondage in which you have been living. Nobody can do it for you. You must rise up out of those ashes. You must forgive the people who have hurt you. You have to release all those hurts and pains. Leave the past behind. When you go through situations you do not understand, do not become bitter. Do not question God. Learn to just wash your face, keep a good attitude, and move on. Get ready for the new things God has in store for you. If you will stay in an attitude of faith and success, God has promised that He will turn those emotional wounds around. He will use them to your advantage, and you will come out better than you would have had they not happened to you. Humans alone, of all the creatures of the Earth, can change their own pattern. Humans alone are the architect of their destiny. The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Christians often think in terms of opposites—right/wrong, good/bad, sinful/goodness—instead of the principle of transcendence of opposites. The actualizing Christian learns to transcend these opposites. Openness to experience all that one is can be expressed as follows: I am neither good nor bad, I am both. I am neither spiritual nor sensual, I am both. I am neither generous nor selfish, I am both. I am neither honest nor dishonest, I am both. I am neither a saint nor a sinner, I am both. However, God accepts me, forgives me, and loves me just as I am. And I can accept, forgive, and love myself and others. The testimony of the actualizing Christian is not that one is perfect, but rather that one is being perfected by the healing love and power of God. The process of being made whole involves gradual transformation of one’s entire being. Every polarity has both manipulative and actualizing alternatives. To be consistently actualizing, a person must learn to transform manipulative behaviours into actualizing counterparts. On the strength polarity, the egocentric manipulative tactics of striving and achieving need to be transformed into interpersonal qualities of cooperating and contributing. The latter two actualizing qualities have a respect and sensitivity that the manipulative forms do not possess. Cooperating with others in a sharing way allows us to express our own strengths while at the same time seeking the common good. Contributing is not something that is grasped at or forced, but rather is a reflection of our true capabilities. Our attitude becomes cooperative rather than competitive. We give up the attempt to be omniscient and omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
When we function in this way, we do not feel threatened by someone else’s contributions or accomplishments. We are also quick to admit our deficiencies and to integrate our strengths with the contributions of others. This is the basis for the virtue of courage or realistic self-confidence. On the weakness polarity, withdrawing and avoiding need to be transformed into feeling vulnerable and empathizing. The actualizing Christian learns that one can honestly share feelings of inadequacy, fear, or helplessness. In sharing feelings of vulnerability, a person becomes more accepting and tolerant of others, and hence more empathetic. Herein lies the virtue of humility. Some years ago, my great grandmother went back home to Sweden for the first time in thirty years. Late one night we received a concerned phone call from her during which she said that the Gripsholm, the boat she was supposed to return on, had collided in New York Harbor with the Andrea Dorea, an Italian ship. We discussed her alternatives, and it seemed the only things she could do would be to take her first airplane trip. This may not seem like a large accomplishment these days, but for my mother, who was over seventy years old, this was a fearful and difficult task. The next day she bravely climbed the steps of the huge 707, turned the corner, and sat down in her seat—which happened to be next to Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt was an empathetic woman who herself had suffered much in her life. So immediately her empathy expressed itself to my great grandmother, who obviously was somewhat shaken at being on her first plane trip. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The Worldly, yet gentle woman pulled a rose from the bouquet the Swedish government had given her on departure—and gave it to my great grandmother. Great grandmother was deeply moved by this gesture and immediately felt vulnerable and open to this beautifully warm woman. During the next five hours on their journey to America, the two of the chattered together like neighbours over the back fence, as my great grandmother often did with her friends in Rockford, Illinois. Elanor Roosevelt is an example of a truly humble person. Since she was genuinely away of her own feelings of vulnerability, she could reach out to others, including my mother, with a special warmth and sensitivity. On the love polarity, the manipulative patterns of pleasing and placating are transformed into the actualizing traits of affirming and caring. There is a freedom to praise and nurture both oneself and others. Built into the combination of affirming and caring the firmness and warmth. From these qualities emerge the virtue of compassion, a sure mark of the actualizing Christian. From the anger polarity arise asserting and expressing, the actualizing counterparts of blaming and attacking. The person who expressed anger graciously and diplomatically exhibits the virtue of confrontation with caring, or “speaking the truth in love.” There is a real wisdom built into the warp and woof of human nature. It is as though God intended a sensitive set of checks and balances in order to create a reliable source of guidance and inspiration within each person. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Love that is expressed fully bring qualities of tenderness, caring, and nurturing into the World. However, to find its finest balance, love must be offset with a certain firmness and power that is captured in the feeling of anger. Anger provides the energy for confronting the World in a caring way. Likewise, the feelings of strength and weakness both balance and check each other. From strength a person derives a certain air of confidence, boldness, and dignity. However, with the balancing effect of weakness, the virtue of humility is added; so one can express strength in gentle and humble ways. It is our belief that as one becomes more balanced in expressing these behavioural opposites, one will experience a connectedness to others and to God in a warmhearted, open and sharing way. Connectedness if the key to understanding others and growing with them in mutually supportive ways. Heavenly Father, I admit that sometimes I am more surprised when You do answer my prayers than when You do not. I know that I do not deserve Your kindness, that like Prince Lestat, I have made some bad decisions, done wrong, and deserve nothing. However, thank You for loving me even through my mistakes, failures, and wrong choices. Please help me, Father, to trust You through my disappointments. The practice of prayer, when done as an exercise can harmonize cosmic energies, so that the will of God will manifest in your life naturally. While praying for good things and thanking God, mentally direct the energy towards your general surrounding so you can mentally connect it with the cosmic life-force. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Remember that the purpose of this lengthened prayer is not only to empty your temple of negative energy, but also to empty your environmental of bad energy. It will help to empty the mind of its tumult and the nerves of their agitation, and focus on your prayer as deeply as possible. Until you learn to build your faith, you may want to repeat your prayer, in different ways, until you learn how to expand your conversations with God and Jesus. Imagine a steam of golden-white energy being drawn from the Holy Trinity and radiated throughout the body. This enables one to better receive cosmic current of life-force. It also strengthens the power of self-control, of disciplining the body. “Only fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; for consider how great are the things He has done for you. However, if you still do wickedly, both you and your king shall be swept away,” reports 1 Samuel 12.24-25. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” reports Matthew 6.13. Most people believe that the Lord sends the trials, tests, and temptations of life. If the trails and temptations come from God, I wonder why Jesus said to pray that you enter not into? If God knows everything and we know the Word says God has all knowledge, then I wonder why God would have to try and test us to find out what we would do in a certain situation. The Word also says that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12.2.) Now since Jesus has authored our faith, God does not need to try it. He knows it will work. The enemy is the one trying our faith. Jesus said, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
What evil is Jesus Christ talking about? The evil and trials and temptations. We can rise to a new level of faith when we realize that it is the thief that steals, kills and destroys. It is Jesus that gives life abundantly. When you draw the battle line, you will have 50 percent of the battle won. This will set you at liberty in your prayer life. You can use your faith shield to quench every fiery dart of the adversary. However, if God put it on you, until you determine the cause, you cannot use your faith. You cannot believe the thing will go away. The enemy suggests that God might be using this to perfect you. It sounds logical, but it is stronghold of the adversary. Now let me refresh your memory in this area. In the 8th chapter of Luke, verse 22, Jesus said to the disciples, Let us go over unto the other side, then He fell asleep in the back of the ship. A storm of wind arouse on the lake and waves were lapping into the boat. The disciples began to say, Master, we perish. Jesus Christ arose and rebuked the wind and the sea. Then He asked them, “Where is your faith?” Was that storm sent of God to try their faith? No. That storm was designed by the adversary to get the Word out of them and it worked well. “The ones alone the path are those who have the Word sown [in their hearts], but when they hear, the adversary comes at once and [by force] takes away the message which is sown in them,” reports Mark 4.15. They told Jesus what the devil said. The devil had told them that they would all drown. However, Jesus said, “We are going to the other side.” His Words did not abide in them. In 1 John 3.8, we find that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. If the storm was of God, then Jesus came to undo everything that the enemy was doing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Jesus Christ rebuked the wind because the storm had been caused by the enemy. He has perverted nature and used the atmosphere to bring floods, storms and tornadoes. However, headlines proclaim, God Visited Our City Last Night With a Tornado. No greater lie has ever been told! When lightning struck a certain plant in Arkansas, it blew up, killing several people and injuring many others. The newspapers called it an act of God. No bigger lie has ever been told. Those things are perversions of nature. The Enemy has perverted the things God created for good. Genesis 1.31 says, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Lightning was what killed Job’s cattle. The King James calls it “fire from Heaven.” One translation says “lightning.” In other words, the enemy used the elements of the Earth and atmosphere to destroy Job’s cattle. However, Job said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, which is actually recorded in the Bible. However, Job was not under the anointing when he said it. He was deceived. He thought it was God but you can plainly read in Job, chapter 1, that it was the adversary who had caused Job’s problems. If you believe that God brings these things on you, you cannot use your faith to get rid of them. There is no place in the Bible where it says, “Take the shield of faith and quench all the fiery darts of God!” You would not dare pray for deliverance from something God is using to perfect you. However, when you get the battle line drawn and see that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy and that Jesus came to give us abundant life, then you can use your faith. You will be able to pray accurately. You can come against the evil forces and prevail. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (Ephesians 6.16). #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
When we have financial problems, most of the time it is the enemy’s work. Sometimes it is our own fault. It is not God, trying to teach us something! When we have problems in areas of the physical body, it is an attack of the enemy, because Jesus said for us to pray, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. God’s will is that we walk in health on this Earth and that is the way we should pray. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as they soul prospereth (3 John 2). O Great Spirit whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the World, hear me! I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake. Ye, though I walk through the Sacramento valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou hast anointed my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
When a single story home is thoughtfully designed, you’ll have all the space you need, and a layout that can last you forever! 🙌 When you tour the Riverside Residence 2, you’ll see how much space can fit in 2500 sq. ft – hint: it’s a lot! 😊 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-2/
I Will Pray for You. I Will Suffer for you. Do Not Hurt Me. See What a Big Heart I Have?
Humans in twenty-first century have been cut adrift in a rudderless yacht on an uncharted sea. Abnormal psychological functioning is deviant, but deviant from what? Sometimes people’s behaviours, thoughts, and emotions are different from those that are considered normal in our place and time. We do not expect people to cry themselves to sleep each night, wish themselves dead, or obey voices that no one else hears. In short, behaviour, thoughts, and emotions are deemed abnormal when they violated a society’s ideas about proper functioning. Each society established norms—explicit and implicit rules for proper conduct. Behaviour that violates legal norms is called criminal. Behaviour, thoughts, and emotions that violate norms of psychological functioning are called abnormal. Judgments of abnormality vary from society to society. A society’s norms grow from its particular culture—its history, values, institutions, habits, skills, technology, and arts. A society that values competition and assertiveness may accept aggressive behaviour, whereas one that emphasizes cooperation and gentleness may consider aggressive behaviour unacceptable and even abnormal. A society’s values may also change over time, causing its views of what is psychologically abnormal to change as well. In Western society, for example, a woman’s participation in the business World was widely considered inappropriate and strange one hundred and twenty years ago. Today the same behaviour is valued. Judgements of abnormality depend on specific circumstances as well as on cultural norms. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Many painful human experiences produce intense reactions—largescale catastrophes and disasters, assaults, child abuse, war, terminal illness, chronic pain. Is there an “appropriate” way to react to such things? Should we ever call reactions to them abnormal? Even functioning that is considered unusual does not necessarily qualify as abnormal. According to many clinical theorists, behaviour, ideas, or emotions usually have to cause distress before they can be labeled abnormal. Should we consider that feelings of distress must always be present before a person’s functioning can be considered abnormal? Not necessarily. Some people who function abnormally maintain a beneficial frame of mind. Abnormal behaviour tends to be dysfunctional; that is, it interferes with daily functioning. It so upsets, distracts, or confuses people that they cannot care for themselves properly, participate in ordinary social interactions, or work productively. Some people have to quit their jobs, leave their families, and are prepared to withdraw from the productive lives they once lead. Here again one’s culture plays a role in the definition of abnormality. Our society hold that it is important to carry out daily activities in an effective, self-enhanced manner. The behaviour of some people is considered abnormal and undesirable, whereas others, who continue to perform well in their jobs and enjoy fulfilling relationships, would probably be considered simply unusual. Then again, dysfunction alone does not necessarily indicate psychological abnormality. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Some people fast or in other ways deprive themselves of things they need as a means of protesting social injustice. Far from receiving a clinical label of some kind, they are widely viewed as admirable people—caring, sacrificing, even heroic. Perhaps the ultimate in psychological dysfunctioning is behaviour that becomes dangerous to oneself or others. Individuals whose behaviour is consistently careless, hostile, or confused may be placing themselves or those around them at risk. Although danger is often cited as a feature of abnormal psychological functioning, research suggests that it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Despite popular misconceptions, most people struggling with anxiety, depression, and even bizarre thinking pose no immediate danger to themselves or to anyone else. If the concept of abnormality depends so heavily on social norms and values, it is no wonder that efforts to define psychological abnormality typically raise as many questions as they answer. Ultimately, each society selects general criteria for defining abnormality and then uses those criteria to judge particular cases. Noting society’s role in the process, the whole concept of mental illness may be considered invalid, a myth of sorts. The deviations that society calls abnormal are simply “problems in living,” not signs of something wrong within the person. Societies invent the concept of mental illness so that they can better control or change people whose unusual patterns of functioning upset or threaten the social order. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Even if we assume that psychological abnormality is a valid concept and that it can indeed be defined, we may be unable to apply our definition consistently. If a behaviour—excessive use of alcohol among college students, says—is familiar enough, the society may fail to recognize that it is deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous. Thousands of college students throughout the United States of America are so dependent on alcohol that it interferes with their personal and academic lives, causes them great discomfort, jeopardizes their health, and often endangers them and the people around them. Yet their problem often goes unnoticed, certainly undiagnosed, by college administrators, others students, and health professionals. Alcohol is so much a part of the college subculture that it is easy to overlook drinking behaviour that has become abnormal. Conversely, a society may have trouble distinguishing between an abnormality that requires intervention and an eccentricity, or marked individuality, with which others have no right to interfere. From time to time we see or hear about people who behave in ways we consider strange, such as a man who lives alone with two dozen cats and rarely talks to other people. The behaviour of such people is deviant, and it may well be distressful and dysfunctional, yet many professionals think of it as eccentric rather than abnormal. In short, while we may agree to define psychological abnormalities as patterns of functioning that are deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous, we should be clear that these criteria are often vague and subjective. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When is a pattern of behaviour deviant, distressful, dysfunctional, and dangerous enough to be considered abnormal? The question may be impossible to answer. Few of the current categories of abnormality that we will deal with are as clear-cut as they may seem, and most continue to be debated by clinicians. Furthermore, the term “mental illness” has been out of fashion since the late nineteenth century, the more politically correct term is “dysfunctional.” The term mental illness for a lot of people is scary. Some people fear that if they admit they have some dysfunctional aspect of their behaviour that they will be locked up in a lunatic asylum and that medical history will follow them all their lives and stigmatize them, making it impossible to have gainful employment. However, “It is not just people who cannot find a job, or cannot fit in society that struggle with depression sometimes,” says Jared Padalecki. It is significant that Communist leaders like Lenin despised all schools of spiritual thought, denounced religion, and scored metaphysical reflection. This is now the nominal inheritance of half the World, most particularly the so-called workers’ class. If social justice means that every human, however deprived one’s background, should have a chance to develop oneself and to better one’s standards of living, then it is certainly a good thing. However, if it means the forced regimentation of everyone, the compulsory equalization of everything, the denial of individuality and the destruction of freedom, then it is surely a bad thing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
If we only pause to consider that half the entire human race has fallen under the enforced leadership and tyrannical domination of those who would limit humans to their ego and reality to matter, we may see how urgently necessary is an arrest to this downward trend. The World is in a state of a spiritual crisis. Where the physical body is cherished as the sole reality and made the sole basis for social and political reform, where hate-driven humans advocate physical violence as the sole means of effecting progress, be sure of the presence of evil forces, dangers to society, ignorant opponents of truth, and enemies of the Light. It is very meaningful that the filthy abuse which some tyrants put into their writings against idealists is no longer living psychologist and philosophers in the utter blindness which was left to them. More and more they begin to question the nature of consciousness as well as its relationship to the external World, more and more they investigate borderland experiences like telepathy and hypnotism. On the question of consciousness’ relationship to the brain they are now arguing quite widely, but, for obvious reasons, they remain unable to come to definitive conclusions on which all could agree. They are not satisfied with the completely materialistic answer and yet dare not venture into the purely mentalistic one. Meanwhile they go on debating, and so long as this continues, it is spiritually much healthier than their state of sixty years ago. Problems are being stated and solutions are being discussed. If people with an unenlightened inheritance overshadows it all, that cannot be helped in a totalitarian Communist country. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
At the present stage of history the truth must be left out in such a land, but it cannot be left out forever. Out of all their mental and verbal activity, the people will have to draw a little nearer to it intellectually. What is happening on a deeper plane is outside their knowledge. No materialistic organization of society can prevent the appearance and development of spirituality in the individual, but it can create the conditions which will obstruct the appearance or hinder the development of spirituality. Narcissistic personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as NPD) has to be one of the most interpersonally obnoxious of the personality disorder. People with NPD have an exaggerate sense of self-worth and entitlement, coupled with a nearly insatiable thirst for attention and acclaim. Symptoms include a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupations with fantasies of success and power, a belief that the self is special and should only be associated with other high-status and powerful people, a need for excessive admiration, a voracious sense of entitlement, exploiting others for personal benefit, lack of empathy, envy of others, or a belief that others envy the self, and arrogance. The negative effects of this behaviour on others, as well as the wrongfulness of exploiting others for personal gain, are obscured by the arrogance of the individual. On a psychosocial level, the person with NPD wishes for active love and protection, while simultaneously fearing blame, being ignored, or being controlled by others. The constitution of NPD dramatically interferes with the development and maintenance of intimate interpersonal relationships. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Based on clinical observations, several destructive interpersonal motifs have been noted to be expressed by people with NPD. One of these is a pursuit of metamorphosis—that is, a fantasy that association and intimacy with powerful others will bring transformation and evolution from inferiority and insecurity. In the core of every narcissistic personality there exists, more or less pronounced, experience of insecurity and inferiority. A second motif is selective interpersonal repulsion, or a loathing and systematic persecution of those on whom persons with NPD project their own conflicts. When such a person recognizes some unacceptable aspect of one’s own self in another individual, this individual must be cast off and put down. Finally, the pathological intolerance of criticism is a result of the doubly noxious nature of criticism for a person with NPD. Criticism serves to threaten the person’s sense of grandiosity, and intensify the person’s internal experience of inferiority and insecurity. Consequently, the person will respond to criticism with aggression and rage. It scarcely bears mentioning that those with NPD rarely develop satisfying and close personal relationships. Part of this problem stems from these individuals’ hostility and devaluation of others. This constitutes the so-called “narcissist’s dilemma”: holding other in contempt while simultaneously relying on them for positive regard and affirmation. Symptoms of NPD are negatively associated with receiving social support from others, and positively associated with loneliness and conflict with others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Nevertheless, individuals with NPD may feel that there are a lot of people available who think very highly of them. Among married people, NPD is associated with domestic violence, and interest in extramarital relations. Among the important components of the interpersonal troubles experienced by those with NPD are the negative reactions of others to their conduct. When subjects in two studies viewed a person with NPD presented on DVD, they reacted with rejection and a negative mood. These findings are reminiscent of those in the literature on depression indicating that depressed people irritate others and elicits rejection from them. Although people with NPD are probably rejected for different reasons, the end results are similar to those experienced by depressed persons: loneliness, a lack of social support, and conflictual interactions with others. Rejection from others may cause great aggravation for some persons with NPD, while being of virtually no concern to others. NPD exists on a continuum ranging from an oblivious subtype to a hypervigilant subtype. Whereas a person with the oblivious subtype has no awareness at all of one’s impact on other people, the individual with the hypervigilant subtype is on the lookout for any sign of criticism or put-down from others. The interpersonal rejection that often follows in the wake of interpersonal interactions must surely contribute to substantial aggravation for the person with the hypervigilant NPD. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Perhaps the most scientifically plausible account of the etiology of NPD is based on social learning theory; it places origins of the disorder in excessive and unconditional parental valuation and attention to the point of worship. In such an interpersonal context, the parents are viewed as devoting themselves so fully to caring for their child and making one feel special that they sublimate their own needs to those of the child. Consequently, the child fails to develop an awareness or appreciation for the needs of other people. Years of living in such an environment also result in an unjustified sense of self-worth that must constantly be reinforced and polished in the face of any potential failure. This social learning phenomenon is identified by a combination of selfless, noncontingent love and adoration from the family; parental deference to the child; and an ever-present threat of al fall from grace in the pathogenesis of NPD. This account has considerable face validity for explaining the sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy that characterize this disorder. Although a social learning account of NPD enjoys some popularity and acceptance, psychodynamic accounts of the disorder are especially prevalent, and also point to early interpersonal experiences in its etiology. Within this literature there exists something of a controversy. Accordingly, self-psychological perspective, NPD is a manifestation of arrested development. An egocentric sense of grandiosity is seen as a normal part of early development. At this point in time, the child expects total nurturance and caring from parents, and develops selfobjects, which are images of other people as they relate to the self. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Eventually, the infant begins to feel vulnerable upon becoming aware of the parents’ shortcomings. The child then defensively idealizes the parents and returns to a sense of self-grandiosity. These are sources of strength for the child when dealing with an uncertain World. Normally, this narcissism gives way to empathy and more realistic appraisals of the self and others. However, when maternal empathy and confirmation are defective, the grandiose self perseveres as a defense against the vulnerabilities inherent in life. NPD may also be a compensation for early emotional deprivation and unempathic mothering. This causes the child to feel unloved, resulting in rage being projected onto one’s parents. As a defense, the child develops a grandiose self by combining aspects of the self that are admired by the parents, a fantasized version of the self, and an idealized version of the parents. There is also a focus on simultaneous feelings of inferiority and grandiosity in NPD. There may additionally be some oral rage, a powerful aggression originally directed at caregivers who did not provide unconditional love and approval, as a casual agent in NPD. One may need to focus more on pathological psychosocial development in the etiology of NPD, and conclude arrested development to fully understand the condition. NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) involves a grandiose sense of self, interpersonal arrogance and exploitation, a desire for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. The interactions of a person with NPD are marked by the quest for metamorphosis (rising above inferiority via association with powerful others), selective interpersonal repulsion, and pathological reactions to even the slightest criticism. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Obviously these traits and qualities render intimate interpersonal relationships nearly impossible. People with NPD are trapped between a need for other people to give them attention and admiration, and contempt for others. Their interpersonal lives are marked by conflict, loneliness, and rejection from others. A social learning hypothesis holds that this personality disorder is the result of excessive parental adoration and attention. Psychodynamic accounts of NPD also stress early parent-child relations, focusing on arrested or pathological development of the self image in relation to others. If one is serious about being well, if one really wants to be made physically and emotionally whole one must get up and get moving with one’s life. Do not lay around feeling sorry for one’s self. Do not make excuses; do not blame other people or circumstances that disappointed one. Instead, start forgiving the people who hurt one. Trust God, get up, and step into the great future He has for you. Today can be a turning point in your life, a season of new beginnings. Refuse to in a state of victimhood. Thing happen to us and we may never know why. However, do not use that as an excuse to sulk and be full of doom and gloom. Just because we do not know the answers does not mean that they do not exist. One has simply not discovered them yet. Trust God to workout the things one does not understand. God has your best interests at heart. That is faith, and that is the attitude that God honours. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If you want to live your best life and become a success, you have to work hard and have faith in God. In God’s salutary presence no indecent thought, no unhealthy distraction, shall ever rear its ugly head. Why? Because one is about to welcome into one’s heart and hearth, however humble it may be, not an Angel, but the Lord of Angels. What a difference a distance makes! There is a World of distance between the Ark of the Covenant and its holy contents; between God’s unstainable Body and its unspeakable Virtue; between a sacrifice required by the Old Law and the Sacrifice of sacrifices required by the New Law; that is to say, the one prefigures the other, and the new bread that is host to God’s body completes the sacrifice. Every free action has two causes that come together to produce it. The one is moral, namely the will that determines the act; the other is physical, namely the power that executes it. When I walk toward an object, I must first want to go there. Second, my feet must take me there. A paralyzed mand who want to walk or an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain where they are. The body politic has the same moving causes. The same distinction can be made between the force and the will; the one under the name legislative power and the other under the name executive power. Nothing is done and ought to be done without their concurrence. We have seen that legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary, it is easy to see, by the principles established above, that executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Therefore the public force must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in humans. This is the reason for having a government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the minister. What then is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political. The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, governors, and the entire body bears the name prince. Therefore those who claim that the act by which a people submit itself to leaders is not a contract are quite correct. It is absolutely nothing but a commission, an employment in which the leaders, as simple officials of the sovereign exercise in its own name the power with which it has entrusted them. The sovereign can limit, modify, or appropriate this power as it pleases, since the alienation of such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the association. Therefore, I call government or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call prince or magistrate the human or the body charged with that administration. The willing seduction of the consumer into production has staggering implications. To understand why, it helps to remember that the market is premised on precisely the split between producer and consumer that is now being blurred. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
An elaborate market was not necessary when most people consumed what they themselves produced. It only became necessary when the task of consumption was separated from that of production. Conventional writers define the market narrowly as a capitalist, money-based phenomenon. Yet the market is merely another word for an exchange network, and there have been (and still are) many different kinds of exchange networks. In the West the most familiar to us is the profit-based, capitalist market. However, there are also socialist markets—exchange networks through which the goods or services produced by Ivan Ivanovich in Smolensk are traded for goods or services turned out by Johann Schmidt in East Berlin. There are markets based on money—but also markets based on barter. The market is neither capitalist nor socialist. It is a direct, inescapable consequence of the divorce of producer from consumer. Whenever this divorce occurs the market arises. And wherever the gap between consumer and producer narrows, the entire function, role, and power of the market is brought into question. The rise of presuming today, therefore, begins to change the role of the market in our lives. It is too early to know where this subtle but significant thrust is taking us. Certainly the market is not going to go away. We are not going to go back to premarket economies. What I have called Sector B—the exchange sector—is not going to shrivel up and vanish. We will, for a long time to come, continue to be heavily dependent upon the market. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Nevertheless, the rise of presuming points strongly toward a fundamental change in the relationships between Sector A and Sector B—a set of relationships that Second Wave economist have until now virtually ignored. For presuming involves the “de-marketization” of at least certain activities and therefore a sharply altered role for the market in society. It suggests an economy of the future unlike any we have known—an economy that is no longer lopsidedly weighted in favour of either Sector A or Sector B. It points to the emergence of an economy that will resemble the First Wave nor Second Wave economics, but will, instead, fuse the characteristics of both into a new historic synthesis. The rise of the prosumer, powered by the soaring cost of many paid services, by the break down of Second Wave service bureaucracies, by the availability of Third Wave technologies, by the problems of structural unemployment, and by the many other converging factors, lead to a work-styles and life arrangements. If we permit ourselves to speculate, bearing in mind some of the shifts described earlier—such as the move toward de-synchronization and part-time paid work, the possible emergence of the electronic cottage, or the changed structure of family life—we can begin to discern some of these lifestyle changes. Thus we are moving toward a future economy in which very large numbers never hold full-time paid jobs, or in which “full-time” is redefined, as it has been in recent years, to mean a shorter and shorter workweek or work year. (In Sweden, where a law guaranteed all workers five weeks of paid vacation regardless of age or length of service, a normal work year was considered to be 1840 hours. In fact, absenteeism has run so high that a more realistic average per worker is 1600 hours per year.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Large numbers of workers already do paid work for what averages out to only three of four says a week, or they take six months or a year off to pursue educational or recreational goals. This pattern may well grow stronger as two-paycheck households multiply. More people in the paid labour market-higher “labour participation rates,” as the economist put it—may very well go with reduced hours per worker. This casts the whole question of leisure into a new light. Once we recognize that much of our so-called leisure time is, in fact, spent producing goods and services for our own use—prosuming—then the old distinction between work and leisure falls apart. The question is not work versus leisure, but paid work for Sector B versus unpaid, self-directed, and self-monitored work for Sector A. In the Third Wave context new lifestyles based half on production exchange, half on production for use, become practical. Such lifestyles were, in fact, common in the early days of the industrial revolution among farm populations who were slowly being absorbed into the urban proletariat. For a long transitional period millions of people worked part-time in factories and part-time on the land, growing their own food, buying some of their necessities, making the rest. This pattern—but with twenty-first century technology for goods and food production, as well as immensely enhanced self-help methods for the production of many services. Instead of a dress pattern, for example, tomorrow’s prosumer might well buy a computer program the powers a “smart” electronic sewing machine. Even the clumsiest househusband, with such a computer program, could make his own custom-fitted shirts. Mechanically inclined tinkers could do more than tune up their autos. They could actually half-build them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
It is always possible for the customer to program one’s own specifications into the auto manufacturing process via computer and telephone and have the car delivered to one’s house without even going to the dealership. One can also easily picture a generation brought up on part-time paid work as the norm, eager to use their own hands, equipped with many inexpensive mini-technologies in the home, forming a sizeable segment of the population. This is already happening in China. They are replicating and creating electronics and selling them to Americans for a much more affordable price. Some of these machines are made for China so they instructions are in Chinses are well as the settings on the machine, but when you are getting them at a discounted price, it is worth your time to do the research and figure out what the machine is saying. Half in the marker, half out, working intermittently rather than all year round, taking a year off now and then, they might well earn less—but compensate by supplying their own labour for many tasks that now cost money, thus mitigating the effects of inflation. American’s Mormons offer another clue to possible future lifestyles. Many Mormon stakes—a stake corresponds to, say, a Catholic diocese—own and operate their own farms. Members of the sake, including urban members, spend some of their free time as volunteer farmers growing food. Most of the produce is not sold but stored for emergency use or distributed to Mormons in need. There are central canning plants, bottling facilities, and grain elevators. Some Mormons grow their own food and take it to the cannery. Others actually buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, then take them to the local cannery. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Says a Salt Lake City Mormon, “My mother will buy tomatoes and can them. Her relief ‘society,’ the women’s auxiliary society, will have a day and they all go and can tomatoes for their own use.” Similarly, many Mormons not only contribute money to their church but actually perform volunteer labour—construction work, for example. None of this is to suggest that we are all going to become members of the Mormon church, or that it will be possible in the future to re-crate on a wide scale the social and community bonds one finds in this highly participatory yet theologically autocratic group. However, the principle of production for self-use, either by individuals or by organized groups, is likely to spread farther. Given home computers, given seeds genetically designed for urban or even apartment agriculture, even cheap home tools for working plastic, given new materials, adhesives, and membranes, and given free technical advice available over the Internet, mobile phones, telephone lines, with instructions flickering on the TV or computer screen, it has become possible to create lifestyles that are more rounded and varied, less monotonous, more creatively satisfying, and less market-intensive than those that typified Second Wave civilization. It is still too early to know how far this shift of activity from exchange in Sector B to presumption in Sector A will go, how the balance between these sectors will vary from country to country, and which particular lifestyles will actually emerge from it. What is certain, however, is that any significant change in the balance between production for use and production for exchange will set off depth charges under our economic system and our values as well. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Whoever was the first to make the analogy between caterpillars and butterflies and death and resurrection—old life and new life—must have had a “butterfly experience.” Knots being untied; tight jar libs being loosened—it is freedom. It is freeing. It is the slow motion experience of leaping through a meadow with arms and legs in tune with rhythm of life. However, somehow the butterfly says it best, become of the cocoon experience. People seem to have more than one go-round with the cocoon. How did it start for me this time? Why did it start? I was happy as a caterpillar. Just a bit confined, that is all. I viewed myself, and others did, as fuzzy-wuzzy, problem free, happily married, financially secure, basking in the love of God…but I was content. I did not know myself. Actually, I did not even know that I did not know myself. And certainly did not own my feelings. I had to move away from all those who unknowingly kept me as a pet caterpillar to learn the true situation. And what is why I ended up here in the New World. Things have happened fast, which I like. However, becoming a new nation has been a difficult, thrilling, labourious, joyous, arduous, and climatic year. There have been so many significant encounters. Every century and generation I have learned so much. However, several things were of major importance. Almost a passing comment by Dr. James McCune Smith tuned a trickle into a flood last fall when he said, “American, I sensed a lot of tension in you the first time we met.” I could hardly believe it. Everybody knew I was the land of opportunity, where one could achieve anything, they put their mind to, no matter who they are. I was not tense…how could he say that? #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I was building colonies, hosting thanksgiving, emancipating human being with religious freedom and human rights, establishing child labour laws, building free centers of public education, creating factories that raised the standard of living, producing crops, fostering livestock, and giving constant attention to the beings of my land by providing them with some of the best weather in the World. Tense…tense! How true! I had to face it. And so began a whole chain of discoveries. I thought I was relaxed and learned myself I was tense. I thought I was well-adjusted and learned that I did not even know myself. I thought I was loving and learned that I was often indifferent. I thought I was social and learned that I was withdraw. On an optimistic note, I thought I was dumb and learned I was intelligent. At an earlier point in my Christian life, it would have seemed unspiritual to consider these things. However, somewhere bear the beginning of this century, I experience a glorious assurance that God was in fact the One who led me to this point—and He was the one leading me through! For some reason, it seems that it is almost over. Or maybe it is the beginning of a new era building on what I have learned. I do know that I am more excited about life. I love my land and its inhabitants more than ever before. And I am more open to forming friendships with new pilgrims. Most of all, I feel more comfortable being myself. In these centuries of growth I have come in touch with my own worth and potential. Simply becoming aware was a great part of the answer. Perhaps that is because I wanted the change. I really do want to be a transparent nation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
For now all I can say is that something deep is happening within me—and I love what is happening. Rather than focusing on why certain things happen to me or to those I love, I choose to focus on You, Father, who You are, and what You have promised to do in my life as I trust You. I want to be better; I want to be healed from anything that would keep me locked in the past. Today, I will step into that great future You have for me. I pelage my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. To all that is brief and fragile, superficial, unstable, to all that lacks foundation argument or principles; to all that is light, fleeting, changing, finite to smoke spirals, wand roses, to sea foam, and mists of oblivion…to all that is light in weight for itinerants on this transient Earth, somber, raving, with transitory words, and premium cranberry juice, I toast. May God be mindful of the souls of all our brothers, departed members of the house of America who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Holy Name and the honour of America. Please grant that their heroism and self-sacrificing devotion find response in our hearts and the purity of their souls be reflected in our lives. Many their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life, an everlasting blessing among us. Amen. O merciful God who dwellest on high and art full of compassion, please grant perfect rest beneath the shelter of Thy divine presence among the holy and pure who shine as the brightness of the firmament, to our dear departed who have gone to their eternal home. May their souls be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Grant that their memories ever inspire us to noble and consecrated living. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s
Now Selling!
No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms.
Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more! Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included!
Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town.
A statement chandelier pulls the whole room together! ✨ We’re also loving the textured wall; details like these set your home apart, and let you love every minute in it. 💃https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Life is Not Just a Rose Garden—It Can be a Crown of Thorns as Well!
Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It is the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with. A healthy mental state will help one leverage one’s everyday power to achieve the success one seeks and live a purposeful life. A personality disorder is an enduring and stable pattern of behaviour and cognition that deviates from normative standards and expectations in one’s culture. This pattern of behaviour and experience has its onset during adolescence or early adulthood, and leads to tangible distress and impairment. Most people who exhibit personality disorders by definition have interpersonal problems. The criteria for a personality disorder includes: manifestation of stable and enduring problematic behaviours and experiences in at least two of the following domains: cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, and impulse control. The enduring pattern must be pervasive and inflexible across a variety of social situations, and it must lead to impairment or distress in social or occupational areas of functioning. The concept of functional inflexibility implies that the individua relates to others, expressed feelings, and resolves conflicts in a rigid fashion, with tactics that are often ill suited for the situation at hand. However, estimates of the prevalence of personality disorders in the general population are sometimes scarce as it is still considered a new science. It is estimated that the prevalence of historical personality disorder in the general populations is at 2.2 percent. In a college student population, the prevalence of histrionic personality disorder may be as high as 6 percent. Considering the fact that there are over a dozen personality disorders, it is clear that personality disorders collectively are common in the general population, with lifetime prevalence estimates on the order of 10-13 percent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Like many other psychological problems, most personality disorders are associated with problematic interpersonal relationships, virtually by definition. Some of the most striking evidence of interpersonal disruption appears in the domain of family-of-origin experiences. Themes of parental abuse, insecure attachment, excessive parental attention, parental overinvolvement, and family chaos are rampant in the literature on personality disorders. Some have theorized that these early interpersonal experiences play a significant role in the pathogenesis of these disorders. Existing research indicates that when these persons do marry or form stable romantic relationships, their relationships are characterized by distress and dissatisfaction. Interpersonal problems are not just confined to the various family relationships, but also extended into the domain of general personal relationships. Many people with personality disorders have stormy and unstable personal relationship. They often elicit interpersonal rejection, and experience conflict with others and loneliness. In the area of interpersonal communication, there is a tendency for people with certain types of personality disorders to use communication with others for the function of seeking attention. A powerfully complicating factor in the personality disorder is their high comorbidity with other psychosocial problems. Research studies have revealed alarmingly high rates of such problems as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and somatoform disorders among people with personality disorders. Currently, 10 different personality disorders (plus the residual category of personality disorders not otherwise specified) are formally recognized. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
One useful way to organize, describe, and map the personality disorders is with an interpersonal circumplex, using the dimensions of dominant-submissive and hostile-nurturant. For example, those with dependent personality disorder are situated in the dominant and hostile quadrant. The majority of the personality disorders fall into the hostile half of the circumplex. Although personality disorders have interpersonal implications and ramification, the disorders projected toward the outer edge of the circumplex, such as dependent, narcissistic, and histrionic, have more evident interpersonal implications. It may be unwise to think about something like histrionic personality disorder as a disease entity, in the same way that one thinks about Parkinson’s disease or bulimia nervosa. Rather a personality disorder may be more like high blood pressure—an exaggerated version of a normal phenomenon, with little more than an arbitrary “cutoff point” at which normal becomes viewed as pathological. Borderline personality disorder (hereafter abbreviated as BPD) is the most frequently diagnosed of the personality disorder. Approximately 15-25 percent of psychiatric inpatients and outpatients carry this diagnosis. Its principal features involve instability of interpersonal relationships, affect, and self-image. People with BPD exhibit intense and variable mood, ranging from irritability to euphoria to impulsive anger and even self-destructive behaviour. This moodiness is combined with more generally aberrant and aloof behaviour, a dissociated self-image, frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, impulsivity, suicidal behaviour and threats, feelings of emptiness, problems with anger control, and occasional paranoid ideation. There is a morbid fear of abandonment and a wish for protective nurturance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The characteristic desire of a person with BPD to fuse with another person for emotional support is a sign of ego weakness and identity disturbance. It is not surprising that BPD is highly comorbid with depression. It is tautological to assert that this disorder has negative interpersonal implications and consequences. Many borderline symptoms are seen as arising primarily within the context of a relationship, where the involvement of another person is the arena in which an essential component of the patient’s psychopathology emerges. Indeed, research on BPD indicates a pervasive pattern of interpersonal problems in both adulthood and childhood. It should be obvious to even the casual observer that people with BPD have a long history of interpersonal problems both professionally and socially, and close relationships that may best be characterized as stormy. Symptoms of BPD are absolutely associated with social conflict and feelings of loneliness. Symptoms of the disorder are also associated with endorsing a ludus (game-playing) and mania (manic, possessive) love style. Accordingly, persons with BPD are less likely to find themselves in loving relationships. Individuals with BPD experience a great deal of interpersonal problems and distress. These individuals have excessive interpersonal dependency needs, which make them particularly vulnerable to interpersonal losses. On the other hand, they employ manipulative tactics that often result in agitation and rejection from others. Thus person with BPD tend to sabotage the very relationships that they so badly need. This phenomenon may be a consequence of their problems with distance regulations. According to this hypothesis, whenever patients with BPD move close to or away from other people, they receive negative feedback. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Consequently, these patients oscillate between attachment and avoidance. Sadly, people with BPD rarely learn from their interpersonal experiences and often recreate their problems as they move from one relationship to another. A major component in the interpersonal distress produced and experienced by persons with BPD is emotion dysregulation. As noted above, anxiety about abandonment, excessive anger, and a reactive mood are all problems associated with this disorder. When compared to people with bipolar disorder and unipolar depression, those with BPD indicated substantially more hostility in their past and resent relationships—in terms of both sending and receiving hostility. In a unique study of facial expression recognition, people with BPD performed as well as healthy controls and controls with a history of sexual abuse, with the exception of a tendency to overidentify fearful expressions. This suggests that BPD is associated with a hypersensitivity or readiness to identify fear in others, which could increase these individuals’ own experience of fear in interpersonal context. Like those with any of several other mental health problems, people with BPD elicit interpersonal rejection from others. To give an idea of how potent this rejection effect is, it was compared to interpersonal reactions to BPD and narcissistic personality disorder—an intensely annoying syndrome. Other people felt that the subjects with BPD were more unstable of the two groups. It was concluded that the interpersonal consequences of BPD are even more negative than those associated with narcissistic personality disorder. Given the preponderance of interpersonal conflict, emotional lability, and oscillation between attachment and avoidance, it is little wonder that those with BPD create such negative interpersonal impressions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Experiences in the family of origin have been a focal point in the interpersonal research of BPD. Poor maternal and paternal caring, to the point of neglect, in the family or origin are common themes among those with BPD. This lack of parental caring is coupled with a greater overprotectiveness, similar to that reported by other psychiatric groups. Another family-of-origin phenomenon is the perception by the patients with BPD that their mothers were autonomous and hostile toward them. This perceived hostility also spills over to perceptions of current relationships with, for example, other patients and hospital staff A similar theme is evident. Patients with BPD also rated their fathers and mothers as attacking and rejecting. However, these patients also indicated that they too were attacking and rejecting toward their parents. This illustrates how the antecedent to conflictual adult personal relationships clearly have their origins in adolescent, if not preadolescent relationships. Themes of separation and loss in the family or origin are common in BPD. Predisposition to BPD is especially pronounced when this loss is due to the separation or divorce rather than to death of a parent. Of course, parental conflict would also be exaggerated in such cases, and itself may contribute to the development of symptoms. In any event, such early losses predispose a child to insecure attachment, and explain the clinging attachment and fear of abandonment that are so evident in adults with BPD. Evidence of sexual abuse in the history of many individuals with BPD indicates noxious boundary violations in the family or origin. A history of incest was evident in 19 percent and 35 percent of the cases in two samples of patients with BPD. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, the broader category of “childhood sexual abuse” is estimated to have occurred in about 70 percent of all patients with BPD. The impact of such traumatic interpersonal behaviour in a more general context appears to play some role in the disorder. Where there is sexual abuse in the family context, significant family dysfunction almost surely coexists with the behaviour. However, some wonder whether it is the abuse per se that contributes to the disorder or the malevolent family environment that tolerates and perhaps even encourages such conduct. Findings such as these have led to the hypothesis that those with BPD tend to internalize abandoning, neglectful, and abusive childhood relationships in such a way as to promote self-abandonment and attack in adulthood. The parents of people with BPD appear to have psychosocial disturbances of their own that interfere with effective parenting. It is often the case that these problems are evident in both parents—a phenomenon characterized as “biparental failure.” In a study of 30 women with BPD and their 60 parents, both patents had an Axis I or Axis II diagnosis in 73 percent of the families. Even 60 percent of their grandparents had psychiatric disorders, particularly substance use or mood disorders. A similar analysis of first-degree relatives of patients with BPD revealed that 18 percent of these relatives had BPD, 10 percent had antisocial personality disorder, 25 percent had a mood disorder, and about 25 percent had a substance use disorder. These staggering rates of parental psychopathology are consistent with the hypothesis that links disturbed and ineffective parenting to the development of BPD. At the same time, these findings could be interpreted as support for a genetic component in the parental transmission of the disorder. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The exact and relative contributions from genes and family environment remain to be established by future research. For the time being, it is apparent that mental health is far more likely to be impaired among parents of individuals with BPD than among parents in the general population. Undoubtedly, this at least has the potential to interfere with effective parenting and care. There are four family-of-origin processes that lead to the development of BPD. The first is family chaos, involving fights, affairs, intoxication, trouble with the law, and suicide attempts. This family dynamic creates a dramatic, soap-opera quality in the family or origin. Second, traumatic abandonment is common in these families. Children who later develop BPD are often left alone without adequate care and supervision, during which sexual abuse by others may be perpetrated. The children may interpret this abandonment as resulting from their bad behaviour. Third, the families of those who develop BPD tend to shun autonomy and promote dependency. These children are socialized to believe that they are flawed, and that their families, miserable as they may be, are their only salvation. Finally, these families only offer nurturance in response to misery. These families reinforce displays of helplessness and agony by offering nurturant care in response to such displays, and at no other time. Collectively, these family-of-origin processes are thought to promote the identity disturbance, emotional liability, fear of abandonment, and suicidal gestures that are typical of BPD. The interpersonal backgrounds of people with BPD are particularly remarkable. Themselves of loneliness, conflict, and fear of abandonment are prevalent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
As it is for people with depression, interpersonal rejection is a notable problem for those with BPD. This may be the result of the tendency in BPD to oscillate between clinging attachment and avoidance—a pattern that is repulsive to even the most tolerant friend or family member. Experiences in the family or origin are commonly devoid of stability and nurturance. Rather, one finds a lack of care, frequent abuse, rejection, and psychiatric symptoms emanating from the parents of those who later develop BPD. It is when parental overinvolvement is combined with neglect and abuse that symptoms of BPD are especially likely to appear. This toxic combination of parenting behaviours set the stage for the later interpersonal attachment-avoidance conflict that characterizes BPD (borderline personality disorder). “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” reports Hebrews 12.1. Many people wonder why they are not happy. Often, it is because they are dragging around all sorts of baggage from the past. Someone offended them last week, so they have packed that pain in their bag. Someone’s car looks better than theirs, so they are offended and have packed that pain in their bag. Someone has a new hair style and they think it looks better than theirs, so they pack that offense in their bag. A month ago they lost their temper, said some things they should not have, and they have that stuffed in their bag, too. Ten years ago, their boyfriend cheated on them, and they just do not understand why. They have got all that anger, jealousy, and doubt stashed in still another bag. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Growing up, they were not treated right. They have got that suitcase full of junk, too. They have been carrying these heavy bags for years; they are loaded down by their collection of burdens, and then they wonder why they cannot live a rich, full life! Worse yet, they drag their baggage with them everywhere they go. Not only do they hold on to their baggage, but they like to unpack it every once in a while, just to make sure it is all still there. They take some things out and look at them, and relive all that hurt and pain. Then they pack it up again and drag and drop it someplace else! Bethany (not her real name) went through a failed relationship in her marriage many years ago, and she lost her house and car. She prayed that God would bring somebody new into her life. Sure enough, she met a fine gentleman, a very godly, successful man, and she was excited about their friendship. However, she made the mistake of dragging her borderline personality disorder (baggage) into that new relationship. When they were together, she talked constantly about all she had been through, how she was emotionally drained, and how mistreated she had been. That gentlemen told me later that Bethany was so focused on her past, so caught up in what she had been through, he just could not deal with it anymore. He finally stopped calling her, and just moved on. Unfortunately, something like that happens all too often. If you hold on to the hurts and pains of the past, they will poison you wherever you go. You may think that other people are the problem, but I want to encourage you to examine your own heart. Look on the inside, because you may very well find out that you are the problem. Maybe you have been a baggage dragger. And you cannot drag around baggage from the past and expect to have good, healthy relationships. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
God did not create us to carry around all the baggage from the past. “Exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God’s grace (His unmerited favour and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it,” reports Hebrews 12.15. One does not have to live depressed and discouraged because of what one has gone through. Maybe one has been holding on to painful memories or attitudes that has been keeping one bitter, discouraged, emotionally worn out, physically run down, depleted of energy and enthusiasm, and living in self-pity. Sadly, one’s situation will not change until you put your foot down and make a decision to do or say something about it. “Strive to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord,” reports Hebrews 12.14. If you develop that kind of attitude, God will give you a new beginning. You will see things improve. If someone hurt you, give that to God and He will pay you back, He will make it up to you. Quit dwelling on your disappointments. Quit mourning over something that is over and done. DO not make the mistake of dragging the pains of yesterday over into today. Stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. If you continue to wallow in despair, not only will you stay stuck in the past, but you will sink deeper and deeper. God will invite the likes of you—that is to say, the pocketless and the pauperous—to the Communion of His Most Holy Body. However, who are we that we should presume to approach God? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Look, the Heaven of heavens cannot contain God—if I may echo the Author of the First Book of Kings (8.27)—and yet God says to me, a leaky sieve, what He said to the others in His lifetime on Earth. “Come, all those of you who break your backs and bust your butts, and I will pour you a draft.” Is that not how the great Matthew put it. We than cannot find a spot of good in ourselves to save our souls, how are we to introduce ourselves when we first meet Jesus Christ face to face, we whose malign conduct we have continually thrown in Jesus Christ’s benign face? Surrounded by such Heavenly heavyweights—Angels and Archangels, holy people from the Old and New Testaments—Jesus still have the nerve to say, “Come to Me, one and all?” That is outrageous! No one else would make such an invitation. Who would believe it? Nobody would give such a command. Who would pay any attention? However, let us not get stalled on comings and goings. “Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood. And have you [completely] forgotten the divine word of appeal and encouragement in which you are reasoned with and addressed as sons? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“My son, do not think lightly or scorn to submit to the correction and discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage and give up and faint when you are reporved or corrected by Him; for the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes. You must submit to and endure [correction] for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there who one’s father does not [thus] train and correct and discipline? Now if you are exempt from correction and left without discipline in which all [of God’s children] share, then you are illegitimate offspring and not true sons,” reports Hebrews 12.2-8. These points must be well taken from our Friend and Founder of all Law, Giver of All life. We, lawless creatures that we are, have the gall to receive God without having to break a sweat? God is bigger than the past. He is bigger than all one’s disappointments and problems. Some may have made a lot of mistakes, but God can turn those things all around. People may have hurt you and done you wrong, but if you will leave it up to God, He will pay your back. God will make your wrongs right. Get rid of that baggage and start focusing on your possibilities. Let hope fill your heart. Your future can start today. No matter what you have been through, no matter how difficult it was, God is saying there are great days ahead for you. He still has good things in store. Knowing God’s will is a key to answered prayer. So often people spend a lot of time trying to figure out if it is God’s will for them to be healed or if it is God’s will for them to be prosperous. Jesus said, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come. They will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven,” reports Matthew 6.9-10. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Let us ask ourselves what is it like in Heaven: Is there any poverty in Heaven? No. Is there any disease in Heaven? No. Jesus told His disciples to pray that the will of God be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Then He must be saying to pray that there be no disease on this Earth and that there by no poverty here. Now if Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray this way, do you not know that it is the will of God? His will is that it be on this Earth as it is in Heaven. When the enemy is put in the bottomless pit and shut up for a thousand years, there will be no sickness or disease. Now that ought to tell us where it comes from. Sometimes people get the idea that God is testing and perfecting us with sickness and disease. They say that the trail of your faith perfect it. However, that is not what the Word says. James says that the trying of your faith works patience. (James 1.3.) How many of us have not had any trials and tests in life? If it were true that God uses trials and tests to perfect our faith, then everyone of us would be perfect. The trails of life are a design of the adversary to destroy you, not to perfect you. The trying of your faith works patience. Patience is a spiritual force that comes into play to undergird your faith and to hold it up like a pier under a long span of a bridge. If the bride did not have piers to support it, it would collapse. That is what happens to many people’s faith. It causes you to be consistent through the trial and test that the enemy brings against you. So often we have thought it was God sending us the trails and tests. No, thank God, it is not my Father sending them—it is the enemy. Jesus said, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” reports John 10.10. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
Is there going to be any sickness and disease in Heave? No Is there going to be any poverty there? No. There is abundance in that place. It is a healthy place. Do you know any poverty-stricken folk on Earth who have their driveway paved with gold? The streets of that city are not only paved with gold, they are pure gold. The whole street is gold! God’s will is that this Earth be conformed to the spirit World that spawned it. This Universe is a creation of God and it was designed to be prosperous. However, the adversary entered into it and fouled it up by distorting God’s creation and His Word. In the process of actualizing, one expressed oneself less on the character and manipulative levels and moves more into the actualizing expression of each polarity. For instance, one the strength polarity, one may express oneself once in awhile in rigid manner. Occasionally, one may employ manipulative tactics of striving and achieving. However, mostly one learns to express strength in actualizing manner, by being powerful, strong, capable, or adequate as it is appropriate. If one were actualized, one would express only the actualizing level. However, we are in a process and this is why we need to be aware that our manipulative tendencies can by only gradually neutralized. The best model for understanding the actualizing life is Jesus Himself, Jesus possessed a quality of being that awed people wherever He went. In His encounters with others, He would leave healing, change, and renewal. He lived form His core and was able to express the intensity of emotion required for every situation. He could be living enough to restore and free a woman caught in the act of adultery when her accusers wanted to stone her to death. #RadolphHarris 15 of 20
Jesus could be weak enough to surrender to being put to death on a cross and buried in another man’s tomb. He could be strong enough to rise from the grave a victor over death itself. Knowing that God participates with one in the quest for authenticity and meaningful involvement in the World brings courage to trust the subtle promptings of one’s inner feelings or to be open to the wisdom of one’s gut reactions. The actualizing Christian values the still, quiet voice within that often reflects the gentle guidance of the Holy Spirit in the core of one’s personality. Inputs from God and other flow readily through the permeable bounty of the self and on into the core. We can describe the process as dynamic and continuous. Persons who live this way are being maximally sensitive to themselves and others. They function transparently: what originates deep within is what is expressed honestly to others. They are also moved emotionally by the feelings that other people share. Thus we could say these persons are congruent and empathetic. An important aspect of growth is having the courage to accept out losses up to now. A woman once shared in a counseling session with Jensen how tragic she though it was that certain insights had come so late in life. He reassured her that it was a blessing that the insights had come at all. Now the insight was to take the insight and build on them. The fact is that life is not just a rose garden—it can be a crown of thorns are well. So we must learn to accept our looses and defeats and get on with the adventure of living. In giving up our radical defenses and bags of tricks, we are reborn. We become like babes, loveable to behold. We experience the freshness, purity, and genuineness that are truly Christlike. However, we do not become naïve and simplistic. Rather, we grow to be as Jesus said, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” reports Matthew 10.16. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
As we gibe in to spontaneous expression from our core along the primary polarities, integration gradually takes place and inner harmony is experienced. This process takes time, just as building up a pattern of repressing feelings took time. The actualizing response must be made again and again before it becomes an automatic expression of our core being. Also, the transformation from manipulating into actualizing involves a fundamental change of attitude toward self and others. Notice people who are healed and holistic have expressions of the self, rather than with the ulterior motives of impressing others or repressing one’s feeling. One chooses to approach and encounter others—even when the going gets rough—rather than reproach or avoid them. Further, the people look inward. The Holy Spirit flow into the depths of the Christian just as it did for Christ. This is important to know, because it assures us that our whole being—physical, emotional, and psychological—is the ground out of which emerges the unfolding will of God in our lives, as it did in Jesus’ life. All the essential elements for an actualizing lifestyle are already in the personality. Nothing needs to be added or taken away. We simply work with God’s help, to restore the inner balance so that we can live with more integrity. With awareness, patience, and gentle discipline, the patterns of characters styles become stages of growth—like the bud that eventually gives way to the blossoming of the flower. Gentleness is an important concept here. If someone impatiently tried to tear the covering of the bud away, the flower inside would be destroyed. In the same way, we need to be respectful of slow and gradual transformation of the constricted personality into the fully alive and expressive one. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
With courage the actualizing Christian recognizes within oneself the possibility for deterioration into psychosis, or growth into Spirit-led actualization. It is this potentiality for psychosis or actualizing that makes each day a creative act of personal surrender to the miracle of God’s abiding grace. The transformation from neurosis to personality health is indeed a wonderful process. The person rises on the force of hope out of the depths of one’s despair. One’s cowardice is replaced by courage. The rigid bonds of one’s selfishness are broken down by a taste of gratification of unselfishness. Joy wells up and streams over one’s pain. And love comes into the human’s life to vanquish one’s loneliness. One has at last found oneself—and found one’s fellow humans and one’s place in the Universe. Such is the transformation from neurosis to personality health. And such is what it means, likewise, to experience religion. The Christian Bible is clear that the kingdom of God need not begin only when one goes to Heaven. Rather, the kingdom of God has already burst into time and space and history. The more we live from our cores, the more we experience the gracious powers of the kingdom of God—here and now. So the actualizing Christian has hope not only for a blessed eternity but also for substantial healing, meaning, and fulfillment in this life. Many Christians are not sufficiently aware of this exciting prospect. An example is a marine sergeant who was recently talking to Jared. He confided sincerely that he was afraid to make a deep commitment to Christ because he felt he could not handle the new obligation to straighten out his life and give up some bad habits he enjoyed. “If I surrender to God, He will judge me and send me to some remote corner of the Earth,” he said. Jared suggested that the whole meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ was that God loves each one of us perfectly. So why would a loving God want to make Crowley miserable? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
God sent Jesus into the World to liberate people, not to condemn and frustrate them. Crowley had never seen that side of it, but had rather assumed that God was the kind of gruff and stern Being with whom one ought not to get too intimate—a punitive God. However, this is simply not true. God is for us, not against us! Given the balance of desire to be all that we are called by God to be, courage to be ourselves here and now, and openness to grow day by day, we cannot help making the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. For proof that the glimpse is a genuine fact and not a hallucinatory one, not only ought the experience itself to be analyzed but the after-condition ought to be studied and the subsequent behaviour ought to be noted. Does it show less attachment to the ego and more devotion to the Overself, less emotional disturbance and more mental tranquility? If it is a genuine glimpse, its effect will be seen in one’s face, one’s gait, one’s talk, while the influence, and some of the aftermath, lasts. For one’s face will be transfigured, one’s gait will be slowed down, one’s talk will be restrained and wise. The Glimpse is in very truth a magic spell cast over a person’s whole being so that one neither feels nor reacts like one did before. For a short time one is born again, a new person. All the annals of the vanished past and all the experiences of the living present inform us that whoever enters into it feels one’s natural egotism subside, one’s fierce passions assuaged, one’s restless thoughts stilled, one’s troubled emotions pacified, one’s habitual World-view spiritualized, and one’s whole person caught up into a beatific supernal power. Did one ever have this kind of consciousness? One’s words and deeds, one’s personal presence and psychological self-betrayal should proclaim with a united voice what one is. No human who habitually enters such a blessed state could ever bring oneself to hate or injure a fellow human being. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Dear Lord in Heaven, I am dropping my baggage from the past right here. I am letting go of it and giving it to You. I do not want to drag it along with me any longer. Thank You for taking this heavy load off my heart. God, please be with us Violence, destruction, receive our homage. Please help us to bring darkness into the light, to lift out the pain, the anger, where it can be seen for what it is—the balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love. Within the act of creation, crude power that forges a balance between hate and love. Helps us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit. Who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light, nothing flowers. Beat the roots in mind, You the dark one, God, awesome power. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved husband whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and his memory ever be for a blessing. O Heavenly Father, remember the sold of my beloved wife whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and may her memory ever be for a blessing. O heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved son whom I loving recall in this solemn hour. His memory is enshrined in my heart. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my beloved daughter whom I loving recall in this solemn hour. Her memory is enshrined in my heart. May her soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. O Heavenly Father, remember the soul of my grandparents whom I affectionately recall in this solemn hour. As I remember the hours we spent together in happy fellowship, may I ever keep sacred the memory of grandfather’s loyalty and love. May grandmother and grandfather’s soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life. Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Cresleigh Homes
We’ve noticed something interesting since moving to Brighton Station Residence 2…laundry isn’t such a chore. 👕
Is it the extra cabinet space? The long folding countertop? Who knows, but we’re here for it! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/
Be welcomed by the grand foyer showcasing a beautiful open-concept great room, kitchen and casual dining room as well a gorgeous backyard.
Randolph Harris II International Institute 